We want to make Australia far more united, more hopeful and more reconciled than ever before.” Those doubters, those wreckers, they want to hold Australia back. Bitterly denouncing and witch-hunting opponents of the Voice plan, she said: “Of course, there will always be those that seek to hold us back. Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney was more blatant in trying to stoke nationalism in the Australian Financial Review (AFR) magazine last Friday. He linked this unmistakeably to the Voice proposal, saying: “Yet we learn, and we keep taking steps forward together.” Great prominence was given to the indigenous soldiers who served and died “for the country” in previous wars, including both world wars and the Vietnam War.Īlbanese told the dawn service at the national war memorial in Canberra: “e must acknowledge the truth that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who donned the khaki fought harder for Australia than Australia was sometimes willing to fight for them.” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese personally led the charge last week, using this year’s annual Anzac Day, glorifying Australian imperialism’s past wars, as a vehicle for connecting the Voice to the requirements of war. The transformation of the conditions and rights of ordinary people in order to undertake this war effort cannot be implemented democratically. Hand-in-hand with this program will be the suppression of any opposition among workers and young people. As is increasingly evident to workers and youth, that can be achieved only at the cost of working-class wages, living standards, and essential social programs, such as disability services, public health, education and housing, and welfare payments. ![]() It is being developed to help place the population on the frontline of a US-led war against China and spend hundreds of billions of dollars on an unprecedented military buildup, as outlined by the government’s Defence Strategic Review, released last week.Īs that report stated repeatedly, this requires an “all of nation” mobilisation, that is, a total war economy. This is not just a diversion from mounting social inequality and working-class discontent. The purpose is to project a manufactured façade of national harmony and inclusivity. ![]() This will soon be promoted by a massive advertising blitz heavily backed by the corporate boardrooms. Patriotism and warįirst of all, a “yes” vote for the Voice is being presented as a patriotic duty, necessary to unite the nation or complete the national unity of Australia. That also means further elevating, as an entrenched part of the political establishment, a privileged indigenous layer of CEOs, bureaucrats and senior academics, ever more based on business, that is organically hostile to the working class, particularly the indigenous working class. The Voice seeks to take to a totally new level decades of moves by successive governments and big business for “reconciliation” and constitutional “recognition.” This means reconciliation with the same capitalist profit system that massacred and sought to eradicate the indigenous population and recognition within the anti-democratic capitalist constitution. The Albanese government, backed by the corporate elite, is cynically exploiting the widely-felt hostility among workers and youth toward the crimes of capitalism against the indigenous population to further a program of war, wage-cutting and the slashing of social spending for the entire working class. ![]() The other is the unprecedented escalation of war against China, in which Australia is slated to play a central role, accompanied by the imposition of historic cuts to spending and attacks on the wages and conditions of the working class to pay for the massive military buildup. It is increasingly clear that this proposal, for an unelected indigenous advisory body with the constitutional right to be consulted by parliament and every level of government, is one of two key pillars of the Albanese government’s agenda. The interviews, featuring the main indigenous architects and proponents of the Voice, mark a stepping up of the Yes campaign for the Voice, which will accelerate over the next months financed by wealthy family foundations and corporations. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Alice Springs, January 2023.
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