Labor’s more excitable fellow travellers have still not accepted the decisive result of the voice to Parliament referendum.
Linda Burney, the former Indigenous Australians minister who failed to deliver the voice for Anthony Albanese, will reportedly be awarded life membership in Labor at its national conference this week. She told the media she had no regrets pushing the voice to Parliament and said she hoped it would be revisited in the near future.
“I think [the referendum result] was a devastating outcome…but I have faith this issue will not go away,” she said. “If not a voice, then proper recognition of the whole story of this country in our Constitution would be most welcome.”
Burney doesn’t understand our Constitution. It’s not a document that “recognises stories”. It’s a document which effectively lays out the rules for parliaments governing Australia, and it already recognises every Australian indigenous or otherwise, by making no distinction between them.
But even Burney’s refusal to accept her own spectacular failure was eclipsed by the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU), which released a ‘blueprint’ ahead of the conference demanding the removal of “symbols of oppression, like the Union Jack on our flag and offensive colonial statues” from public life.
Racial division has always been part of Labor’s DNA. One people, one country under one flag – the current Australian flag – is part of One Nation’s DNA. Hiding our history doesn’t change it. Treating people differently based on race doesn’t unite Australia. The people have spoken, and they’ve rejected this division. One Nation will always oppose an indigenous voice in Parliament or changes to our national flag.