Call it what you like. The buried lede, the cats out of the bag, coming out of the closet or hiding in plain sight, but whatever you call it, exactly as predicted by many, many people, over many, many months and which should kill the referendum stone dead in its tracks, is in paragraphs 7 through 10 on the front page of the Weekend Australia April 1st. (Politicians won’t ‘shut the voice up’)
The new body will not be “limited to matters specifically or directly related to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and, it will have the power to speak on a broad range of matters” and further on “the voice could advise government across the policy spectrum from environment and climate to defence or financial matters”. The referendum proponents are well and truly telegraphing their intentions It’s almost like they are deliberately trying to scuttle the entire project and strangle the referendum in the crib.
A weird kind of constitutional Munchausen’s by proxy.
Section 51 of the Constitution presently reads:
Part V – Powers of the Parliament
51. Legislative powers of the Parliament
The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power12 to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:
……
(xxvi) the people of any race for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws;
Why don’t we replace that with:
‘….. make no laws with respect to race, and it shall be illegal to specify race in any laws or regulations.’