- Senator Lidia Thorpe of Australia has criticized the proposed referendum on an Indigenous “voice” in parliament as “window dressing.”
- Indigenous Australians, comprising 25% of the country’s prison population.
- PM Anthony Albanese plans to establish an Indigenous advisory committee in parliament.
Senator from Australia Lidia Thorpe has called the proposed referendum on an Indigenous “voice” in parliament “window dressing” One of Australia’s most well-known Aboriginal politicians, Thorpe, an independent in the upper house, claimed that the voice is another attempt by a colonial government to assert its authority over Indigenous people and impose its norms upon them.
She suggested that the entire exercise should be scrapped since it has sparked conflict and harm and that true self-determination cannot be attained unless society’s systems, beliefs, and values are fundamentally altered.
Australia’s voice referendum
When the British arrived to build a colony and claimed the land was uninhabited, indigenous Australians had been living there for thousands of years.
Today, Indigenous Australians make up more than 25% of the country’s prison population, with many of them serving time for very minor offenses. Australians of Indigenous descent have lower life expectancies, poorer health than non-Indigenous people, and a third of the population who live below the poverty line.
To enhance the lives of Indigenous people by providing them a voice and ensuring that policies are more informed, the government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese claims that the voice will establish an Indigenous advisory committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander problems in parliament.
Although the public’s support for the referendum has waned recently, it is still anticipated to occur by the end of the year.
