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# Manually typed from https://theblower.au/@DropBear/110647780217493876

Discussion over vote on Voice

A VOICE that can't be deleted.

When Assistant Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy said
that we will need to "call out the misinformation and disinformation" on the
Voice to Parliament.  I got to work doing just that.  I was seeing a lot of
it.

But when I tried to counter misinformation from my local member, Tony Pasin,
Liberal for the seat of Barker, he deleted my comment on his Facebook post.

In an alarmist speech to Parliament, directed specifically to the "seven
million Australians who were born overseas", Pasin wrongly claimed a
successful yes vote in the Voice refferendum would mean "exclusive rights will
be conferred" to Indigenous Australians and that there will no longer be "only
one class of Australian citizenship".

Under his Facebook video of the speech, I calmly called out his misinformation
and shared my own family's experience of the trauma caused by poor government
policy.

He deleted it.

Pasin has been on a concerted campaign against the Voice, so these comments
are only the tip of the iceberg of misinformation.  I'm worried that if we
don't steer out of this iceberg's path in time - it could sink the referrendum
for all the wrong reasons.

So I feel the need to share this story somewhere it can't be deleted.

My grandmother is a Luritja woman. Her name's Linda - after Lyndavale - the
place near Alice Springs where she was stolen from her parents as a child.
For this terrible policy, she eventually heard the Apology to the Stolen
Generations from the Rudd Government in 2008.  Nice to have an apology and
all, but Linda never saw her parents again.

She grew up on a mission Croker Island, and Linda eventually gave birth to my
mother out of wedlock.  At that moment, my mother was forcibly adopted - which
means Linda was basically drugged, told what was best for her, and never held
her baby.

Another poor policy which proportionately affected Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander women, and Julia Gillard offered the National Apology for
Forced Adoptions in 2013.

At the time my mother was forcibly adopted, grandma Linda was forcibly
sterilised - another poor policy.  It's hard to draw the line between policy
and practice when it comes to the traumatic experiences of Aboriginal people
in Australia.  In Australia, forced sterilisation was practiced under various
state and territory laws between the late 19th century and the 1970s.
Aboriginal women were often targeted for sterilisation without their informed
consent or understanding of the procedure.

Not knowing this, she tried to have children with her partner, those attempts
failed and ultimately, as a consequence, so did their relationship.

The cruelty of these kinds of policies and practices are only possible when
governments are uninformed, and the people who suffer the consequences have no
voice.

While our stories and comments can be deleted, the whole point of enshrining a
Voice in our Constitution is that it cannot be deleted like our voices have
been in the past.

In 1973 Gough Whitlam established the National Aboriginal Consultative
Committee, Malcolm Fraser deleted that.  Bob Hawke set up the Aboriginal &
Torres Strait Islander Commission, and then John Howard deleted that.

In 2011 the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples met, and later, the
Morrison Government deleted that - not before it was defunded to the point of
being unable to function anyway.

Can we see the pattern here?  The Liberal Party has consistently abolished
mechanisms established for the First Nations people to have a voice.  But have
you ever tried deleting the Australian Constitution?  This referendum protects
our voice from the whim of successive governments.

My local member Tony Pasin disingeneously spruiks the Dutton Liberal
quasi-solution of regional and rural First Nations voices.  It's as if to say
"we want you to have a voice, but it can't be powerful or permanent."  The
preferred Voice for this Liberal Party is still one that can be deleted.

This is why we need a Voice to Parliament enshrined in the Constitution.

It's a pretty simple question: if First Nations people have to live with the
consequences of Government policies, do we want them to have a voice when
those policies are being made?

I'm sure my grandmother's community would have had something to say, were they
ever asked.

-- George Beck
"Lynwood Park"