Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

He was certainly welcome at our dinner table and was a close friend of my father's, but he also dined in the Governor-General's house in Western Australia—a remarkable life. I say this not to pretend that the past was better than it was or that Charlie didn't face racism in his life—I have absolutely no doubt that he did—but to say that I was raised to always look to the individual, to always look to what the individual brought to the conversation, to always consider the value of humanity as based on that individual value of the person.

This bill will easily pass parliament; that has been clear for a long time. And that is right. It is up to the Australian people to make judgements as to the nature and the words that make up the Australian Constitution. But I will vote 'no' in the referendum, and I wish to put on the record why that is so. The Australian Constitution is the fundamental bedrock of our democracy. It is the foundation upon which our democratic and legal institutions sit, and from which our society has grown. We must take any change to that foundation with the utmost seriousness.

Our Constitution is a living document; it's designed to accommodate change. But that change has to be made thoughtfully and that change to our great federation has to be made by the majority of Australians, but also by a majority of states. This was an important provision that reflected our desire, Australia's desire, to preserve our institutions, to avoid changing our Constitution unless strongly supported by most Australians. In practice, changing our Constitution requires a supermajority. This has prevented significant overreach by governments in the past.

You don't have to look far through the list of failed constitutional amendments to see that the Australian people have a lot of common sense in this regard. For example, we would have seen a significant, an unprecedented growth in Commonwealth influence if it had been given the power to take control of any industry or corporation deemed to be monopolistic. Australians, in their wisdom, defeated this attempted overreach. Another example: the referendum in the early phase of the Cold War to give specific Commonwealth power to regulate communism. This was defeated, at perhaps one of the tensest points of that war, because the Australian people were wary of giving government more power to control political thought.

We, as a Western democracy, are a part of the great Enlightenment tradition. The Enlightenment ideals—the need to separate and limit power; checks and balances to avoid the tyranny of the majority; equality of the individual as a key source of freedom; a robust federalism—turned sceptical ideas into a robust and meaningful set of institutions—our parliaments, our courts and, at the heart of Australia, our Constitution. Enlightenment thinkers distrusted mob rule and revered the rule of law. The Enlightenment project is the origin of the modern world and of modern Australia, but it has never claimed perfection. That is why we need mechanisms like referenda; to give us the ability to change, albeit with caution, our foundational document.

As my good friend Senator Paterson described much better than I could, and I would encourage you all to listen to or read his contribution, there is a stain on our foundational document in the race power. Like Senator Paterson, in preparing for this debate and clarifying my own thoughts, I went back to the constitutional conventions of the 1890s and read the words and the justifications for that race power. From a modern perspective they make uncomfortable reading. For someone who, like me, is a proud defender of our constitutional norms the justification for that power was blatantly racist in nature—not directed at Aboriginal people I should add, but at others mostly outside this country.

Some leading proponents of the Voice today were, just a short decade ago, calling for the repeal of that race power, for it to be taken out of the Constitution. I would endorse that view. Though now, strangely, that has been silenced in the face of this amendment to the Constitution to enshrine a permanent Indigenous Voice to Parliament. So while I acknowledge that stain on our founding document, it is also worth hypothecating for a moment. In one of the first acts of the new Commonwealth, the White Australia Policy was implemented. One of its chief proponents, Chris Watson, first Labor Prime Minister of Australia, used his position on the then crossbench to secure its passage. A few years earlier, he'd tried unsuccessfully to be elected as a Labor Party delegate to the Constitutional Convention. If views like his had had a more prominent position, might we have seen that White Australia Policy more directly enshrined in our Constitution? If so, how and when would it have been removed? The Constitution is difficult to change.

The fact that the race power there is an anachronism. It should go. But, as I have said, the enlightenment project is an ongoing one. Our Constitution can be improved, but the current referendum proposal does not do so. Sadly, it seeks to divide, not unite. It does not elicit universal principles of equality and a steadfast defence of the individual, regardless of heritage. Over the 19th and 20th centuries we've seen many manifestations of anti-enlightenment thought from both the far right and the Left, from fascism to communism. Today's anti-enlightenment movements are less obvious. They reject inquiry and debate as the centrepiece of democracy. Instead, they claim all virtue, as though it comes by way of instinct, as a quasi-mystical driver of our decision-making, and all those who disagree are wrong if not evil. This is the new methodology of the anti-enlightenment. They claim a purity of will while silencing what they deem as unacceptable speech. We need to return to core principles of liberty, progress, toleration, constitutional government, equality, citizenship and primacy of the individual. This constitutional amendment does not achieve those ideals.

The Senate transcript was published up to 19:51 . The remainder of the transcript will be published progressively as it is completed.