The Voice Referendum is doomed to fail, hijacked by partisan interests, overworked in the media so that we're suffering from Voice fatigue, while nobody seems interested in why middle Australia is running the household budget into chronic and unassailable debt.
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The current farce is in stark contrast with a similar referendum in 1967 that was respectful, overwhelmingly popular and free of politics.
Bemused and confused Australians are becoming drenched in a cascading overflow of culture, facts and misinformation.
We try to avoid politics at the best off times, but the current debate is dragging us kicking and screaming into a bottomless pit of endless semantics.
I still haven't clue how I will vote. It's like being punched in the face from all sides, all at once.
I'm not going to decide until the final week. I know how I would like to vote but I will decide then whether all this is worthwhile.
Any attempt at a quiet conversation about it with friends quickly degenerates into a collective yawn about an issue thrashed beyond recognition.
I wondered how we could have got it so right in 1967 when we gave our black community, yes our black community, status as Australians and empowered Parliament to make laws for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.
A treaty would be a compact between white and black Australia, where symbolically we celebrated our country as one tribe. It would be a welcome to country for the millions of immigrants who will come to our shores in the future, seeking our peaceful way of life. Where our violence in the beginning was pacified long ago.
More than 90 per cent of Australians supported the referendum and this was back in 1967 when the White Australia Policy had only recently been abolished.
More than half a century later we are back to the future. Modern Australia still has no idea how to treat its first citizens with regard to something so fundamental, as our Constitution.
A few observations. The debate, well, more like fight, over the Voice to Parliament has become the opposite of what was intended. The Voice was another way of uniting Australians but instead it has divided the nation along racial lines.
If you are brave enough to admit you are voting No you are a racist. You don't get to argue the point or defend yourself. You are a racist. You always will be.
Your reputation is in danger of being trashed.
The Matildas have achieved a far greater level of national unity than a Voice could ever achieve.
When the Matildas won we united in celebration. When they lost we still united like never before. Imagine if the Voice could do that.
Imagine if our passion and patriotism for reconciliation sparkled like it did on the women's soccer field.
If ever there was a futile exercise in semantics it is the argument over whether the Uluru Statement from the Heart is a one page or 26 page document. Who cares? Whatever is needed to explain such a profound statement should form the natural length of the document.
Rather than a secret agenda the idea of a "Treaty" seems to me a better way of conveying the notion of reconciliation than a whole host of Voices.
A treaty would be a compact between white and black Australia, where symbolically we celebrated our country as one tribe.
It would be a welcome to country for the millions of immigrants who will come to our shores in the future, seeking our peaceful way of life.
Where our violence in the beginning was pacified long ago.
The major parties have hijacked the Voice and weaponised it as a proxy war for political supremacy.
PM Anthony Albanese has used the Voice in an attempt to marginalise the conservative parties and assure the Government of a second term.
He will seek to do the same thing with the Republic in his second term, weaponising it once again to marginalise his opponents.
The strategy currently hangs in the balance because polling shows the referendum to be in trouble in a number of states.
If it fails Albanese will blame the Coalition for playing partisan politics when he was just as bad.
If the policy was so right his Government needed to get all the detail out in the public domain and let the debate sort out facts from fiction. They didn't.
They remained smug for precious months and Australians grew suspicious.
For its part the Coalition defaulted to a negative position rather than be party to a substantial, historic Labor Government achievement.
The Coalition groaned when new PM Kevin Rudd press ganged then Opposition Leader Brendon Nelson into saying sorry in Parliament in 2008 to our first nations people. They were not about to let it happen again.
So the Voice has become the new election campaign and the referendum date just another name for general election.
When the National Party first signalled its opposition to the Voice ahead of the Liberal Party, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton had little choice but to be led into the No camp. He was on his way there anyway.
So here we are. Still arguing over the rights of Australians. Still fermenting a race based society. Still no closer to nationhood.
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