The Voice and nation at crossroads

INTERESTING in this business how often we come across people who say their first job was delivering newspapers.

Presumably later generations will remember something similar starting work with McDonalds.

Newspapers everywhere are working hard these days to adjust to the digital world.

The days of newsboys is coming to an end, partly due to online migration but also due to OH&S and industrial laws making it difficult to employ kids 15 years and under.

Newspapers supporting country communities have been under the pump ever since motorised transport replaced horse-drawn coaches.

As the number of small towns withered so often did their local newspaper.

Not that many years ago nearly every small township proudly supported a newspaper, sometimes even two competing at one time.

Think hamlets like Merino and townships like Penshurst.       

Kudos to independent publishers like Camperdown-based Western District Newspapers who continue to maintain a strong presence in places like Cobden, Mortlake and Terang.   

A community that loses the local paper is less informed, it loses its soul just like when the local footy club disbands.

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IN an era when so many accept the snippets of propaganda they get on their phones as fact the importance of informed decision-making opportunity newspapers provide has never been so vital.

The brevity of social media is the main reason so much woke rubbish gains traction today.

There’s very rarely been an issue that needs so much consideration as the radical push for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

This is the looming campaign to grant, via referendum, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders special influence via our constitution.

It’s a race-based advisory parliament, proposed to be written into the national agreement, and so likely to be there forever no matter how damaging it may be to social cohesion.  

For several decades now we’ve been led by the nose, sleepwalking to a divisive Australia similar to the apartheid regime the world once despised in South Africa. 

No harm in a body to represent indigenous groups, of course, if it was like the forerunner, Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Commission, which was abolished in 2004 over rampant corruption, or lobby groups like the ACTU, employer organisations and such, but Voice is much more than that.  

The obvious danger is giving a favoured group vague legal constitutional status open to interpretation by a few judges.

A Voice legislated by parliament is one thing. This could be overturned if abused. One via the constitution is there to stay.

When the latter is in place it will take a national government with more grit to stem Voice demands than we’ve seen in this country ever.

And if, perchance, they decide to ignore demands from Voice, activist judges could have a field day reading whatever they want from the referendum result.

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IT’S not hard to foresee that anything and everything impacting indigenous interests – real or imagined - would henceforth first have to be ticked off by Voice “parliamentarians”.    

 For the sake of our children we need continual change to improve integration, not separation into tribes – but that’s where we’ve been heading for some time.    

The new system envisaged effectively gives one group of Australians two votes in our “democratic” process.

We’re in for endless months of browbeating on this subject by national broadcasters and the usual woke suspects to get a “yes” vote over the line.    

Not surprisingly our state and national governments, forever on whatever woke PC juggernaut comes along, show all the signs of providing limited information to ensure a positive outcome.    

Nothing wrong with the Voice concept if left in control of the parliament of the day.  

That leaves control with all voters – not the few and not with some sitting in a court.

The fine print, either way, is what needs our considered preview.   

Let’s hope the lack of detail forthcoming isn’t a devil.