The British Australian Community calls on Australians to vote No in the referendum on a “Voice to Parliament”.
Some of our criticisms of this proposal have already been made by other commentators. We agree that a constitutionally mandated voice would undermine democracy and the supremacy of federal parliament. It would also establish the ethnic privilege of a small minority, and encourage undemocratic judicial activism. Recognition should not take the form of a constitutional voice.
Importantly, we also ask, “Is the proposed voice good for Anglos?” We ask and try to answer that question because the BAC, like other multicultural groups, exists to celebrate and defend the interests of a particular people; in our case Anglo-Celtic Australians, founders of the nation and the Commonwealth and still the majority population.
Therefore, we evaluate the proposed voice from the perspective of Anglo-Australians as well as from the national interest.
Our starting position is that a constitutional voice would be bad for Anglo-Australians because it would degrade federal governance, in which all citizens are stakeholders.
However, we sympathise with the complaint by indigenous Australians that the Constitution ignores their special stake in Australia. They say, correctly, that it does not acknowledge them in any way. It ignores the fact that they were occupying this land for thousands of years before European settlement. It ignores their identity, their culture, and their history.
Anglo-Australians should be doubly sympathetic because we find ourselves very much in the same position. Whilst Australia’s Constitution is written in the English language and includes a role for the British monarchy, these identity markers are incidental. The Constitution fails to recognize Anglo identity, culture, or history, even though our ancestors created the colonies that became our six states. In 1901 they created the Federal Commonwealth, explicitly to further our interests, the interests of Anglo-Australia. Sir Henry Parkes, the father of federation, declared in his great speech at the first federation conference in 1890:
“The crimson thread of kinship runs through us all. Even the native-born Australians are Britons, as much as the men born within cities of London and Glasgow. We know the value of their British origin. … … [A]t some time or other, we must unite as one great Australian people.”
Any country’s constitution should recognize the identity of the founding people. Australia is no exception.
Indigenous Australians should also be counted as founding peoples because they contributed their land, albeit involuntarily, as well as elements of culture. Australia’s culture and identity would have been different if the First Fleet had arrived at an empty continent.
This is part of the national context against which the voice referendum needs to be judged. The founding peoples were Anglos, Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. They all should be recognised in a preamble to the Constitution, but not in the form of a voice or elsewhere in the legally binding sections.
Another contextual aspect is that Anglo advocates were completely excluded from the consultations and deliberations that formulated the voice proposal, despite being the founding majority. This exclusion means that governments never made an effort to examine the voice proposal from the vantage point of Anglo interests.
Exclusion of Anglo patriots continues a broader trend of systemic anti-white discrimination. Anglo-Australians have been excluded from fair representation in ethnic politics in general, especially regarding issues of immigration, multiculturalism, and indigenous affairs. As a result, infrastructure is not keeping up with a rapidly growing population. Rents and homelessness are rising, and ethno-religious diversity has reached dangerous levels.
Anglo-Australians are under siege, not only by uncaring governments but by corporate media and schools that indoctrinate children to disrespect our pioneers and their British connections. Undemocratic immigration policy is likely to push down the founding ethnic group to minority status within a few decades.
Since the 1970s institutional Anglophobia has been so extreme that immigration and multicultural policies might as well have come from an occupying army. Indeed, if China or India invaded and conquered Australia, they would be well advised to break national resistance by putting an indigenous voice in the constitution (and perhaps other voices but never an Anglo one). They might also retain the anti-Anglo indoctrination already practised in Australian schools. And they might continue high levels of Third World immigration, especially from their own countries. (Actually, the occupiers might substantially reduce present levels of immigration to avoid being accused of committing cultural genocide.)
Whether viewed through indigenous or Anglo eyes, the Constitution is a cold-blooded document that has afforded the nation inadequate protection against ruthless elites.
Much as a prosecution needs a defence lawyer to achieve fairness, Anglo-Australians need champions who are willing to take their side in the voice argument. Freedom rests on balancing adversarial relations in politics, business, and culture. The revolutionary demographic change afflicting many Western countries could not have occurred had the majority’s ethnic interests been represented in politics and culture. Inverted ethnic hierarchies are imposed by multicultural regimes in Australia and overseas. These could not have arisen or been sustained if governments had not turned against the founding ethnicity. This is perhaps the reason why political multiculturalism has punished freedom of speech and association in such an authoritarian fashion. Tolerance of majority identity and expression would have moderated this extremist replacement ideology.
It is in this context that Anglo-Australians are being asked to mutilate their Constitution to privilege indigenous peoples and pay for the inevitably bloated voice bureaucracy, which will likely be followed by strident calls for even greater financial reparations.
All Australians have an interest in good governance. However, Anglo-Australians have a special interest as founders of the Australian nation. If the voice referendum succeeds, most Australians will be unfairly disadvantaged. For Anglos, however, this will be a particularly bitter pill to swallow as these changes will degrade the Constitution and the Commonwealth which were created by, and for, us.
The full version of this statement will be published by Quadrant as an open-source online book from 1st August 2023. An abridged version of 10,000 words with documentation can be read on this website here. Also recommended is the book Anglophobia: The Unrecognised Hatred, by Harry Richardson and Frank Salter, which can be purchased as a paperback, e-book, or audio book.