THE PSYCHOLOGIST : Voice referendum question likely ‘misleading, unconstitutional’, legal experts warn

Voice referendum question likely ‘misleading, unconstitutional’, legal experts warn

What lies behind all the vagueness is that Albo is quietly aiming at something very big and controversial. He wants the body of "advisers" formed by the bill as someone he can negotiate a "treaty" with, following the very damaging NZ example. It is all about a creating a treaty with Aborigines, nothing else. And there is no knowing what a treaty will do. Some extreme ideas have been put forward. It is dangerous racism

The wording of the Voice referendum question being put to Australian voters could be fundamentally “misleading” and unconstitutional because it fails to state the core function of the proposed body, according to one of the nation’s leading silks.

At the upcoming referendum, likely to be held in October or November, Australians will be asked to vote yes or no on a single question, “A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. Do you approve this proposed alteration?”

Victorian barrister and constitutional law expert Stuart Wood KC, in a legal opinion for the conservative Institute of Public Affairs think tank published on Thursday, argued that the question “misleads and misinforms voters” and has a “serious deficiency” as it “fails to state the core function of the Voice”, and would be “open to challenge in the High Court of Australia”.

“In our view, the government’s proposed question misleads and misinforms voters about what they are being asked to approve at this year’s referendum,” Mr Wood said in the opinion, jointly written with barristers Paul Jeffreys and Jakub Patela.

“The central issue with the question is that, although it mimics the long title of the Bill, it fails to state the core function of the Voice, being to make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.”

The question “instead, as presently framed, emphasises the notion of constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, with the establishing of the new body being only a symbolic step to achieve that aim”, they wrote.

“This is significant in circumstances where there is differential support amongst electors as to the concept of constitutional recognition, and the concept of a new constitutionally entrenched body,” the opinion said.

Assuming the proposed question remains deficient, they argue it would be “open to challenge by seeking relevant relief, such as a High Court declaration that an answer to the proposed question can not be taken to constitute approval of the proposed law, or an injunction preventing it being put to electors”.

Leading barrister Stuart Wood KC, left. Picture: Liam Kidston

The barristers suggested an alternative referendum question that could be put to voters instead.

“A Proposed Law: To alter the Constitution by establishing a body to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice that, despite any Act of Parliament to the contrary, may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Do you approve this proposed alteration?”

Daniel Wild, the IPA’s deputy executive director, said in a statement that the legal opinion showed “fundamental questions now hang over the constitutional validity of the Voice to Parliament referendum”.

“The federal government has sought to prevent the release of detail on the Voice to Parliament proposal at all costs,” Mr Wild said.

“Mr Wood KC’s advice demonstrates the attempts to shroud the danger and divisiveness of the proposal have created a questionable and contestable legal scenario. Every step of the way, the Prime Minister, and Voice to Parliament advocates, have sought to deny Australians basic details, to stack the deck in favour of the Yes case, refused to answer rudimentary questions, and have admitted to not fully reading critical documentation on key legal matters.”

The IPA has called on the government to revise the question before the vote is held.

The legal opinion comes after Mr Wood earlier this year claimed that the “gravy train” of government work created a “big incentive” for barristers to support the Voice to Parliament.

“If you’re a sensible person making decisions about wanting to get onto the gravy train of government work, you’re not going to put sand in the gears,” he told Sky News.

“You’re going to tend to do the sort of things that make you more attractive to the biggest client in town.”

https://www.news.com.au/national/courts-law/voice-referendum-question-likely-misleading-unconstitutional-legal-experts-warn/news-story/77fb2ffc944d928e562af0d38d9c464b

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Background

The essence of conservatism is caution. The essence of Leftism is anger

This blog is written solely by John Ray, who has a Ph.D. degree in psychology and 200+ papers published in the academic journals of the social sciences. It does occasionally comment on issues in psychology but is mainly aimed at giving a conservative psychologist's view on a broad range of topics. There are very few conservative psychologists.

The blog originated in Australia and many (but not most) posts discuss Australian matters. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart, which is the reason behind the old name for this blog. So events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

A primer in American politics for non-Americans:

SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land

The "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.

The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Global warming

Calibrated in whole degrees. Larger graph here

Climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson said. “The warming we have had the last 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.”

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Two examples of Leftist racism below (much more here and here):

Beatrice Webb, a founder of the London School of Economics and the Fabian Society, and married to a Labour MP, mused in 1922 on whether when English children were "dying from lack of milk", one should extend "the charitable impulse" to Russian and Chinese children who, if saved this year, might anyway die next. Besides, she continued, there was "the larger question of whether those races are desirable inhabitants" and "obviously" one wouldn't "spend one's available income" on "a Central African negro".

Hugh Dalton, offered the Colonial Office during Attlee's 1945-51 Labour government, turned it down because "I had a horrid vision of pullulating, poverty stricken, diseased nigger communities, for whom one can do nothing in the short run and who, the more one tries to help them, are querulous and ungrateful."

Defensible and indefensible usages of the term "racism"

The book, The authoritarian personality, authored by T.W. Adorno et al. in 1950, has been massively popular among psychologists. It claims that a set of ideas that were popular in the "Progressive"-dominated America of the prewar era were "authoritarian". Leftist regimes always are authoritarian so that claim was not a big problem. What was quite amazing however is that Adorno et al. identified such ideas as "conservative". They were in fact simply popular ideas of the day but ones that had been most heavily promoted by the Left right up until the then-recent WWII. See here for details of prewar "Progressive" thinking.

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a war criminal. Both British and American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese naval code so FDR knew what was coming at Pearl Harbor. But for his own political reasons he warned no-one there. So responsibility for the civilian and military deaths at Pearl Harbor lies with FDR as well as with the Japanese. The huge firepower available at Pearl Harbor, both aboard ship and on land, could have largely neutered the attack. Can you imagine 8 battleships and various lesser craft firing all their AA batteries as the Japanese came in? The Japanese naval airforce would have been annihilated and the war would have been over before it began.

FDR prolonged the Depression. He certainly didn't cure it.

WWII did NOT end the Great Depression. It just concealed it. It in fact made living standards worse

Joe McCarthy was eventually proved right after the fall of the Soviet Union. To accuse anyone of McCarthyism is to accuse them of accuracy!

The KKK was intimately associated with the Democratic party. They ATTACKED Republicans!

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter:

The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

America's uncivil war was caused by trade protectionism. The slavery issue was just camouflage, as Abraham Lincoln himself admitted. See also here

Did William Zantzinger kill poor Hattie Carroll?

Did Bismarck predict where WWI would start or was it just a "free" translation by Churchill?

Leftist psychologists have an amusingly simplistic conception of military organizations and military men. They seem to base it on occasions they have seen troops marching together on parade rather than any real knowledge of military men and the military life. They think that military men are "rigid" -- automatons who are unable to adjust to new challenges or think for themselves. What is incomprehensible to them is that being kadaver gehorsam (to use the extreme Prussian term for following orders) actually requires great flexibility -- enough flexibility to put your own ideas and wishes aside and do something very difficult. Ask any soldier if all commands are easy to obey.

A good article on Leftist hate

The real history of social Darwinism

Some personal memoirs

Memoir highlights

THE PSYCHOLOGIST

Voice referendum question likely ‘misleading, unconstitutional’, legal experts warn

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