Hey Albo, who do you reckon qualifies as an Aborigine? Before I vote in your referendum on an indigenous Voice not only to parliament but to government and all its agencies, like all Australians I’m entitled to know just to whom I’m supposed to be giving this Voice. Is it to the seriously disadvantaged 155,000 Aboriginal people living in remote communities who really do need a voice in the corridors of power? Or will their voice be submerged under the almost five-times bigger voice of the 660,000 urban Aboriginal people that make up more than 80 per cent of Australia’s 813,000 citizens claiming Aboriginal descent? Most of these have more than a dash of Caucasian (or other non-Aboriginal races) blood along with significantly different needs and agendas from those of tribal Aborigines. Or even worse, will the needy voice of remote Aborigines even get to sing in a choir dominated by the 300,000 capital-city-based of mixed-ancestry, many of them political activists, who have access to the norms of a Western lifestyle but, in booming numbers, claim entitlement to the benefits aimed at their genuinely disadvantaged  remote (part-) brethren.

Fifty years ago, when I was a young bloke of 42, I supported the eccentric Liberal minister Bill Wentworth (three years later I became his parliamentary colleague) in his partly successful endeavours to improve the lot of Australia’s then only 116,000 Aborigines, particularly the 60,000 hard-done-by mob making up more than half Australia’s total, living in squalor in remote communities. But since then there has been a seven-fold increase in people claiming to be Aboriginal, with only about six per cent (40,000) of that 700,000 increase coming from the needy remote areas whose population has only risen modestly to 155,000. So a game-changing 95 per cent of the massive growth in Aboriginal numbers over the last 50 years has come from urban areas – with the great bulk being of mixed ancestry. It is now a very different problem needing a very different set of solutions. There is now a clear divide between the needs of remote Aboriginal people, who were 1971’s main problem but currently represent only onesixth of the rapidly rising (self-identified) Aboriginal population, and the agendas of today’s urban activists.

So I was keen to find out about what is presented as a good idea to end the disastrous decades-long governmental multi-billion-dollar meddling, along with the chaotic attempts at ‘guided’ self-management, in Aboriginal affairs by trying something new. But good intentions alone (if that’s what prompted the Voice rather than power-hungry pressure from political activists) are not enough to bring success – especially if the plan has fatal flaws. The key flaw has not even received a mention from political campaigners in the unedifying slanging match that seems to have replaced what should be an important debate on whether to take the momentous step of changing the Australian constitution.

H.C. ‘Nugget’ Coombs is to blame for this fundamental flaw. When the 1967 referendum included Aboriginal people as citizens for Census purposes (like 90 per cent of Australians I voted Yes), the Bureau of Census and Statistics asked the Holt government’s Council for Aboriginal Affairs, of which Coombs was chairman, what level of mixed ancestry should be included as ‘Aboriginal’. Coombs response that, ‘Perhaps the best definition of Aboriginal is a person who so describes himself’ was accepted by the council.

Without being aware of the unintended consequences of the census-purposes definition being used for entitlement purposes, in the 1971 census each person was asked to identify ‘the race which was most important to them’. This ended the short-lived question in the previous census that sought the degree of Aboriginality.

The consequences fifty years later of that absurd decision provide the unassailable reason why the referendum must not pass. Whatever their motive, hundreds of thousands of people, many of whose Aboriginal blood represents a tiny fraction of their DNA, have decided to reject their overwhelmingly Caucasian or Chinese or any other racial background, no matter how dominant, and prefer to be Aboriginal (or in woke-speak, to be termed ‘first nations’). This means there is an open invitation for millions more to join this gravy train of entitlement – and now the prospect through the Voice of special access to government that is not available to the rest of us.

The boom in self-identified Aboriginality has been the main factor in 1971’s Aboriginal population of 116,000 multiplying seven times to 2021’s 812,728, way out of proportion to the doubling of Australia’s total population. As a result, the proportion of Aboriginal Australians has jumped from less than one per cent to 3.2 percent –with much of the rise taking place in the last decade. Official forecasts expect greater rises to come, particularly from urban Aboriginal sources. The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates that to 2031, urban Aboriginal growth will outpace remote growth four to one, so extending the divide between indigenous people living in remote communities and the urban activists being catered for in the Albanese government’s Voice referendum.

In any event, how fair dinkum are these self-declarations? The Statistician has reported that 11 per cent of them in the latest census did not list an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander ancestry, so who knows? The Spectator Australia recently quoted prominent Aboriginal academic, Dr Suzanne Ingram, suggesting that as many as 300,000 of the currently reported Aboriginal population may not be genuine.

But concerns about the authenticity of some self-identifications are peripheral to the major objection that the process provides a potential for exponential growth in Aboriginal numbers, particularly in urban areas where even only tenuous links to Aboriginality can hold sway. This would not only broaden access to whatever benefits may be available, but, more importantly, further submerge the voice of traditional tribal Aborigines. While the statistics do show modest increases in Aboriginal numbers in remote areas (but only a fraction of the booming growth in the cities) as some improvements in health and longevity have an impact, the latest Productivity Commission report on closing the gap demonstrates the depressingly dramatic differences between the needs of the mainly full-blood Aboriginals in remote areas and their numerically overwhelmingly dominant, city-based, mainly mixed-blood cousins.

Heightening this divergent trend is that while the proportion of couples where both are Aboriginal has continued to decrease, the overwhelming majority (82 per cent) of Aboriginal couples recorded in the 2021 census included a non-indigenous person. This cohabiting has ultimately contributed most of the demographic element of the sharp rise in the 2021 census over 2016 in the number of young people being reported as Aboriginal. On top of that, more than half of the 165,000 (25 per cent) jump in Aboriginal population between the 2016 and 2021 census was the non-demographic result of a major increase in self-identification

Until ‘Nugget’ Coombs’ ludicrous open-ended definition of Aboriginality, now used for entitlement purposes is closed, and entitlements are directed only towards those really in need, rather than as directed by self-interested capital city political activists, the Voice is simply the wrong answer.