I'm on vacation over the Christmas break. But that doesn't mean the blogging has to stop. I've queued up a four-part series on the contemporary debate in Australia over an Indigenous 'Voice' to parliament. You can find Part One here and Part Two here. Needless to say, the usual caveat applies: the views expressed this paper are the author’s own and do not reflect the views or positions of the Commonwealth Government or its agencies. 

“No such country”

It is worth considering the philosophical objections raised by those who oppose an indigenous Voice to parliament. In addition to the Government statements included in Part One (here), today's blog will look at a research brief from the Institute for Public Affairs (‘IPA’), a right-libertarian thinktank with considerable influence over ministers. 

The IPA acknowledged that every citizen had “the [right] to participate in the democratic process” but claims that this right is exhausted by the principle of “one person, one vote”. Under this view, the constitution establishes that all citizens are entitled to equal rights, with no special privileges granted to any group of individuals. The IPA argues that equality means “being blind to immaterial differences such as race, ethnicity and skin colour” and that using race as a qualification for the right to political participation is divisive and undemocratic. A separate press release criticises the proposal for an indigenous Voice as ‘racial identity politics’ that treats human beings as members of a group and not as individuals. This is pretty standard right-libertarian language. 

While the IPA  invokes Aristotle, the liberal democracy it portrays does not actualy exist in Australia. The nation has no Bill of Rights, either in the constitution or in statute. Very limited constitutional guarantees (e.g. to trial by jury, and freedom of religion) have been watered-down by the High Court; even the right to “one person, one vote” does not enjoy constitutional protection. Indeed, had indigenous peoples already possessed meaningful civil and political rights, the interventionist policies adopted by Canberra over the course of the 20th century may never have occurred. Indeed, universal and compulsory indigenous electoral enrolment (i.e. equal treatment with other Australian voters) was only legislated in 1983. Conservative opposition to special representation rights on the basis of formal equality, therefore, is not a claim based in Australian law but in a particular (narrow and pedantic) reading of classical liberal texts. And as we saw last week, it is a reading that is many decades out of date with contemporary philosophy and the reality of multicultural societies.

Other Objections

We should also address some other criticisms of differential group rights. The egalitarian Brian Barry (and other left-leaning critics of ‘identity politics’) have argued that the ‘politics of difference’ damages efforts to redistribute social resources to assist the disadvantaged. The crude version argues that the majority culture will not vote for higher taxes to support minorities that are perceived to be privileged in some way. This is the lazy, zero-sum understanding of politics I have previously referred to as the identarian interpretation of identity politics. 

A more sophisticated version is attributed to Robert Putnam, who has studied the extent to which diversity undermines social capital and solidarity. But Putnam’s research is often misrepresented. It’s not that perceptions of unfairness increase in-group selfishness; rather, they decrease all pro-social behaviour including towards in-group members. While this offers support for Barry’s hypothesis (that differential policies will lower pro-social outcomes for everyone), Putnam's research also demonstratedthat income inequality is equally and independently responsible for eroding social capital. As I have written elsewhere, it's unclear to me why egalitarians who work to establish solidarity across class lines in order to overcome these dissociative tendencies would or should fail to advocate solidarity across other forms of difference. 

Rights for whose benefit?

Lastly, we need to examine the question of whether special representation rights might ultimately harm the interests of indigenous individuals. The classic liberal articulation of this case is to assess whether a cultural group seeks special treatment to impose internal rules or practices on members of its community that would not be tolerated by (or in common law parlance, be ‘repugnant to’) the majority culture. While strong communitarians or relativists may not ask this question, liberal philosophers draw the line of tolerance at communities that are themselves liberal and rights-upholding. I consider this a fair interpretration, and it's an issue with some relevance to the Australian context: the intervention was initially justified as necessary to prevent child abuse, and increasing school attendance and preventing domestic violence remain part of its public purpose. 

While special representation rights and claims for internal autonomy and control are conceptually distinct, they likely overlap in practice. A Voice to parliament that successfully opposed the Northern Territory intervention, argued for recognition of indigenous law in kinship matters, or indigenous language schooling in education policy might (hypothetically) lead to unintended consequences for indigenous families and children. But the key question here is not whether policies of differential representation would prevent any and all harm - clearly the status quo fails that test as well. Instead, it's whether policies of differential representation ensure that all the individuals in a community have their legitimate democratic interests and human rights respected by their political representatives. 

Liberalism does not require that any system of differential representation for indigenous Australia prevent all potential harms: only that itself be liberal and democratic. Any putative inconsistencies between differential representation for national minorities and liberal values can only be resolved on a case-by-case basis. Australian common law has in fact accommodated traditional indigenous punishment, marriage, and property customs for decades. Multiculturalism is always a question of reasonable accommodation and risk: the Australian problem is that there has been no accommodation and no mechanisms by which indigenous citizens could bargain with the majority culture. That needs to change. 

Next week, in Part 4 (the final part), we'll look at an alternative philosophical system based on egalitarian principles of justice.