The VOICE – by Aborigines for Aborigines

By Christopher Kennedy

This discussion paper (first submitted to ANTAR) will set out another route to provide the First Nations people with a Voice. The person who becomes the Voice for their people will hold a ceremonial position, held due to the fact they have been voted in by their First Nation’s people.

A parliament is a group of people, to organise a meeting of a group of people on the internet costs about the same as a cup of coffee.

To set up a Voice website robust enough to handle taking and collating information from the approximately million people of Aboriginal descent is, of course, more expensive.

The real cost is finding an internet hosting service that is of military grade to ride shotgun against any Neo-Nazi or other group which has an interest in stopping the process of collating and counting the votes.

We are looking, at present, a cost of between 60-100 thousand dollars. This is a sum that could be raised by Aboriginal groups or donors. There will be no need for Government funding, or permission. And should it get bad publicity from the Murdoch press and suchlike, well, good. The Australian people are not paying for it, the donors for the site are unlikely to care for what Murdoch thinks. It would be a case of the more publicity (good or bad) the better.

The website itself would be very simple, for security reasons, and consist of four pages:

1. Page one – A simple explanation of the site, a welcome to country, and an invitation to vote on page two.
2. Page two – Here the voter places their name, language group and whom they wish to vote for. Some people have argued that the larger language groups should have more sway, this would be a difficult sell and would probably alienate a lot of voters.
3. Page three – An invite to leave their email address to receive that final count and to receive any communications the Voice may wish to send out. This would not be mandatory, as many people do not have email addresses.
4. A list of possible candidates for the position.

The Final Count

Many respected scholars of Aboriginal Languages would be interested in the results of the language census. In exchange for which they can weed out the bullshit artists who get past the security service only too be able to make one stupid remark at a time. Aboriginal Language Centres must be approached for this job.

The Winner

The Role of the Voice? To be able to say something with knowledge; they are representing a culture older than 60,000 years.

 

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