I was banned by Facebook

 

On 20 August 1944, Count Schwerin von Schwanenberg was brought before the Nazi ‘People’s Court’, charged with treason. He was unshaven and wore no tie. Prominent in the July plot against the Nazi regime, he knew he was about to hang. 

When Nazi judge Roland Freisler angled for an apology, Schwerin would not be cowed, but spoke out about the ‘many murders’ of the Nazi regime ‘at home and abroad’ – drawing Freisler’s apoplectic ire. Hoping they would obtain useful propaganda footage, the Nazis filmed this exchange, and the film has survived – a powerful example of a person speaking truth to power.

 

I posted this clip on Facebook, with some background information, as part of a regular series of posts promoting my book Treason, which recounts the German resistance to Hitler.

 

I have posted the clip a few times before. 

 

This time I received a notification from Facebook that my post was blocked, because it violated Facebook’s community standards. 

 

I was plunged into the Kafkaesque realm of Facebook’s processes.

 

The notification stated ‘this is because you previously posted material that violated Facebook’s community standards’. The previous week, Facebook had notified me of such a breach, but when I asked for a review, they overturned this and apologised for getting it wrong. According to Facebook’s retraction, there was no previous breach. But there was no way for me to point out this mistake to Facebook.

 

The notification set out Facebook’s standards – all laudable – but did not say which standard was breached, nor how. 

 

Despite failing to specify what was wrong, Facebook required me to select from a menu my reason for saying that the post should not be blocked. This is like someone on trial being told to defend themselves when they are not told the charge.

 

Despite this absurdity, I asked for a review and marked the option ‘The post does not violate Facebook’s community standards’.

 

Facebook then advised that they try to have a person review the decision, but could not guarantee this, because of staff shortages due to Covid. 

 

Really? There are plenty of people they could hire to do this task, even during Covid. It’s a task that could readily be performed online. The excuse was specious.

 

Having asked for a review, I received a prompt response. Facebook had reviewed the post (evidently by its algorithms, not by a person, who would scarcely have had time to watch the video clip and read the post). Facebook stated that they had reviewed the post and confirmed that the post violated Facebook’s community standards. Again, they did not say why.

 

One thing is clear: Facebook’s algorithms are incapable of distinguishing an anti-Nazi post from a Nazi post.

 

Facebook then asked me whether the communication from them had been helpful. When I marked that it had not, they thanked me and said they used responses to improve their service.

 

Facebook notified me that there was a right of appeal to Facebook’s ‘Oversight Board’. 

 

This ‘right’ of appeal is illusory. According to Facebook’s own figures, in 2021, the Oversight Board received over a million appeals, but the Board published just 17 decisions, overturning Facebook 11 times. Opting for an appeal was like buying a lottery ticket.

 

Even though a waste of time in terms of reversing the decision, I decided to lodge an appeal anyway. When I tried to click on the link, nothing happened – just the wheel of death as the attempt to log in timed out. I did this several times. Even getting to the Oversight Board was blocked.

 

This was not the first time I’ve had trouble with Facebook’s ‘standards’, with the same opaque processes.

 

Over several years I built up an earlier page promoting my book. I paid Facebook money to promote it, and the page grew to have over 11,000 followers. Then Facebook closed it down (and the linked Instagram feed), without any recourse, saying it violated their community standards, and again failing to say which standards, or how it breached them. Just before publication of my book, I lost all the investment of time and money made in building up this following.

 

As I emailed Facebook (of course, there was no reply) the page 

 

did not violate Facebook’s published community standards. Nor does it violate community standards as any reasonable person would understand them. The content, dealing with the bravery of those who stood up to the Nazi regime, usually at the cost of their lives, is entirely in accordance with the highest community standards.

 

It is important that the events of the Nazi regime, the mass murders which have given us the terms ‘genocide’ and ‘crimes against humanity’, are widely discussed and known. The efforts of those who struggled against that regime should also be part of our shared discourse.

 

I can’t speak truth to Facebook, because they are not listening. Bizarrely, the business takes a perverse pride in its refusal to support its customers. Who knows how Facebook’s processes are intended to work – but it is clear that this platform is not a safe place to invest. It is only capable of dumbing down our shared discourse and, as a result, diminishing our community.

A Promise Broken, a Victory Lost: the scandal of Wombat Forest logging

In the 1990s I was active in opposing the logging of the Wombat Forest.

In 1999, the Bracks government was elected, and in 2002 promised to end that logging, this being one of the conditions of receiving Greens preferences at that year's election.

John Thwaites (the Deputy Premier) announced the phasing out of the logging, with woodchipping ending immediately and final removal of sawlogs completed in 2006.

In 2019, during the VEAC process, the Minister stated, in writing, that no sawlogs would be taken out of the Wombat.

In 2019, the Victorian government announced that native forest logging would end in the State by 2030.

Last year, the premier, Dan Andrews, accepted, in part, the VEAC recommendations, and promised a national park for the Wombat.

However, there has now commenced, out of the blue, industrial scale logging in the very area proposed for the national park.

There are to be 175 logging coupes, so the undertaking is enormous. One of the coupes will carve through the very point where John Thwaites made his announcement to the community.

The coupes extend into areas that were never allowed to be logged even in the dark days of the Kennett era – in particular riparian zones and Special Protection Zones for threatened wildlife.

The first coupe logged had greater gliders present – no buffer zone was left around their habitat. Instead of leaving the required 100 metre buffer zone, machinery was working next to a tree with a wedge tailed eagle nest. Entire creeks have been compromised by bulldozing through them, compacting soil and disrupting drainage.

Despite the spin, this is not a ’salvage’ operation in any sense. VicForests is going in to get the large trees they were never allowed to take under the Kennett regime.

Numerous studies now show that:
1. logging of native forest increases fire risk, as the resultant regrowth is drier, sparser, and more fire-prone;
2. logging of native forest reduces water yield from that forest for the next 150 years, as regrowing trees take up water;
3. logging of native forest, particularly Victorian eucalypt forest, is one of the most carbon polluting activities humans undertake, as it releases some 2000 tonnes of carbon per hectare.

The values that justified the dedication of this area as a national park are now being destroyed by VicForests.

VicForests remains an ongoing source of scandal. The Courts have repeatedly held that it has breached the law in its logging operations. It is now being investigated for spying on citizens. From the destruction of our forest heritage it has not even been able to generate a profit, let alone the kind of yield one would expect from so valuable a resource – assuming you valued it only for money.

Native forest logging employs very few people, and the favoured treatment this industry receives from government adversely impacts on the plantation sector by unfair competition that depresses prices. Plantations are already well able to supply all our needs from timber.

Has the Andrews government lost control of its logging agency, or is this agency doing its bidding?

The Best Books on the Plot to Kill Hitler

 I was asked to compile this list on Shepherd.

See what you think.

Environmental values and the Rule of Law

 

Address to the AGM of the National Environmental Law Association 

13 October 2021

At all levels of government, Australia has a range of statutes, regulations, by-laws, standards, codes of practice, principles, international treaties, and other laws designed to protect the environment.

A law without a practical remedy fails to serve its purpose. Such a law also brings disrepute on the law as an entity.

There are many practical obstacles to enforcing environmental laws in Australia. I want to give a few brief case studies.

Trail bikes

Many years ago, my brother was bushwalking along the Alpine Walking Track on Mount Erica, part of the Alpine National Park.

He was shocked to see trail bike riders illegally riding through the bush, churning up mud, and causing a great deal of damage.

He took the trouble to go to Rawson police station to report the matter. The policeman there told him he would not do anything about it. He did not support the ban on recreational vehicles in the area, and would not enforce it.

There, in a microcosm, is the problem with many of our laws designed to protect the environment – they are useless if those charged with their enforcement will not do so.

Orange roughy

Orange roughy (Hoplostethus atlanticus) was first discovered in Tasmanian waters in the 1980s.

It is an orangeish-red fish, reaching a length of almost half a metre. The skin is poisonous to humans and its oil is powerful enough to be used as a degreasing agent.

Orange roughy is a long-lived and slow growing species. They take 20 to 25 years to reach reproductive maturity. They live for 100 years or more – with good evidence of ages over 150 years. They are found at considerable depth – hundreds of metres to over a kilometre.

The meat of orange roughy survives freezing and packing particularly well, and there is strong demand throughout the world for this fish. It is often marketed as ‘sea perch’. 

After initial minor catches, orange roughy was first commercially fished off Tasmania in significant quantities in 1989.

The fish were taken in greatest quantities whilst spawning, and the major spawning site in Australian waters is located east of St Helen’s at an underwater feature known as the St Helen’s Hill. This is a 400-metre-high pinnacle – or ‘sea mount’ – rising from a depth of 1000 meters. The fish formed a continuous ring, or ‘donut’, around the mount while spawning.

At times other than when they are aggregated for spawning over the winter months, orange roughy are sparsely spread over large areas of deeper waters off southern Australia. But when aggregated for spawning, orange roughy can be taken in large quantities in a very short time. When St Helen’s Hill was first fished, roughy were reported to enter nets at the rate of one tonne per second. It was a very lucrative species.

Because of the slow maturing rate and low reproduction rate of these fish, the stock will take an extremely long time to recover from overfishing. 

The fisheries authorities set quotas designed to preserve the fish – the focus being on the fishing stock rather than preserving biodiversity.

However, within eight years, orange roughy was commercially extinct in Australian waters, and the fishery had collapsed – a pattern all too often repeated in Australia.

The reason for the loss of the orange roughy was systematic, fraudulent under-declaration of catch by fishing enterprises.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s I was involved in a series of cases prosecuting both companies and individual fishermen for false statements to the Commonwealth about their orange roughy catch, and conspiracy to defraud the Commonwealth.

There were several convictions, and some jail sentences. 
·  Brinkman v Dix (No 2) [1999] TASSC 65

The cases were complex, and it was due to the dedicated work of a team of police and solicitors that these results were achieved. The work included careful reconciliation of a variety of records, as well as, in some cases, covert filming of the unloading of the fishing catch.

Critical in the orange roughy prosecutions was the fact that after each fishing trip, the holder of a fishing licence was required to file returns as to their catch. Our legal system understands the significance of making false declarations and statements. 

Requiring an active statement of this kind is very helpful for enforcement.

Hill and Henderson

On Easter Sunday, 2015, there was no work being done on any logging coupe in East Gippsland.

That day, Ed Hill and Joe Henderson entered a logging coupe, and conducted a detailed survey of logging operations. Their investigations soon showed that the contractors – under the control of the state-owned logging agency VicForests – had illegally logged protected rainforest. This was a crime.

Hill and Henderson prepared a careful report, documented with maps and photographs.

They submitted their report to the Victorian Department of Environment Land Water and Planning – the appropriate body to enforce the law.

DEWLP conducted its own investigation. They concluded that the rainforest had been subject to ‘unwarranted destruction’. They found that the destroyed forest area was large enough to meet the threshold of protection. They criticised the destruction of the rainforest trees – which had no merchantable value. There was no reason to destroy the rainforest.

However, they did not prosecute or otherwise enforce the law, other than to suggest that VicForests review its own guidelines. They said that, despite their own finding that a crime had been committed, a court might entertain a reasonable doubt.

The story does not end there. The Department then prosecuted Hill and Henderson for illegally entering a ‘Timber Harvesting Safety Zone’ – even though this was on an Easter Sunday when no one was put at risk.

Not only was it left to the community to properly oversee and enforce the laws protecting rainforest, but when they tried to do so, the community members were themselves charged with illegally entering this forest.

I travelled down to Orbost to represent these men. In the result the charges were dismissed, as there had not been proper compliance with the requirements to mark out the Safety Zone. This was a technical defence, of course, and as with so many such cases, the court was not able to deal with the substantive justice issues raised.

But the sequence of events illustrates a pattern that is all too common –  a public affirmation, by way of a law, that certain conduct was prohibited, but the private reality of one rule for those who seek to protect the environment, but another for those who are exploiting it.

 

Bob Brown and Heritage Rivers

Back in 1997-8, I represented Bob Brown – then newly installed in the Senate – on a charge of obstructing lawful forest operations. 

There were no such operations being conducted at the time, and he did nothing to obstruct logging, but we were nevertheless able to show that the coupe which he attended was not a lawful forest operation, as it encroached some 100 metres into a zone protected under the Heritage Rivers Act. 

·       DPP v Brown [1998] VSC 117

Again, no action was taken to prosecute those who had breached this law. Rather, the State government passed retrospective legislation to validate the unlawful logging.

Litigation to restrain logging

There have now been several cases in which environment groups in Victoria have successfully (and in some cases, unsuccessfully) litigated to restrain VicForests  – the Victorian government logging agency – from conducting unlawful logging operations. 

·      Environment East Gippsland Inc v VicForests [2010] VSC 335, per Osborn J

·      Wildlife of the Central Highlands Inc v VicForests [2020] VSC 10, per McMillan J

·      VicForests v Friends of Leadbeater’s Possum Inc [2021] FCAFC 66

The first two cases resulted in VicForests being restrained from logging. On appeal in the third case, the Federal Court found that although the logging was non-compliant with the legal requirements, and this was likely to have a significant impact on protected species, the logging agency had an exemption from the EPBC Act by virtue of the Regional Forest Agreement.

The sequence of cases has demonstrated systemic inadequacy – almost wilful blindness – of flora and fauna surveys prior to logging, and then no system to enforce potential breaches where they are detected. 

Victoria does have an Environment Protection Authority, but it is still left to community groups to take this difficult, expensive and of course risky litigation.

 

EPBC Act

In 2015 and 16, Tiphanie Acreman and I represented the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre in EPBC litigation against the Tasmanian State Government over its plans to open Four Wheel Drive tracks through the protected Western Tasmanian Aboriginal Cultural Landscape – without approval from traditional owners and without seeking approval from the Federal Government under the EPBC Act. That litigation was, in the result, successful, and the proposal has this year been finally abandoned. I see Adam Beeson in the audience, and he was critical in this litigation.

The relevant Tasmanian Minister had informed the Commonwealth of the proposed action, but also said it was not referring the matter to the Commonwealth, as it did not consider that the proposed action would have any impact on the values of the protected area. The Commonwealth – perhaps with an eye to its political fortunes in the relevant area – did nothing.

·       Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre Incorporated v Secretary, Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment (No 2) [2016] FCA 168

Aboriginal midden used as a 4wd jump in the Western Tasmanian Aboriginal Cultural Landscape

Under the EPBC Act, the Commonwealth often imposes conditions on approval, but the enforcement of these conditions is sporadic and relies on a co-operative approach. This is quite inadequate where large sums of money are at stake and the temptations to cut corners are real. 

Indeed, the Samuel review into the EPBC Act found:

The compliance and enforcement powers in the EPBC Act are outdated. Powers are restrictive and can only be applied in a piecemeal way across different parts of the Act due to the way it is constructed. The complexity of the legislation, impenetrable terminology and the infrequency with which many interact with the law, make both voluntary compliance and the pursuit of enforcement action difficult.

Strong, independent compliance and enforcement is required

Independent compliance and enforcement functions that are not subject to actual or implied political direction are needed. The functions should be properly resourced and include a full toolkit of powers and systems.

In these cases, in which environment groups undertake litigation to uphold the law, those groups are required, at great expense and personal risk, to go to court when it is usually the accepted role of the State to take action to enforce its laws.

So community groups often find themselves opposed by the resources of government, applied not to uphold the law, but for political ends. 

Where corporate interests are involved (as is usually the case), the corporate parties have the benefit of tax deductibility for their legal expenses, which is not true for community groups who are acting for the public good. In many cases, the risk of adverse costs orders means a real risk of office holders of these organisations losing homes and other assets. It is an extraordinary burden to impose on citizens.

The implicit model behind this is that the government sets out some broad aspirational principles, and then steps back to let those who might be referred to as ‘stakeholders’ fight it out. There is no level playing field: this is stacked in favour of those with the resources to litigate, and with the right political support.

But if that is the model, do our environmental laws really amount to laws as most people would understand them?

It is not enough for governments to espouse environmental values in legislation without establishing its own mechanisms to enforce those laws.

We have a systemic problem, at both State and Federal level, in which powerful interests are able to circumvent environmental laws, and governments have not put in place adequate independent means of enforcing the laws they have enacted.

 

The Rule of Law

The rule of law is one of the fundamental tenets of liberal democracy. 

Australia’s traditions as a democracy depend upon our adherence to the rule of law.

The rule of law doesn’t just mean having laws and requiring people to obey them – even tyrants have laws. Nazi Germany had laws – and a lot of them - but no one would argue that it was a society subject to the rule of law. The rule of law operates as a check on the arbitrary exercise of power. 

The rule of law is not about ever harsher laws to reinforce power, but the independent oversight of the exercise of power. Governments and corporations, like citizens, must be accountable under the law. The law must be clear, well-known and applied without fear or favour. Justice must be timely, efficient and independent.

Having laws to protect the environment that are only sporadically and unevenly enforced undermines not only the environment, but also, I would argue, the rule of law and our democratic traditions.

We should be astute to ensure – at all levels of government – that laws to protect the environment do not merely espouse values in a general way, but have specific enforcement mechanisms that give them teeth.

Protecting the environment is too important for us to accept anything less.

 

Angels, like laundry

It was a privilege to have Mark Tredinnick launch my interactive poetry book, 'Angels, like laundry'.

Broken Watch

The small child picks up her father’s watch

and treasures this talisman of one she loves.

She plays with it, imagining herself like him

wearing a big watch in the wide world

then drops it,

smashing the face

into fragments.

Heart stopped

at what she has done

she turns to receive

her judgment.

And I react with anger -

destroying her dreams of wearing watches 

in the wide world

as I make

the fragile face turned towards me 

shatter into shards of tears.

I pick up the broken watch -

and hope there is still time.

New Matilda response

The following article has now been published in New Matilda. 

Cate Faehrmann

Michael Brull spits the dummy

In the middle of an internal Greens preselection, Michael Brull, a Greens member, has written for New Matilda a series of articles attacking a candidate – Cate Faehrmann. 

As he must know, candidates for preselection are not permitted to speak to journalists, and therefore have no right of reply. It is an archetypal act of cowardice to attack a person who is unable to defend herself.

Brull bases his farrago on a bizarre series of falsehoods. 

The articles arise from proceedings in the Supreme Court of New South Wales seeking an urgent interpretation of the NSW Greens constitution. The case is reported.

On 5 February 2018, Cate Faehrmann transferred her Victorian Greens membership to New South Wales. She wanted to stand for preselection for the Legislative Council.

She was a paid up member of the Greens in Victoria. She had previously been a member of the Greens in NSW and served there as a Greens Legislative Councillor from 2010 to 2013.

Astonishingly, Alex van Vucht, the membership officer of the Greens in NSW, treated Cate Faehrmann’s transferred membership as merely provisional for three months, thus denying her the right to nominate for preselection before the close of nominations on 9 April 2018.

This was contrary to the constitution of the NSW Greens and the constitution of the Australian Greens.

To break the impasse, Cate Faehrmann sought legal advice. 

I was one of those who advised, in a written advice provided to the Greens NSW, that there was no basis for treating her membership as provisional. Similar advice was rendered by a senior solicitor in New South Wales. 

Neither the membership officer nor the Greens NSW obtained any contrary advice.

Ultimately, Cate Faehrmann sought a ruling on the correct interpretation of the constitution from the NSW Supreme Court (I was not involved in that proceeding). The court ruled comprehensively in her favour.

Mr Brull repeatedly asserts that Cate Faehrmann was attempting to change the constitution. That is patently false. Cate Faehrmann was seeking to have the terms of the constitution obeyed. That was the whole point of the advice and of the subsequent legal proceeding.

The matter was taken to the Greens NSW State Delegates Council (‘SDC’). Mr Brull writes that the SDC was ‘was able to have a say about whether the rules should be changed. The membership declined to do so.’ This is not true. There was no decision to ‘decline’ to have a say, and nor was there any question of changing the rules. Rather, the position was that the issue of interpreting the constitution was deadlocked, and no decision was forthcoming.

As Hon Justice Ward, Chief Equity Judge of the NSW Supreme Court, put it to counsel for the NSW Greens:

There was no decision. So if there's no decision, what does somebody do? If a dispute is to be resolved by the delegates council and the delegates council is unable to resolve it, they're just left in limbo, are they?

Mr Brull goes on to assert about this process that ‘Greens processes had been followed and Faehrmann had lost’. This is a blatant reinvention of history. As Justice Ward’s judgment states:

there was ultimately no determination by the SDC as to the proper Interpretation of the constitution. The SDC neither resolved to determine in favour of the construction put forward by Ms Faehrmann nor resolved to determine in favour of the construction put forward by the Membership Officer.

And

Leaving aside the question whether members of The Greens NSW would be bound by an incorrect interpretation of the constitution were that to be adopted by the SDC, the fact is that the dispute as to the interpretation of the constitution on the issue in question has not been able to be determined by resolution of the SDC. 

Mr Brull’s narrative is one of hardworking party members following process and Cate Faehrmann blindly taking the party to court to pursue her own selfish agenda. Brull implies that Cate Faehrmann was seeking an ‘exception’ to the rules and asking office bearers to ‘bend the rules’. He writes ‘people who determine the rules – the officer bearers – are not supposed to have the autonomy to make exceptions, to help people out if they’re well-connected or prominent.’ 

Cate Faehrmann was not seeking an exception to the rules, rather the correct application of them. It is of course wrong for office bearers to bend the rules to prevent a legitimate candidate from running. 

Brull criticises Cate Faehrmann for not trying mediation. Why should she, especially when she faced an urgent deadline? She had already handed over legal advice. The office bearers had made no attempt to obtain any contrary advice, but rather maintained a bull-headed persistence in abusing the constitution. As Justice Ward put it:

it is difficult to see what scope there would have been for a mediated resolution of the dispute in the present case. You either agree that the rules allow for Greens members to transfer from another state as full members or not.

In the Supreme Court proceedings, lawyers for the Greens NSW (presumably on instructions), perhaps desperate to avoid the obvious wording of the constitution, tried to rely not on the published version of the constitution, but rather on a version of the constitution that sat with Fair Trading and was last updated in 2002. The judge rejected this attempt, but said that the relevant provisions were not materially different anyway, and the same result would have come from the older document.

Office bearers of the Greens NSW went to great lengths to stop Cate Faehrmann from running for preselection, risking the party’s reputation and finances in the courts. 

Brull’s attack looks like a last desperate attempt of the NSW old guard to protect its patch. It is a nasty coda to very poor behaviour by NSW Greens office bearers.

Hopefully, at some time in the future, Cate Faehrmann will have an opportunity to comprehensively respond.

The Beacon at Uluru

Section 25 of the Australian Constitution provides, to this day:

Provision as to races disqualified from voting

For the purposes of the last section, if by the law of any State all persons of any race are disqualified from voting at elections for the more numerous House of the Parliament of the State, then, in reckoning the number of the people of the State or of the Commonwealth, persons of that race resident in that State shall not be counted.

In other words, a State can, under the Constitution, disqualify an entire race from voting, and the members of that race will not be included in the quota for representation of that State in the Commonwealth parliament.

You only have to read the Constitution to realise how deeply racist it remains. This represents important unfinished business for Australia.

Our Constitution is the founding document of our nation. Some of its contents may be symbolic, but it is no less important as a cornerstone of our polity for that: symbols matter. Much of its contents have real practical consequences.

We, the community governed by the Constitution, have the right to change it so that it reflects our values. It can be amended by a majority of voters in a majority of States.

In thinking about our Constitution, it is good to consider the type of Australia we want to see in the future.

It is imperative that Australia becomes a republic, so that we are, at least in our forms of government, independent from other nations. It makes no sense to have our head of state a person from a foreign country who attains that office by inheritance.

Pressing though a republic is, it ought not to be accomplished without a just settlement with the First Australians. That must have priority.

After a lengthy and consultative process, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have spoken.

In their Uluru Statement from the Heart, the outcome of the 2017 National Constitutional Convention, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples make a simple request that all Australians should endorse:

We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country.

We call for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution.

Makarrata is the culmination of our agenda: the coming together after a struggle. It captures our aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia and a better future for our children based on justice and self-determination.

We seek a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history.

In 1967 we were counted, in 2017 we seek to be heard. We leave base camp and start our trek across this vast country. We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.

The Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull, after cabinet consideration of the Uluru Statement, dismissed it with the words:

The government does not believe such an addition to our national representative institutions is either desirable or capable of winning acceptance in a referendum.

He said that the voice to Parliament ‘would inevitably become seen as a third chamber of parliament’ – but provided no justification for the assertion. It is plainly wrong.

Ironically, in the light of s 25 of the Constitution, quoted above, and which allows the exclusion of entire races from voting, he said:

Our democracy is built on the foundation of all Australian citizens having equal civic rights … a constitutionally enshrined additional representative assembly for which only Indigenous Australians could vote for or serve in is inconsistent with this fundamental principle.

Yet another attempt to build reconciliation between First Australians and those of us who have come after has been cast aside with casual contempt.

Our Constitution badly needs an overhaul. The implementation of the Uluru Statement should be the first priority.