Voice to Parliament – Michmutters

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Australia

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation may lose website names registered ahead of Indigenous Voice referendum campaign

Pauline Hanson, dressed in a red jacket, wears a serious expression as she walks out of the Senate.

A pre-emptive strike by One Nation to register dozens of website addresses that could be used in the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum campaign has backfired, with several of the party’s new acquisitions set to be suspended.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson declared last Friday her party would become the face of the “no” vote in a referendum that could give Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people greater constitutional representation.

She said her campaign snatched up 46 website domains, including five that closely match ulurustatement.org, a website address already used by First Nations Australians and supporters of a constitutionally recognized First Nations Voice.

“The ‘yes’ campaign is ill-defined and ill-prepared, not even having the foresight to register the domain names we will use to good effect,” Ms Hanson said.

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Some of these websites, registered in bulk by Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and One Nation’s Queensland division, included voicetoparliament.org.au and ulurustatement.com.au.

The practice of registering multiple domain names is known as cyber-squatting and can be used to help maximize search engine traffic.

However, One Nation’s endeavor has failed foul of the entity responsible for licensing Australian domains, the .au Domain Administration (auDA).

The domain license administrator, who was made aware of the websites after the ABC uncovered 37 domains that appeared to be registered to One Nation, will suspend several of One Nation’s domains containing a .au address.

It is unclear how many domains will be taken down but auDA policy stipulates entities must typically have a “close and substantial connection” to their registered .au domain name. For example, the domain must match the name they are known by or a service they offer.

“The rules contain strict criteria that registrants must meet to hold their domain name,” an auDA spokesperson said.

“Where registrants are found not to have met the requirements of the .au licensing rules, a .au domain name may be suspended or canceled by auDA.”

The ABC was able to locate 23 domains linked to One Nation’s opposition to a Voice to Parliament with a .au address.

It found another 14 that had their ownership details redacted, but domain records showed they were registered by a Queensland entity at almost the exact same time as the others on August 2 and shared similar website address names.

None of the domains had active websites.

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Australia

‘Relentlessly practical’: Former prime minister Tony Abbott backs Jacinta Price amid Voice to Parliament debate

Tony Abbot said Jacinta Nampijinpa Price “knows what she’s talking about” as the debate continues about the Indigenous Voice to Parliament. Picture: Supplied.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott said Jacinta Nampijinpa Price “knows what she’s talking about” as the debate continues about the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

Senator Price has spoken out against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, saying the body would create a division between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians and wouldn’t address the issues facing First Nations communities.

While appearing on Credlin on Tuesday night, Mr Abbott told Sky News Australia host Peta Credlin he has ‘enormous respect’ for Ms Price’s opinion on the matter.

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“I have enormous respect for Jacinta Price and unlike so many of the people who talk a lot about this area- Jacinta Price has lived a life in remote Australia.

“So she knows what she’s talking about. That’s why her focus is so relentlessly practical.”

Mr Abbott said what we need to focus on instead is “what are we actually gong to do to get the kids to school, to get the adults to work and to keep communities safe.”

“Because all too often we apply these different standards and we say well it’s OK for indigenous kids not to go to school, it’s ok for indigenous adults not to go to work because of culture.

“We tolerate things that we wouldn’t tolerate for a second in suburban Australia because we say well that’s just the sort of thing that happens in remote places.”

The Voice to Parliament was a key element of the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart and called for an elected Indigenous advisory body to the Federal Parliament.

The proposed body would advise the government on issues affecting First Nations people.

The Labor Government pushed the issue to the center of its agenda when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared on election night that there would be a referendum in his first term.

The former prime minister weighed in on the issue and said there was no need for “constitutional change”.

“I think this proposed constitutionally voice to the parliament is wrong in principle and it will work out badly in practice.

“I don’t believe that we need a constitutional change if we are to have a voice and certainly I don’t think that there is any lack of consultation already,” Mr Abbott said.

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Australia

Sky News hosts Andrew Bolt and Chris Kenny clash over Anthony Albanese’s Indigenous Voice to Parliament

Sky News hosts Andrew Bolt and Chris Kenny clash over Anthony Albanese's Indigenous Voice to Parliament

Sky News Australia hosts Andrew Bolt and Chris Kenny have clashed in a heated debate over the government’s Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

Kenny – a member of the senior advisory group that guided the Indigenous Voice co-design process – appeared on The Bolt Report on Monday night and told his fellow primetime host that allowing First Nations people to have their say on how to combat Indigenous disadvantage would give them “a fair go”.

“We want to overcome indigenous disadvantage because we have no mechanism for those indigenous Australians to actually have their say,” Kenny said.

“To tell us what they think will help redress health outcomes or employment outcomes or domestic violence in remote communities”

“We ought to allow those people to have a say. It’s a fair go.”

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But Bolt fired back and said it was “more than a fair go” pointing to the proportion of indigenous MPs in Parliament.

Of the 11 parliamentarians who identify as Indigenous there are three lower house MPs – Jana Stewart, Marion Scrymgour and Dr Gordon Reid – and seven Senators – Pat Dodson, Malarndirri McCarthy, Linda Burney, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Jacqui Lambie, Kerrynne Liddle, Dorinda Cox and Lydia Thorpe.

While Kenny said it was not “relevant”, Bolt replied by suggesting Voice would serve as a “separate parliament”.

“Nope. It’s not a separate parliament it’s an advisory body,” Kenny responded.

The Labor Government pushed the issue to the center of its agenda when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared on election night that there would be a referendum in his first term.

The Voice to Parliament was a key element of the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart and called for an elected Indigenous advisory body to the Federal Parliament.

The proposed body would advise the government on issues affecting First Nations people.

Bolt said the Voice would set up a “false dichotomy” and establish race as the defining difference between Australians.

“It stresses its race as the primary difference between us which I think is false, wrong and dangerous,” he said.

Kenny responded by saying that Indigenous Australians are the most disadvantaged people in the country.

“Now there is all sorts of complex reason for that but it is a national shame that their life expectancy is shorter,” he said.

“They are much less likely to finish school, to get an education, to get a job and we all want that.

“And I believe that requires some special attention from government.”

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Australia

Constitution should recognize Indigenous people as first Australians, says Noel Pearson

Play Video. Duration: 10 minutes 27 seconds

The Albanese government’s proposal to enshrine an Indigenous advisory body in the constitution should include words that formally recognize Indigenous people as Australia’s first inhabitants, advocate Noel Pearson says.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese outlined the core three sentences of a draft constitutional change in a speech to the Garma Festival of Aboriginal culture on the weekend.

Those three sentences would establish a Voice, with a role of advising the parliament and the executive, with its exact powers to be defined by the parliament in future legislation.

But right before outlining the proposed words, the prime minister said the change would be “in recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as the First Peoples of Australia”.

Mr Pearson said it was important that those introductory words themselves be written into the constitution, alongside the enshrinement of the Voice.

“I think that they’re important words to retain as a prelude to those … substantive sentences,” he said.

7.30 host Sarah Ferguson asked if that recognition needed to be “spelled out” in a clause of the constitution, or whether it could be sufficiently “implicit” in the creation of the Voice.

But Mr Pearson said again the words of recognition were an important inclusion.

“It would adorn the substantive words,” he said.

Voice proposal ‘constitutionally conservative’ and practical

Anthony Albanese speaks from a podium on a stage at the Garma Festival
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks at the Garma Festival on Saturday.(ABC News: Michael Franchi)

Mr Pearson said the Voice proposal should appeal to “constitutional conservatives” because it respected the primacy of the constitution and the parliament.

“This isn’t a proposition that has its origins in a leftist proposal. And in my view, this is the formula for success, because we need conservative constitutionals and conservatives and Liberals generally, to join this journey to complete the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.”

Mr Pearson said he was “extremely moved” by Mr Albanese’s speech at Garma.

“I didn’t know that he could connect with me in that way.” Mr Pearson said.

yin and yang

The Opposition’s shadow attorney-general, Julian Leeser, has left the door open to the Coalition supporting the proposal while calling on the government to release more detail about the body’s role.

Indigenous Coalition senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has called the Voice an exercise in “virtue signaling” over practical action.

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Australia

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price tells Q+A she probably won’t support a referendum on Indigenous Voice to Parliament

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price tells Q+A she probably won't support a referendum on Indigenous Voice to Parliament

Indigenous Country Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has told Q+A she will “probably not” be working to support a referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

On Monday night’s episode, which was pre-taped from Garma Festival and hosted by Stan Grant, Senator Price was asked by an audience member if she would work to support the referendum.

She said there were more pressing issues facing Indigenous communities.

“I’ll be completely honest: there are more pressing issues,” Senator Price said before listing promises about education funding for the Yippinga School in Alice Springs and issues about alcohol making its way back into Indigenous communities.

“I have listened to and spoke to the Yippinga school in Alice Springs,” she said.

“The commitment I made to them if I were to get into government was to build a facility for student and staff accommodation.

“That school looks after Aboriginal kids in the surrounding town camps, and they come from very difficult backgrounds … some of them have to spend a three-hour round trip to go to school.”

Senator Price also said she felt little was being done about alcohol issues in Indigenous communities, describing “rivers of grog” being allowed to flow at present.

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“We know that right now alcohol is being let back out into communities, and this is huge,” she said.

“We know that the voices of the organizations that have been speaking out against allowing the rivers of grog back in have said, ‘Please don’t do this.’ but that’s fallen on deaf ears.

“[I’d rather] get the work done. So no, I probably won’t be supporting a referendum.”

The comments would have come as a blow, albeit an expected one, after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said during the weekend he was willing to take an Indigenous Voice to Parliament to a referendum.

‘Another bureaucracy’

Senator Price had earlier on the show railed against enshrining an Indigenous Voice within the Australian constitution, stating she had misgivings about bureaucratic processes and what would happen if things went wrong once it was in the constitution.

“I don’t feel as though something like this needs to be constitutionally enshrined,” Senator Price said.

“I look at the success of the Gumatj.

“What they have done with their country, the way they educate their young people, have industry up and running—they have their own bauxite mine.

“All those things have already happened and it’s all successfully occurred without the need for enshrining a voice to parliament to do so.

“And my biggest concern with this idea of ​​a constitutionally enshrined Voice to Parliament is it’s another bureaucracy.”

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Senator Price then added she believed a Voice would marginalize Indigenous Australians.

“I wouldn’t want to see us divided up along the lines of race in that regard, and I don’t want to continue to pour money into an industry that has been driven on the back of the misery of Indigenous Australians and propping up another bureaucracy,” she said.

“It’s not something new. It’s just enshrining a bureaucracy into the constitution.

“And if there are bureaucracies that have failed and [people] have not been accountable, how are we going to adjust this, which will exist in the constitution and can’t be dismantled should it fail?”

burney hits back

It was an argument that did not sit well with Minister for Indigenous Affairs Linda Burney, who was steadfast in her support for an Indigenous Voice.

“What we are talking about here is a permanent voice that no government can get rid of, that’s why enshrinement is so important,” Ms Burney said.

“And when it comes to another bureaucracy, it is going to be a body that we will consult with — you and everyone else on what it will look like and how it will operate.”

Ms Burney also shot down any suggestion it would not be clear what people were voting for at a referendum.

“The design of the Voice will happen after respectful, extensive consultation with First Nations people and the Australian community,” she said.

“It will happen before the legislation will take place.

“It won’t be me deciding, that would be so wrong, it will be people that we consult with and build a consensus with that we will listen to.

“There will be a lot of information out to the community about what people are voting on. It would be nuts for that not to happen.”

Asked whether it was a concern the proposal could be shot down, Ms Burney said she felt the time was right, backing the PM’s statement: “If not now, when?” She also said she felt both sides of politics were on board.

“We want to build consensus across the parliament, and I am so happy to see Peter Dutton is open to this, David Littleproud is open to this and the Australian people are ready,” she said.

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“We wouldn’t be embarking on this exercise if there was not a belief the tide wasn’t with us.”

Treaty became like ‘writing in the sand’

However an Indigenous Voice has been floated before and independent Member for Mulka, NT and Yolngu elder Yiniya Mark Guyula remembers when treaty was discussed in the 80s.

Now a politician, something he admitted he did not love being, he said Aboriginal people were more than ready.

“My people here in the East Arnhem land have been ready for a long time,” he told Grant when asked by the Q+A host.

“We have been ready for a long time, because I can talk about the example of the 1988 Barunga petition.

“There were two land councils…. that brought all our elders from both Center and from the East, we were ready for the recognition of our Indigenous identity, but the government wasn’t ready.

“All their promises about ‘there will be treaty’, and that echoed all along and nothing ever happened.

“At that time, it was a new promise that we had got and everybody was happy, but as time went on we waited and waited and waited, and it became like writing in the sand.

“We are ready for this one.

“If that referendum was called now, we would be gathering our people and we would go for it, go for it as soon as we could.”

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