Few people have been as invested in the forthcoming referendum as Megan Davis. She has been a protagonist in every key scene of the drama of constitutional recognition that has played out over the past two decades. In Voice of Reason, Davis reminds us of that journey, and of how much is at stake – not only for her personally but for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at large and, indeed, the whole country at this year’s referendum.

No one who reads this essay can be left in any doubt about the crucial role she has played or what has motivated her. Central to the essay is her account of how the proposal for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice was developed; how it obtained the imprimatur of Indigenous consensus and, subsequently, parliamentary acceptance, so that it could ultimately be put to the electors at a referendum. This narrative is situated within Davis’s analysis of the massive failures in public policy when it comes to Indigenous affairs and her own attempts at helping to identify problems and recommend solutions.

This experience allows her to assert with confidence that public policy and law reform will not improve unless a new mechanism is established to enable policy and lawmakers to hear Indigenous voices. She explains that this mechanism won’t be effective, however, unless its existence is guaranteed by the Australian Constitution. Hence, the need for constitutional recognition not only of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples but of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. It is only in this way that “the torment of our powerlessness” can be ended. Thus, the heading “recognition and reconciliation” only appears halfway through the essay. For Davis and those who have toiled with her, the referendum proposal is primarily about addressing the failure of public policy in Indigenous affairs by entrenching a new
consultative mechanism in the Constitution. Only by achieving this can reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people occur, through the symbolic moment of amending the Constitution to recognise Indigenous people. 

Within months of the publication of Davis’s essay, the country will have voted either for or against the proposal she first read out at Uluṟu six years ago. When she was writing the essay, most electors were only just starting to become aware that they would have to vote for or against the proposal for a Voice to Parliament. So it is timely to think about what might be going through their minds.

Towards the beginning of her essay, Davis references Noel Pearson’s claim in his 2022 Boyer Lectures that Aboriginal people remain the “most unloved” people in Australia. She writes that “Pearson’s theory will be tested in 2023.” Davis claims that Pearson’s thesis applies to “an Old Australia,” and that it is this Old Australia that is propping up the No campaign. She writes: “Conservatives are busy carving out a convenient narrative for themselves that there is a reasoned and respectable case for ‘No’; there isn’t.” She continues by quoting Niki Savva’s opinion that “While it is not true to say that every Australian who votes No in the Voice referendum is a racist, you can bet your bottom dollar that every racist will vote No.”

I offer no comment about who is racist or how racists will vote. I do note, however, that – although I don’t agree with them – there are principled reasons for voting No, as Greg Sheridan explains in a paper he wrote recently for the Centre for Independent Studies. His philosophical objections to the proposal do not make him racist and they are not misinformation – they are arguments that can and should be refuted. While Davis claims that conservatives are busy carving out a convenient narrative for voting No, some of us have spent the better part of a decade carving out the conservative case for voting Yes. I helped edit two collections of essays – The Forgotten People: The liberal and conservative case for recognising Indigenous people (2016) and Statements from the Soul: The moral case for the Uluru Statement from the Heart (2023) – which show that some conservatives are in fact motivated by their conservatism to vote “Yes” and to make the case for change. The case for change has never been confined to the purview of progressives. Conservatives since Edmund Burke have understood the need for change, and the proposal that is currently before us is one that owes much to conservative thought.

There is widespread acceptance among conservatives and progressives alike that Australia’s Indigenous people should be recognised in the Constitution, just as there is widespread acceptance that public policy is failing badly when it comes to Indigenous affairs. The question is whether there will also be widespread acceptance by referendum day that a Voice will improve public policymaking in Indigenous affairs and similar acceptance that entrenching a Voice is the right way to recognise Indigenous people in the Constitution.

To achieve the requisite level of acceptance, electors need to feel comfortable that they understand, first, how a Voice could work and, second, why a Voice that works in that way will improve the lives of people on the ground. Sean Gordon, in his speech to the Sydney Institute last year, addressed this when he said, “As a nation, we all want to see more Indigenous communities driving a responsibilities agenda and leading change. There are pockets of change happening, but this change is slow. To accelerate progress, communities need to be able to tell government how to get rid of the barriers to their development, and they need a structure or group who is authorised to drive place-based reform. The Voice to Parliament can be that change if the Parliament designs it as such.”

Greg Craven and I argue along similar lines in a paper we wrote this year for the Centre for Independent Studies, Guaranteeing a Grassroots Megaphone: A centre-right approach to hearing Indigenous voices. As we explain: “If the Indigenous Voice is designed as a grassroots megaphone, it will be something that conservative and liberal voters can support. We can all get behind a mechanism that enables people in Indigenous communities to provide advice to the Commonwealth Parliament about laws relating to Indigenous affairs. And we can all get behind the idea that, in light of Australia’s history, the Constitution should guarantee that, in future, Indigenous voices will be heard before Parliament exercises its power to make laws with respect to Indigenous affairs.” 

More recently, Gavin Brown, a Wiradjuri man, authored PwC Indigenous Consulting’s report entitled Who Is Speaking? Who Is Listening? The architecture for creating a Voice as a vehicle for practical partnerships. The report notes that the co-design report commissioned by the Morrison government and delivered in July 2021, known as the Calma/Langton report, dealt largely with the question of who is speaking at local, regional and national levels. It was focused on the Indigenous voices. To explain how the Voice will work in practice, the PwC report identifies the need also to consider who is listening to these voices, and the bridge between those doing the speaking and the way the parliament and the executive would listen. Brown notes that the desire for Indigenous peoples to be heard is a call for mutual respect and recognition. “Underpinning this structural reform is both the right to be heard, and the responsibility to speak. Rather than seeing the Voice as a threat to our democratic process, a well-designed structure which provides for local, regional and national input can actually be a crucial enabler for improving outcomes for Indigenous peoples,” he says. 

The value of the report lies in the way it explains the structural link between local and regional Voices and the national Voice. It explains that the local Voices will provide the critical power base for the parliament and the executive to engage successfully with Indigenous communities. The efficacy of the national Voice lies in the architecture that it provides for facilitating constructive engagement between these people on the ground and decision-makers in Canberra. It does this by creating a bridge – an institutional framework that ensures disempowered people can speak effectively to those with the power to make decisions, and that those decision-makers can listen effectively to what is being said.

Opponents of the Voice argue it risks being stacked with activists or, worse, people from the so-called Canberra bubble. Once you see the functions and the responsibilities of the Voice through this grassroots-up architecture, it seems unlikely this would occur, given the lines of accountability back to community.

Davis concludes her essay by relating how she has sought to reassure Indigenous people who feel cynical about the capacity of government to address their concerns that there is a better way of doing business, that their aspirations will be realised if we ensure that their voices are heard by law and policymakers. Their cynicism is understandable, and Davis has done our country a great service by patiently acknowledging and addressing it. But theirs is not the only cynicism that needs to be addressed. We need to explain to non-Indigenous electors who feel cynical about a Voice that a Voice that enables local Indigenous communities to work with policymakers to find solutions to the problems that beset their communities will bring about solutions that enable Indigenous communities to take responsibility for their own prosperity.

That non-Indigenous electors might be cynical about the ability of a Voice to address the plight of many of their Indigenous compatriots does not necessarily mean they do not love Aboriginal people. A different interpretation could be that, in a constitutionally conservative nation, electors need to understand what they are being asked to vote for and why it will help improve the lives of people on the ground. If this is explained to them, they will vote Yes in large numbers and will affirm their love of their fellow Aboriginal citizens.

Damien Freeman is the principal policy adviser at the PM Glynn Institute, Australian Catholic University. His books include Abbott’s Right: The conservative tradition from Menzies to Abbott and Killer Kramer: Dame Leonie – a woman for all seasons.