(Image: Zennie/Private Media)

Pretty soon, the Albanese government may commit to the referendum for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. And then again, the way things are going, it very well may not. But should it do so, and the die be cast, even with so many things unresolved (truth-telling, treaty, how genuinely grassroots the thing was in the first place), we will enter a new stage. At that point, the debate on the wisdom of the proposal stops, and a lot of us will have to turn instead to just defending the thing against attacks from the right. Or, if you really can’t bring yourself to do that, to just shut up about it.

So while there is still time, it may be good to raise a few final points, as much for the record of history as anything. And one thing to say is that even if the Voice succeeds in the referendum and is established, it may well prove to be a step backwards in the struggle for First Nations self-determination. Not merely ineffectual, not merely meh; it may actually make things worse. 

The reason lies in the Voice’s unique design feature: that it is intended to be powerless. This has been a hell of a proposition for many of us to get our heads around, since a referendum is such a bloody awful thing to have to try and win, that to go into it to get something that, of itself, can do nothing, hardly seems worth the candle. 

The argument from the Voice-ists (Vocalists?) has been that there needs to be an assembly before a treaty so as to conduct treaty negotiations. The trouble with that position is that it must cede “constituting” power to the settler state, in order to compose the assembly in question. The government is going to have to play some role in adjudicating the legitimacy of those elected/selected for the assembly. 

That then resituates a treaty, since it becomes a product of this process, rather than something bringing negotiation into being. It could actually, arguably, be better to have a somewhat ad hoc First Nations leadership negotiate a minimal core treaty, to preserve some autonomy from settler-state processes. But that’s gone by the by, if the referendum goes ahead in any case. 

The more modest of the Voice’s advocates have argued that, even if it cannot impose its will on Parliament, it will be heard with at least some respect (its enthusiasts claim far more for it than that). It can’t be worse than things are now. Even if there is no great advance, it can’t go backward.

But what if that’s not true? What if the Voice establishes a situation in which the very structure of the arrangement generates a negative situation that the assembly’s members, by the very nature of their commission, are unable to remedy? What if the matter of the relationship between the assembly and power becomes a question in itself?

This will surely, reasonably, occur once the very real limitations of the situation — power and powerlessness — start to play out. Whatever successes the Voice achieves early on, it will soon run into hard limits. Its demands can be unlimited; the government has a budget to manage, and, as both major parties have shown, will be unmoved by the suffering and inequality that different policies could remedy.

As this situation persists, the Voice will have no recourse for not being listened to. Faced with the inability to make an impact on the other, the inevitable pressure is towards contestation among one’s own group, to divide into factions — not least over what one should do about the dilemma of one’s powerlessness.

Every group that has suffered exile knows this feeling. As does every party in permanent opposition. And every member of an academic department. The problem is to be a group whose only mode of action is talk, set within the context of those who have real power. So any such group must eventually start to argue among themselves, and factionalise. 

This is when an entity enters decadence. Multiple groups make calls for unity and fighting the common enemy; every faction uses the other faction’s momentary concession to collective action to take strategic advantage. The logic of the “prisoner’s dilemma” takes over.

Many of the Voice’s advocates say that First Nations peoples’ commitment to discussion will overcome this. But that tends to be what everyone thinks. The most frustrating thing in such a situation is that one can see what needs to be done — fully collective action — but it remains tantalisingly out of reach. It is the deep structure of powerlessness, the perpetual reinforcement of dependency, that one side is real, and the other is a talkshop.

Now all this may not happen. The sense of collective purpose may override, or real delegated powers of regulation may be transferred. But under the current proposed set-up, this other possibility remains a real one — and one that arises not from any character of First Nations politics, but from the general structure being offered.

I dunno, ’twere me, I’d grab whatever treaty could be got from the referendum process. But we’ll have to all shut up about this stuff, pretty soon.