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aux is playing's avatar

The Voice is purely an advisory board and will not have powers to veto laws, though they are supposedly able to influence legislation. Supposedly.

The Voice would be an elected group charged with advocating Indigenous interests to Parliament, but would not have a vote on laws. In other words, a snow job, a charade, a sham that purports to be democratic and dissimulates endorsement of the will of the Aboriginal people, but does no such thing. One and the same as the rest of Parliament, and the Australian "Democracy" with respect to the will of the Australian: it's a total betrayal. The will of the Australian people is irrelevant to the Australian government and has absolutely no bearing on policy.

Long-term activist and elder Gary Foley, who co-founded Canberra’s Aboriginal Tent Embassy in 1972, has said, “I want you to think; think before you vote. Make sure that you’re not being manoeuvred into a position of being complicit in the latest of a long line of cosmetic bullshit measures that will achieve nothing in the way of justice [for Aboriginal people].”

Victorian Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe told the crowd [at Melbourne’s Invasion Day rally] Australia had been at war with Aboriginal people since 1788.

“What do we have to celebrate in this country? Do we want to become advisors now? Do we want to become an advisory body to the colonial system?”

In Sydney, Gomeroi man Ian Brown said he had no trust in a Voice to parliament because it would be “another formal process of government not listening to mob”.

Activist co-organiser of Melbourne’s Invasion Day rally and Victorian Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe's sister, Meriki Onus says. "If people don’t trust Voice, it’s because they don’t trust governments."

And neither should anyone ever again.

First nations are being used as proxies by global oiler banker corporation oligarchs, for whom the Australian government truly works and whose interests government only ever serves.

This Voice malarkey simply creates another government department needing more government officers and administration and bureaucracy. It co-opts some Aboriginals into the government to give the government a veneer of legitimacy in its rulings on indigenous Australians, however phoney and thin. It is a far simpler job to deceive the few government-captured Aborigines from the city with an urban middle class background, and then make their underhanded agreements the official word, than it is to convince all First Nationals.

Gary Foley has also said, “Beware of Blak bourgeoisie trying to sell you a referendum, trying to sell you a shonky proposition called the Voice.”

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Michael Ginsburg's avatar

Here is a super simple rule of thumb to live by:

Your automatic/instinctive response to ANYTHING the government of the day (regardless of political persuasion) puts forward should be a firm and vocal NO.

If the government tries to intimidate you or call you names, you should know that your decision to say no was DEFINITELY the correct one.

At that time, you should move from passively opposing to actively working your backside off to ENSURE that proposal by the government FAILS (and ideally fails spectacularly!)

We are there now when it comes to the voice...

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