Australia Says No to White Guilt

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Australians won a major victory in a recent referendum, decisively rejecting a de facto Indigenous shadow government called the “Voice.” Proponents claimed that the Voice would only be a way for Aborigines to advise the government, but in a democracy, all citizens have that right. If different racial groups need Lebanon-style racial bodies within the government, that’s an argument against multiracial states. The defeat was a political catastrophe for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, whose left-wing government spent much of its political capital on the campaign, only to meet humiliation. He’s facing calls to resign.

The “Yes” side started ahead, but the “No” side gained strength throughout the campaign. The result wasn’t close. More than 60 percent of voters rejected the Voice. Every state voted against it.

Credit Image: © Lukas Coch/EFE via ZUMA Press

Media coverage has been overwhelmingly hostile:

• “Australia: Heartbreaking result as Voice referendum ‘No’ votes prevail,” Amnesty International, October 14, 2023.
• “Why Did Australia Fail Its First Nations Citizens?,” an editorial at the Washington Post.
• “Australia rejects Indigenous referendum in setback for reconciliation,” The Gazette.
• “Australians deny constitutional recognition to Indigenous people. Why?” said the Christian Science Monitor. It warned this could “invite more divisive politics,” according to “analysts.”
• “Australians vote No in referendum that promised change for First Nations people but couldn’t deliver,” CNN. “With a two-letter word, Australians struck down the first attempt at constitutional change in 24 years, a move experts say will inflict lasting damage on First Nations people and suspend any hopes of modernizing the nation’s founding document.”

Is the word “no” the new N-word? The assumption is that the legal equality of all citizens is “divisive” but a race-based body isn’t.

White advocates shouldn’t be fooled; many of the “No” voters acted on egalitarian ideals. This earned them little credit. “Settler Australians have often tended to equate equality with sameness,” said Professor Frank Bongiorno at the Australian National University. “For many, to create an Indigenous Voice was to foster inequality and promote division where they believe there should be unity. The ‘no’ case’s claim that the Voice would create disunity was likely devastating in its effects. What many ‘no’ voters want is unity on their own terms.”

“Settler Australians” are simply Australians. Unless we are just talking about a landmass, Australia did not exist until whites made it. For most of its history, Australia had a “White Australia” policy that let it become a prosperous outpost of Western Civilization. When former prime minister John Howard recently said colonization was the “luckiest” thing, thereby stirring “a storm of outrage” (according to the New York Times), he understated the case. Without “colonization,” there is no Australia. It wasn’t colonization, but settlement.

The end of “White Australia” didn’t lead to reconciliation, harmony, or strength, but to never-ending conflict. Arguing in favor of the Voice, Federal Minister for Multicultural Affairs Andrew Giles applauded the 1973 decision to make multiculturalism a “cornerstone of our Australian story,” praising “our national identity as a majority-migrant nation” with diversity as “our greatest strength.” However, Australia is still “divided,” because “successive governments of all persuasions have failed to listen to those who could advise government on improving” problems in Indigenous areas. Does that mean multiculturalism failed? Is there some “end” to multiculturalism, at which point unity and equality will be achieved?

Aborigines already have special programs and of course enjoy the right to vote and lobby the government. There’s not some language barrier or failure in communications preventing them from telling the government what they want. It’s an endless list of demands.

The purpose of the Voice was never clear. The government said the new body would help the Indigenous, but that it also wouldn’t be part of the government. Why have it then? The Prime Minister claimed there was “no cost” to the proposal, but what would it do? The truth is that a referendum victory would delegitimize white Australians’ claim to be the founding population. They would be guests on “Aboriginal land,” with no legitimacy. There would also be an official body that could be counted on to shame white Australians (i.e., real Australians), demand more money, and hand out patronage to non-whites and radical activists.

The Prime Minister should resign; the country rejected him. The vote should also settle the issue for good. Not for him. “Tonight is not the end of the road and is certainly not the end of our efforts to bring people together,” said Prime Minister Albanese. The attorney general had also warned of “dire consequences” if the referendum failed, whatever those may be.

In democracies, the will of the voters has little impact. Californians rejected mass immigration when they voted for Proposition 187 in 1994, but mass immigration got worse and a court threw out the result. Desperate British voters left the European Union, hoping to gain control of their borders. Immigration increased.

“Australia looks to lift Indigenous living standards after referendum loss,” reported the Associated Press. “Coming out of this referendum there is a greater call for action on closing the gap,” said the deputy prime minister. Most would expect the results meant the opposite. The gap will never be “closed,” because it is a product of biology, not policy.

Opponents have already blamed “misinformation,” the routine excuse when a vote doesn’t go the Left’s way. “This heartbreaking result comes after rampant online disinformation in Australia about the consequences of the referendum, and the reverberation of the racist myth of ‘Terra Nullius,’ the false premise of ‘nobody’s land’ upon which Australia was colonized 235 years ago,” said Amnesty International’s “Australia First Nations Rights” spokesperson.

An article featured on MSN worried that “as the referendum unfolded, it became painfully clear that many people lacked a basic understanding of their country’s governance and legal system. This void was quickly filled by a deluge of misinformation and conspiracy theories on social media, undermining the democratic process and threatening social cohesion.”

“The voice referendum turned into an overdue civics lesson. Sadly, many failed the test,” said The Guardian.

“A Polarized Australia Confronts ‘Trump Style Misinformation,’ warned the New York Times.

Australians should look out for attempts to crack down on free speech.

Will Europeans on their ancient continent consider measures to guarantee special rights for whites in their “Indigenous homeland”? It would be edifying to force our opponents to explain why whites aren’t indigenous anywhere.

For Australians, the victory over the establishment should spark a new patriotic movement. Anglos in Oceania are going to need to take their own side. This was a major victory but a defensive one. It’s time to take the offensive. Australia was built by whites, and we are proud of it. It is an outpost of British civilization. If it is not that, it is not Australia: it is mostly just dirt.