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by Paul Santamaria KC

This article is Part 2 of 2. Read Part 1 here.

On August 10, Paul Santamaria KC addressed a News Weekly Community Evening at the Veneto Club in Bundoora. He spoke from a more personal perspective than he has hitherto on the proposed Voice to Parliament. This is the second part of Paul’s address.

The great pity about the situation where the referendum fails, is that, if the Prime Minister had been less inclined to overreach and could persuade people that the Voice would make a material improvement to the lives of rural and remote Aboriginal communities, then the proposal would have enjoyed good prospects of succeeding. But there has been no attempt to demonstrate how the Voice will improve the lives of rural and remote Aboriginals.

When the Prime Minister and the Treasurer say, as part of their advocacy of the “Yes” campaign that we are spending billions of dollars each year to close the gap and we’re failing, one would have thought that the first thing the Prime Minister and the Government would do would be to conduct an inquiry into why the expenditure of those funds fails year after year after year. At least if we understood why government programs fail, we would have a better basis for coming to a view about whether the Voice would succeed.

But it seems that the only difference the Voice is going to make is to establish another level of bureaucracy in Canberra, run by people who may have the best intentions in the world, who distribute funds to different communities, but where ultimately there’s no accountability.

Every year, the expenditure fails to produce the outcomes that we all want. Imagine if a private company was spending a billion dollars on promoting welfare and Aboriginal communities. I can tell you one thing: it would call people to account, to explain how the money is spent and why that money isn’t producing positive outcomes.

But, of course, with the public servants in Canberra, it’s not their money, they can spend it. They don’t lose their jobs if the outcomes aren’t positive. The money just goes down the drain.

I don’t think anyone in Australia really begrudges the spending of the money. We just want to see that the expenditure is productive and that these kids who have next to hopeless outlooks be able to have a future.

I suspect that we are going to experience an advertising campaign like we’ve never seen before in the weeks leading up to the referendum; it might even have the outcome that the Government wants. I think Australians are too smart for the marketers, but the difficulty will be, of course, when you have, say, a champion like Eddie Betts speaking for the Voice, it’s very attractive.

But the referendum should fail because it’s not in the national interest. I’m going to stop now as I want to read to you something that a woman from Elcho Island wrote to one of my nephews who has taught on the island for a couple of years and who speaks the dialect of the Elcho Islanders.

I was absolutely fascinated to read what this woman, Dilipuma Wulanayngu, said. It had quite an effect on me. She is an educated woman. She’s mostly Indigenous; she does have some Italian blood. She wrote a few extraordinary paragraphs on the Voice and what it offers people like her up at Elcho Island.

Of course, one of the points Nyunggai Warren Mundine and other Indigenous opponents of the Voice make is that it is completely false to think that Indigenous communities all speak with one, homogeneous view of the world. That is simply not the case. There’s a high degree of resentment of one tribe speaking on behalf of another.

That is a pretty powerful statement from a most articulate Aboriginal woman who has no trust in what the Voice will ultimately deliver. The choice we make at the referendum is going to be a very important one for the next generations in Australia, because it is going to decide whether Australians remain one nation.

I think the Voice will fail, and I think that it will be in the interests of Aboriginal Australians ultimately for it to fail, because I fear the consequences of an Australia where there is resentment by one group of Australians – not just white Australians, but Chinese, Sudanese people from every corner of the globe – against another group within the community who, despite their being absolutely entitled to special recognition, have political and social rights that are not enjoyed by all Australians.

So, for my part, I will be voting “No”.

“English is not our first language and we live very traditional lives in a modern world. We have already Aboriginal people elected into Parliament to represent us, but they don’t. Federal funding allocated to people like me doesn’t reach us. We never see a politician until election time; they come with promises and lies, get our vote then disappear.

“The Voice is being pushed by black elites for their agenda, these black elites don’t live like I do and my people. In overcrowded homes, minimum 10, maximum 30 people to a three-bedroom house. Chronic illnesses, poverty, unemployment, low education rates, suicide, mental health, child removals, youth crime, general crime and deaths on a daily basis.

“I lost 13 members of my family in one year; that’s an average of one death a month.

“I know these black elites are selling the Voice as something good for us remote and isolated Aboriginal people who live the life they don’t. But it will do nothing for us, it will just give the black elites more power to abuse. We are out of mind and out of sight.

“We are ignored on a daily basis, we need action on the ground given to grassroots people like myself and we need money to run programs that we know will work for our people in our regions.

“It is not one size fits all when it comes to Aboriginal issues. Aboriginal dysfunction is a billion-dollar industry created by successive governments, policy failures over the generations.

“We are all Australians and protected by the same Constitution; these black elites are using remote Aboriginal people as bait for their own personal and political gain. I have been an advocate for Aboriginal people since I was a child, marching with my mother, working in services that are supposed to help my people, so why would I not support a Voice to Parliament if I believed it would benefit my people? It’s a hidden agenda under the disguise of Aboriginal empowerment.

“They can do what they are saying they will do without a Voice to Parliament and changing the Constitution. This is dangerous move, we must protect the Australian Constitution with all our might; we cannot allow these people to use emotional blackmail and guilt to secure their abuse of power forever. Remember, once they are in, that is it.

“We already have a National Indigenous Australians Agency, aka NIAA. They have an office next to the Marthakal Motel [on Elcho Island] which is abandoned and has no representation or people working there. The Morrison government created it and the 2022-23 budget is $4.4 billion. I have not seen one NIAA employee in Galiwinku which has an office for them during the whole of 2022 and this year. Imagine if a Voice is created with constitutional rights?”