The Indigenous Voice and Democracy-To-Come

This paper explores disruptions of the modern liberal democratic paradigm. It focuses on democracy for indigenous peoples in a settler democracy, Australia, though its analysis and conclusions will resonate with other countries and contexts. While immersed in arguments about what is or is not ‘democratic’ in the Indigenous Voice referendum in Australia in 2023, the paper steps back to reflect on fundamental questions of what democracy might or can become (or what new paradigms may be haltingly emergent). The paper defends a strongly contextual and comparative approach to democratic theory and discusses the implications of postcolonial entanglements for visions of democratic futures. The proposal for a constitutionally entrenched Indigenous Voice to parliament and government was defeated in a national referendum in Australia on 14 October 2023. Criticism of the Voice from the conservative Opposition has many threads. One has been to press relentlessly the Labor Government and other Voice supporters for ‘more detail’ on how the Voice would work. But the focus of the paper will be on another prominent line of criticism – that the Voice model is undemocratic, it would be inequitable and would undermine parliamentary democracy. Consider for example claims by former prime ministers, Tony Abbot - the Voice would ‘give Indigenous people two votes’ – and Malcolm Turnbull – it would constitute a ‘third chamber’ of parliament. (The paper will detail further examples). Informed by a democratic sensibility and the openness to difference, contextuality, and hybridity which the democratic design framework advocates (Saward 2021), the paper explores responses to such critiques. Perhaps democracy, to be more democratic in a settler colonial context, needs to become something it has never been in order to more fully realise its ideals? The discussion examines a range of arguments including: (b) principles of proportionality (as opposed to strict equality) of influence over public decisions (Brighouse and Fleurbaey 2010); (c) recognition of profound social and material inequality (e.g. great differences in life expectancy and experiences of poverty and exclusion) and an accompanying silence; (d) temporality (many Australian Aboriginal concepts of temporality are fluid and continuous – for example through the idea of ‘everywhen’, where ancestors are present in the features of the land); (e) founding violence (what if post-founding democracy were obligated by its own professed values to fully acknowledge the continuing and visceral experiences of violence by Indigenous people?); (f) differently democratic processes (the Voice model was the product of a long, multi-level, deliberative process); and (g) democratic evolution. Evolution of the Voice itself – recognising that designs ‘have a life’ - is also recognised by the Voice’s leading advocates: ‘It is inevitable and imperative that an Indigenous Voice continues to evolve, as both local and regional and national arrangements take shape and mature’ (Co-design process Final Report, 2021).