There are, I understand, good reasons to oppose the Voice.

You may, for example, be skeptical that it will lead to real outcomes for Indigenous Australians, you may think that it will flatten the nuance of contributions from local Land Councils, and therefore you may be convinced that the risk of disturbing our remarkably stable Parliamentary system, which benefits all Australians, is not worth the uncertain return.

However, I do not think Kel Richards’ recent article in The Spectator makes a good case, let alone a good case from a Christian perspective. 

Firstly, Kel rehearses tired old ‘I-don’t-see-colour’ arguments against affirmative action when he dichotomises race- and need-based assistance. When the apostles discovered that Hellenic Jewish widows were being discriminated against in the distribution of food, every one of the seven men whom they appointed as deacons had Greek names. Kel claims that ‘the Bible treats race as an unimportant factor’, which not only would have been surprising news to Israel, but raises real questions about Paul’s missionary strategy of becoming ‘like a Jew, to win the Jews’ and ‘like one not having the law…so as to win not having the law.’

The image-bearing identity of every human being does not erase attention to race. The Christian vision is not of humanity flattened into an undifferentiated whole, but of a kingdom from every tribe and tongue. And sometimes mercy and justice cannot be achieved, or needs met, without attention to the structural issues particular to the story of a racial group, even if some members of that group have managed to evade or escape the worst of those issues.

Secondly, Kel quotes Gary Johns’ claim ‘that 80 per cent of people who identify as Indigenous Australians are fully integrated and doing as well as any other middle-class or working-class Australians’, and that the problem is largely restricted to isolated communities rather than the bulk of Indigenous Australians who have moved to major cities.

Now, many Indigenous Australians with whom I have spoken would like woke progressives to talk less of Indigenous victimhood than of the success and survival of Indigenous culture, despite its many challenges. But it is also true that, according to the Australian government, ‘[t]he median gross weekly equivalised household income for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults was $825 in 2021. This ranged from $982 in Major cities to $459 in Very remote areas.’ Neither of these stacks up well against the median for non-Indigenous adults – $1,141. Some 67% of Indigenous adults live in households in the lower half of the income distribution.

This, however, misses a larger point: the hidden assumption that it is a good thing that so many Indigenous Australians ‘live in cities and towns’ and are ‘fully integrated.’ Fully integrated into what? Specifically, what kind of culture is being held up as normative? I have a real concern here that what is on view is a dismantling of the historically unbreakable Indigenous association between culture and country to erect, in its place, a very Western post-industrial consumption model – and that this is a sign of success. Whose success, exactly, are we describing here?

Finally – and I worry that he has shown his hand here – Kel calls us to be skeptical ’[w]henever the Yes campaign starts to obsess about the unchangeable past.’ Now, I’ve recently had the privilege of a far-too-short week of learning from an East Arrernte elder and Christian brother, who was explicit about his desire not to dwell in the bitterness of the past, but rather focus on how we can walk together into our common future. What a stunning sentiment! What amazing grace!

But grace doesn’t absolve the sinner of doing whatever they can to undo or mitigate their past sins. As Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector, declares, ‘if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.’ Kel is right – ‘we don’t live in the past.’ But Christianity is a faith tradition deeply concerned with not moving on from the past too quickly. We name past and present evils, grieve them, and do what we can to address them. Not to expiate our guilt, but because those whose guilt has been forgiven have found new resources to make things better.

Now, many in the ‘Yes’ camp have argued for the Voice on the basis that it is the best way to meet the needs of Indigenous Australian needs. I don’t know if that is true. And I can understand the Catch-22 concerns of those who object: ‘what do we do, if and when those needs are now met, and yet we still have a Voice enshrined in the Constitution.’ And Kel, with others, have objected to singling out Indigenous Australians in this way, on the basis that it is wrong to permanently treat one race as special.

And perhaps, on the basis of need, it would be. What of justice, though? Is there an argument for recognising the particularity of the First Nations in our Constitution, not because it is effective, but because it is right?

Because in Australia, Indigenous Australians are special. The unavoidable truth is that this was their land for tens of thousands of years, before it was stripped from them by an often violent occupying colonial power on the basis of a legal fiction. And truth doesn’t have an expiry date. Australia will never cease to once-have-been theirs. And even if we can come to a common mind on how to make right the grand theft of this island continent, precisely because this cannot be undone, the story of our united nation will always be founded on a particular crime (as well, we hope, as a particular reconciliation, and many particular acts of nobility and kindness.)

This need not ‘hang over us’ for all time. But it also should not be forgotten, airbrushed out of our history. Not least because, why would we wish to forget the abundant generosity of Indigenous Australians who long to walk together with us and to share their wisdom with us?

And if there is a reason to recognise Indigenous Australians in the Constitution in this way, then the race argument against the Voice, too, falls apart. For Indigenous Australians are undeniably special and undeniably warrant special treatment. The debate should not be over ‘if’, but ‘how.’ That’s still not an argument for the Voice, but it is an argument that we need to find a way of recognising without tokenism the special status of Indigenous Australians without compromising what has made our democracy so good. And that is a much more complex and nuanced discussion – one which isn’t helped, Kel, by allegations of racism and linguistic card tricks.