‘Since when did opposing communism become racist anyway?’ my Uber driver, Ben, asked me.

You have the best political conversations with Uber drivers. Much like the kindness of strangers, politics is best discussed, if ever, with those you are not likely to encounter again. I have had the most enlightening thoughts about culture and politics from the back seat of an Uber. Memorable drivers have included a young engineering student from Africa, who admitted to me he liked Trump’s economic policy and thought that business experience was an asset to a politician. He then hastily added that he would, ‘…like, obviously, never say that to anyone who could exert power over him.’ I, like, totally got that one; noting I didn’t count as ‘anyone’ and feeling like a priest in a confessional booth. It certainly helps that driver and passenger don’t ever have to face each other.

If charity starts as far away from home as possible in 2023, safe political chit-chat is even further away. For months now the Voice has been a barbed wire No-go zone in all social settings. It was thus not surprising to me at all that, within the confines of a 15-minute trip and the safety of being strangers, one Caucasian woman of Irish immigrant stock (me) and one Aboriginal man (Ben) found themselves not just discussing, but reaching wholehearted agreement on the most divisive issue Australia has dealt with since the conscription referendum of 1916.

Opposition to the Voice has nothing to do with racism, Ben and I concluded. We both lamented the misuse of the term ‘racist’, suspecting that the most racist people of all were white liberals desperate to use indigenous Australians to push through a communist agenda, completely ignoring Aboriginal children subjected to child abuse and neglect.

I listened to Ben, as he spoke at length on issues the Voice advocates have shown reluctance to address, child welfare being the most important. The Voice is trying to pit Ben and me against each other on racial lines, however the indigenous of Ireland and Australia have more than a few similarities in their histories. Deliberately, the left does not like to point this out. Identity politics was designed to give credence to a very profitable grievance industry; there is a reason the phrase is ‘divide and conquer’ not ‘unite and conquer’. The last thing the far left wants is indigenous Australians finding commonalities with immigrants, who having fled persecution and have eschewed perpetual victimhood as a means of improving their lives.

Not just the Irish, but the convicts who came here in chains, such as the youngest convict on the First Fleet, 13-year-old John Hudson – not a lot of white privilege there.  Australia is home to one of the largest Jewish populations in the world and a sought-after new home for immigrants fleeing communism; we are proud of this. Ben told me 20 years ago he had travelled to Cambodia as a backpacker. Remnants of the Khmer Rouge were very evident then; whether it be the number of everyday citizens missing limbs or the crime rate ‘…you just knew,’ said Ben. I take the stance that Douglas Murray so well states; history was bad for all of us, let us move on with hope. Black, convict, immigrant, homosexual; we need to count the blessings of today, which are plentiful, but this does not feed the grievance industry.

My primary concern in all of this is the duty to protect children. Hearing Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price describe child abuse and neglect in Aboriginal communities, I am not remotely concerned with history or politics, I just want it to stop. Bess Price, politician and mother of Jacinta, became a mother at age 13 and survived years of domestic violence. Why isn’t she listened to? I know, it’s a rhetorical question!

Bess Price was an ardent supporter of Prime Minister Howard’s Northern Territory intervention.

Listening to this mother and daughter team, I believe the money behind the Voice campaign would have been better used in a royal commission into the sexual abuse of Aboriginal children. Yet, I dare not say this for fear of being labelled a ‘racist’. The fear runs deep; look at what happened to Kerri-Anne Kennerley. You can’t stray from the dominant narrative. I find myself, to my discredit, self-censoring. Meanwhile, the children suffer, nothing changes, and I have abandoned my duty of care. I am a coward.

The term ‘racist’ is highly effective at shutting people up; my inner-city peers are enthusiastically talking about their own mental health on RU OK? day. This is a great initiative, but it is ridiculous that, as we are all white, none of us can speak about the mental health and wellbeing of Aboriginal children. Woke indoctrination dictates we don’t step beyond our world of navel-gazing and virtue-signalling. We can’t call out evil when we see it, because racism is a mortal sin, while child abuse appears to be a lesser one.

Thank goodness for Ben who was first to broach what was, for me, the most alarming aspect of the Yes campaign; taking the Aboriginal vote for granted. In 2020, President Biden infamously said in an interview, ‘If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump then you ain’t black.’ The condescending way he treated the African-American vote is mirrored by Prime Minister Albanese as he encourages our most vulnerable and disadvantaged Australians to vote on a ‘vibe’. Bess Price writes of the Labor party in The Spirit Behind the Voice, ‘They think they own us, and they can’t tolerate our dissenting from their narrative.’

Labor is so despising of dissent, they are now not even encouraging the very basic practices of reading and critical analysis, which are essential to any disadvantaged group’s upward mobility and advocacy. Voting based on a ‘vibe’ for a document a sitting prime minister hasn’t even bothered to read himself goes against every instinct I have. So much for self-determination and agency, Labor is asking me to pretend I am illiterate. I am not.

‘I am sick of burying our children,’ writes Bess Price. ‘Seeing education denied to them, seeing them incarcerated, living in dire poverty and taken from families that don’t know how to care for them.’

I am too. Call me racist or a dinosaur all you want, but this mother will take advice from Bess Price over a prime minister, who can barely be bothered to visit Alice Springs. Australians shouldn’t out-source their conscience to more window-dressing like the Voice, more bureaucracy isn’t the answer. Women and children deserve more.