There’s begging the question and then there’s Paul Kelly importuning it with a Smith & Wesson:
Pivotal to the coming debate is the stance of the Coalition and conservatives, and this raises two decisive questions. Will the conservatives, instead of defining themselves by what they oppose, actually explain what sort of voice they would support? And do the Labor Party and Indigenous leaders have any real interest in making concessions to win bipartisan support?
As Michael said to Geary: “You can have my answer now, if you like. My final offer is this: nothing.”
One of the few remaining pleasures of still subscribing to The Australian is reading the comments below columns like that of Paul Kelly. It is pretty clear the editorial line of the paper is to promote The Voice, with Janet Albrechtson the token dissenter, but it is almost universally [correctly] identified as racist in comments. The exceptions being the obvious GetUp plants, which for some reason all have a first name and a number for their ID. As a sort of secret handshake perhaps?
Most comments deride Kelly’s false choice.
One of the big problems I have with nominally conservative voices is buying into the frame of the left. Accepting the premise and arguing terms, rather than fighting the idea in the first place.
One big reason I say conservatives are worthless.
The voice I would support is parliamentary democracy, where every Australian gets the same voting power as every other Australian.
Besides that, independent media should be supported by making regulations lightweight where possible and government should be banned from using tax money to buy any specific viewpoint.
The proposal is that the only people specified in legislation – singled out for laws – are indigenous people and they should have input to those laws. There is no proposal for tgst process to have any ability to legislate but only review and comment. The proposal came after a lengthy development by indigenous people.
The alternative is to remove all legislation specific to indigenous people and to refrain from doing so.
Pissing Wind
The only correct solution is to remove all references to race in legislation.
That the proposal was exclusively developed by indigenous people (actually select activists) says all that need be said.
The other stupid thing Kelly argues is that conservatives define themselves by what they oppose. No, they define themselves by what they conserve.
Leftists define themselves by what they oppose.
In this case, they oppose racial equality, parliamentary democracy, freedom of opinion and the Constitution.
But that’s classic Kelly. He has always seen the Liberals as having only one role in Australian politics: to disarm their own base so as to institutionalise Labor policy.
Is Kelly supposed to be a “conservative”, or even right of centre?
I am being serious; he very rarely strikes me as being so, even though I have never read The Australian, only snippets online.
In which case he is spot on, though you could quibble that many of the policies are actually Green.
Anyone can review and comment right now.
The only things you can’t review and comment on are the National Cabinet and whatever the public servants get up to. Oh, and you can’t review whoever was responsible for those quarantine hotels.
What a pity Paul Kelly and Michelle Grattan never hooked up and had some kids.