The Trojan Voice: Australians need to be alert – and alarmed

Marita Punshon I 24 February 2025 I Spectator Australia

The plan for an Indigenous-only Voice to the Federal Parliament was soundly defeated in the October 2023 referendum.

The activists, however, have not given up.

Beware the Uluru-inspired triumvirate of Voice, Treaty, and Truth for it still lurks in the corridors of the Australian Parliament.

While the Constitutional method failed, Plan B, or Voice 2.0 is in action.

It is the Trojan Voice sitting quietly in its Senate stable until voters elect enough Greens, Labor, and Teal-type MPs to make it happen.

For it is two Greens Senators who currently have the next instalment of race-based separatism waiting in the wings in the form of the Truth and Justice Commission Bill 2024.

This represents the Voice and Truth components, and Treaty will no doubt follow.

Australians need to be alert – and alarmed.

Just when they thought they had slayed the divisive dragon, Australians will need to return to the polls to do it again: the next federal election may be a proxy referendum on Voice, Treaty, and Truth, an electoral wolf in sheep’s clothing.

The Joint Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs has been tasked with looking at the Bill. The Committee consists of 13 MPs: seven of them are Labor, there is one Teal, one Green, and one Independent, two Liberal MPs, and one National. The Independent is Victorian Senator Lidia Thorpe.

The Committee maths is simple: 10 of the 13 MPs sit to the left of politics.

The authors of the Truth and Justice Commission Bill 2024 are Greens Senators Dorinda Cox and David Shoebridge. The Bill was introduced into the Senate on July 2, 2024 and referred to the Committee two days later.

It was first required to report back to the Senate by February 11, 2025, this year. Strangely, that date has since been pushed back to May 29, 2025.

In the Senators’ words, ‘[The] Bill is intended to establish a Commission to inquire into and make recommendations to Parliament on particular matters relating to historic and ongoing injustices against First Peoples in Australia and the impacts of these injustices on First Peoples.’ It does not question whether or not there were injustices. It makes that assumption.

Written submissions to the Inquiry closed in September. Two public hearings then took evidence, one in Victoria in October 2024 and the other in Perth a month later.

But now, we sit in silence. The Prime Minister has not, and dares not, make a pre-election peep on the nation-changing Bill.

On the other side of it, one wonders if we will have a Prime Minister committing to implementing the Truth and Justice Commission in full? It would duplicate his previous election night love affair toward the Uluru Statement from the Heart. It, too, prowled in the pre-election shadows.

The Bill’s Explanatory Memorandum is enlightening.

The Truth and Justice Commission would have 10 members – one from each state, the ACT, the NT and ‘two Chief Commissioners’ – appointed by the Attorney-General and the Minister for Indigenous Affairs. Members can’t be appointed unless the Ministers are ‘satisfied that the person has the skills, knowledge or experience in a relevant field’.

The majority of the members must be ‘First Nations’ people and relevant stakeholders must be consulted before they are appointed.

It would look into what it thinks are ‘ongoing injustices perpetrated by the Commonwealth government, Commonwealth bodies and non-government bodies’.

The Commission would consider how best to acknowledge and redress such wrongs as it may find in a ‘culturally appropriate way’.

It would be able to recommend law and policy reforms and how the Commonwealth can be held accountable for ‘preventing future injustices’.

The Commission would be required to report its ‘findings of fact’ or anything else the Commission ‘thinks fit’ to the Parliament, within four years of the Bill starting.

Among the powers given to the Truth and Justice Commission is the ability to distinguish between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians by giving consideration ‘to the customs, traditions, rules and legal systems of First Peoples who are appearing before the Commission’.

The Commission must consider, before issuing a warrant, the ‘context of First Nations people’s negative experiences in the justice system’.

Just like The Voice, the Truth and Justice Commission throws up a chasm of questions.

Start with, the ‘relevant’ experience of the Commissioners: what would that experience be and who gets to decide?

Similarly, who are the ‘relevant’ stakeholders the Attorney General and the Minister for Indigenous Affairs must consult before they appoint a Commissioner? Take the appointment of the NSW representative commissioner: would the Ministers seek the ‘relevant’ advice from the Indigenous group that approved of the $1 billion Blayney gold mine, or the unofficial group that rejected it because of an imaginary bee? The bee-believers won that battle.

Would commissioners also investigate Indigenous organisations given the Commission has the scope to investigate ongoing injustices perpetrated by the Commonwealth, Commonwealth bodies and non-government bodies? Would mother’s clubs also be under review? They similarly fit within the remit.

If redress is to be made in a ‘culturally appropriate’ way, what form would it take assuming financial compensation would not apply?

Further, how can such a Commission hold the Commonwealth to account for preventing ‘future injustices’ to Aboriginal people? Would such protections against the unknown whims and vagaries of time only be afforded to Indigenous people, effectively leaving all other cultures exposed?

The Commissioners would also be allowed to treat Indigenous people with ‘experiences in the justice system’ differently to all others.

Australians only need to look at the Yoorrook Justice Commission and Treaty in Victoria to know that ‘truth’ and ‘justice’ and have got very little to do with such Commissions.

The ‘Truth Telling’ Royal Commission in the southern state is a frolic down storytelling lane, little else could be expected given the very definition of Truth Telling. It doesn’t demand the truth, and certainly not the whole truth. Yoorrook has just refused to publish a submission that dares tell a fuller and factual story of Victoria’s history.

It is silent on many ‘truths’, including that life was brutal before the First Fleet arrived.

Yoorrook should be a warning to the nation of where this myopic ‘truth telling’ can go.

Voters must determine the Trojan Voice in an electorate-by-electorate battle, a contrast to the Referendum’s state-by-state standards.

Most commentators argue elections are always about ‘the economy, stupid’.

The next one might be different.

Author: Marita Punshon