Last week we looked at whether the proposed Voice will give rise to an avalanche of litigation and we argued that it will. If you want a new, permanent, unelected, race-based body that will unleash litigation until the Voice and its acolytes get their own way, this is the one for you. That cannot be a good thing, unless you are a lawyer or believe that what Australia needs is more work for lawyers. But this week, we stand back and have a look at why the government wants the Voice in the constitution at all. Also, is this just a proposal for a harmless vehicle to give ‘advice’ or are we walking blindfolded into a trap to give this body unprecedented powers that the government is hiding from us?

Why does the Voice have to be in the Constitution? It doesn’t. It could achieve everything the government says it will achieve by simply setting it up under a law passed by the parliament. That could be done in a few hours, as we know from the speed with which the law giving the Russians their comeuppance over the site for their new embassy was passed. If there is a need for a Voice at all, which I doubt, it could be done by legislation, which would have the advantage of seeing how and if it works and improving it if necessary. This could be guaranteed by continuing oversight by a parliamentary committee. And it would save millions.

Why then is the government hell-bent on putting the Voice in the constitution? Because the government and advocates for the Voice want a permanent change to Australia that will introduce race as the qualification for new and extensive political power and upend our whole constitutional structure.

But isn’t the Voice designed only to give advice? No, it is not. If it were, you would think that the referendum question would say so, at least once, but it does not. In fact, it is a complete furphy that the Voice is designed to give advice and nothing more. Commonwealth laws already give power to all sorts of bodies to give advice and we are very familiar with using that word in commonwealth laws. For example, the National Indigenous Australians Agency is already mandated to ‘provide advice’ on Aboriginal affairs. In the arts, the Australia Council says ‘We advise government on … the arts’. Then we have bodies like the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Skilled Migration and the Advisory Committee on Vaccines. There are dozens of such bodies and they all give ‘advice’. But that word is not used once when it comes to the Voice. The Voice is not to give advice but is to make ‘representations’, as the referendum question specifically says.

What is the difference? Advice is counselling that the government and the executive should keep in mind some basic principles and approaches. ‘Representations’ are claims that you want something done and they are demands that are much more than mere advice. Moreover, they are made on far more specific issues. In Aboriginal affairs, representations would clearly be: should this mine, dam or development be allowed; should the national anthem and the Australian flag be changed; should Australia Day be celebrated or changed to Invasion Day? After all, they are all matters relating to Aboriginals. Also, representations can be repeated. If they are rejected, they can be renewed, because the Voice will be permanent and will have the right to repeat them. If the Voice does not like the reasons given for a rejection, it will have power to repeat its claims, vary them or make new ones. As we also pointed out last week, the endless litigation this proposal will generate could be started again and repeated, as the Voice will be permanent. No one can stop new representations being made if there is a permanent right in the constitution to make them and make them again until they are accepted.

Why then was the word ‘advice‘ abandoned in the referendum question and the word ‘representations’ used instead? Because what is at the bottom of the Voice proposal is not to give advice in a vacuum but to change, fundamentally, the whole governmental structure we have and which has served us so well; to put into that structure a new and unelected, race-based body, with power to second-guess every government decision by making representations and then to repeat the whole obstructive process ad infinitum.

But isn’t it still just a harmless proposal to give the Voice the single ‘power’ to make representations?

No. It is a trap for a wider agenda, to give it powers beyond what the referendum has approved. How come? The proposal gives ‘power’ to the Voice to do only one thing: make representations. So, the government can say, as it does, that the detail can be left to the parliament. But that is the sting in the tail. The so-called detail to be left to the parliament includes no mere detail, but the power to declare exactly what the powers of the Voice will be. On the voting blocks in the parliament at the present, and their declared intentions to vote for the Voice, the government will simply rubber-stamp whatever powers it wants to give to the Voice.

Therefore, if the referendum is passed, the government will be able to give it powers far beyond the mere right to make representations, the only issue the people had before them when they voted. Thus, we will have created the Voice and given it the power to make representations, but we will also have given it unlimited powers that were never spelt out to the people before they voted at the referendum. And it all comes back to the same point: we should not vote for this monumental change to the constitution without knowing, chapter and verse, exactly what powers the Voice would have. Don’t forget: if we vote for the Voice, with unlimited and as yet undisclosed powers, it’s there forever.