- cross-posted to:
- politics@kbin.social
A landmark referendum backed by the government would give Indigenous people constitutional recognition and greater say on legislation and policy affecting them.
A landmark referendum backed by the government would give Indigenous people constitutional recognition and greater say on legislation and policy affecting them.
“a landmark referendum to enshrine in the Australian Constitution an Indigenous body — known as a “Voice to Parliament” — to advise the government on legislation and policy affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, who make up almost 4% of Australia’s population of 26 million.”
This seems, at the very least, reasonable. It’s odd that they don’t have any actual representation, though.
Why do you say they have no representation? There are a lot of specific bodies operating in the government, advisory and otherwise, with the sole focus of indigenous affairs. And of course, currently, indigenous Australians are over represented in terms of parliamentarian race (more than 4% if parliamentarians are of indigenous descent).
I think the problem though is that in a majority non-Indigenous country those Indigenous Australian parlimentarians are those who were voted in primarily by the majority ethnic groups.
Indigenous Australians are only a minority of voters for any position where everyone gets to vote. As I understand it, the Voice is supposed to be chosen by Indigenous Australians themselves…
Indigenous Australians have the standard representation from a government department, minister, state departments etc.
Problem is 96% of those voting in the office holders for those positions are non-Indigenous. This is an attempt to be a bit more progressive than that.