Australia to be run by politically privileged race of Aboriginal people. By Keith Windschuttle.
The common assumption all these activists share is that the real aim of constitutional change is not to arrive at some final settlement that will make the nation complete. They support recognition of Aborigines in the Constitution simply as one more of the steps they need to take towards their real objectives: political autonomy, traditional law and values, and sovereignty over their own separate state or nation. …
In 2011, a survey by the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples found the three most important issues for its members were sovereignty, health and education. No fewer than 88 per cent of Congress members identified constitutional recognition and sovereignty as top priority. …
In other words, reporters, news editors, headline writers and academic commentators today are being quite deceptive when they describe Aboriginal sovereignty as an issue confined to a bunch of easily excitable political fringe dwellers like Lidia Thorpe.
Sovereignty has now become the mainstream demand of all members of the Aboriginal political class. Aboriginal activists are uncompromisingly radical in their insistence that “sovereignty over all of Australia” lies with them. …
In a similar vein, some prominent Aboriginal individuals who once accepted Australia’s political and religious institutions without question, have themselves since become radicalised. Some, like Lidia Thorpe, have come to reject the notion of constitutional recognition on the grounds that, as a sovereign and independent people, the Aborigines are not part of the Australian nation, hence constitutional recognition is a ploy to divert and placate them. …
Duped or deceptive?
Yet when Anthony Albanese spruiks his support for constitutional change, he persists with assurances that there are no fundamental issues like these for Australian voters to be concerned about. …
The proposed Voice or its variants would all be the opposite of reconciliation. The goal has always been political power and who will have ultimate sovereignty on this continent.
Today, we are in a situation where the Aboriginal political class is unwilling to accept a position in contemporary Australia as an ethnic minority group. Its members want other Australians to recognise the “distinct rights” that purportedly flow to Aborigines because their ancestors got here first.
If the proposed referendum is held later this year, as Albanese has promised — some time between September and December, he said recently — voters need to be aware of its ultimate objective. This is to establish a politically privileged race of Aboriginal people, and to relegate of the rest of us to a subservient position in what we once thought was our own country.
hat-tip Stephen Neil
