The Voice: The Great Deception is unraveling

The Voice: The Great Deception is unraveling. By Janet Albrechtsen.

Has there ever been a more flagrant attempt to deceive the Australian people than the Albanese government’s effort to force-feed the voice into our Constitution?

Aided and abetted by an army of activist advisers and cheerleaders, Anthony Albanese and Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney lead what can only be described as the great deception….

The gamble by Yes activists that we would not look too hard at the proposed wording and its consequences, or stand up to bullying, has manifestly failed — to the point where even some voice supporters are now coming clean.

The result: the Yes campaign is now falling apart under the weight of its internal inconsistencies, dishonesties and division. …

Yes, it comes out, the Voice will in fact be able to hold up any legislation and thus effectively gain a veto over everything:

Marcia Langton, Aboriginal activist and academic

Now, Langton admits the voice is a matter for the courts. … Asked about whether High Court challenges could be used to delay government decisions until the voice had deliberated on the matter, Langton said, “That’s a possibility … why wouldn’t we want that to be the case?”

Many curiously minded and in some instances legally trained commentators have consistently warned the voice would be able to use leverage extracted by lawsuits to gum up the processes of government, and thereby hand vast negotiating power to the voice and its supporters. We were naysaid and insulted by a phalanx of activist lawyers. Constitutional lawyer Greg Craven said “this legal fright-fest is bizarre” as he assured us that the High Court would not, for example, impose legal obligations around consultation with the voice.

The gap between then and now is remarkable and of concern. Since then, former High Court justice Kenneth Hayne admitted the voice could be the subject of litigation, but he told us to trust the courts. Then fellow former High Court justice Ian Callinan confirmed the voice could be the subject of a decade of litigation. He appeared less trusting of the courts. Now, even ardent voice supporter George Williams has admitted what he should have told us upfront. “Courts will play a role in the operation of the voice,” he said recently.

Last December, Williams wrote: “There is no requirement the voice be listened to before a decision” was made. Last week, Williams admitted: “Courts may be asked to rule on the … the consequences of a minister failing to listen when the voice has spoken.”

Other leading figures in the Constitutional Expert Group such as constitutional lawyer Davis, as well as Craven, have also recently acknowledged what was long denied or dismissed — namely that the courts will play a significant role in determining the powers, processes and functions of the voice.

Why the deception?

Why didn’t all these lawyers tell us this earlier? Why did this entirely logical consequence of a constitutionally entrenched voice have to be effectively flushed out of them? What else are they not telling us? Are they saving future surprises for us, to be revealed only if a Yes vote is successful?

Given the sudden shifts from high-profile voice activists saying one thing last year, then another more recently, we have every reason to ask: when will the con job on the Australian people end? …

Let’s return to the fundamental problem. This is no “modest proposal” but a carefully crafted attempt to replace crown sovereignty, the sovereignty of all of us, with the co-sovereignty demanded by the Uluru statement.

Armies of activists and academic lawyers have been beavering away for years trying to find ways of inserting into our Constitution the wedge that leads to this co-sovereignty. …

It has become crystal clear that deception, dissembling and intimidation have been key to the whole campaign. Now, with significant parts of the great deception exposed, unwittingly, by these same voice activists, we are entitled to ask: what more haven’t they told us?

Lying activists? See also Truth the first casualty of Lidia Thorpe’s performative activism by Jack the Insider.