TRANSCRIPT:
(This is derived from an automated process. The video recording is authoritative.)
Thank you very much, Jewel. My, my dad would've loved to hear an introduction like that. My mom would've believed it. So there we go. Uh, actually I've told it's a, it's a custom in North America to always start with a quick joke. And I've sort of run through most of mine, so I got a new one.
So an Englishman, a Welshman, an Irishman, and a Scotsman are at dinner, an incredibly expensive London restaurant. And you know, the, they're bringing out the French champagne and you know, the courses are coming, the caviar and they order more drinks. And at the end of the evening, this incredibly expensive bill comes tens of thousands of pounds and the four of them sit there and look at it.
And finally, the Scotsman says that he'll pick up the whole thing. And the next morning the Englishman wakes up and opens his newspaper. And the top headline, he reads, “Ventriloquist Welshman Found Murdered Behind the Expensive Restaurant”.
Okay, uh, alright, so look, 15 minutes, I'm going to be brief. Uh, one of the reasons the LNP haven't taken a stand is because you can't stand if you haven't got a backbone. And so invertebrates find it difficult. This will, this will in my view play out a bit like the Brexit referendum.
The Brexit referendum had all the great and the good, the corporate power, the money, they were out spent 10 or 12 times to one. Everything was lined up for 'remaining' - it lost. You know, I think there was one newspaper that was, uh, Brexit, maybe that was a Telegraph or Daily Mail, I forget. Um, and so on the procedure, so let's just start with the moral, the core problem here is equal citizenship. There are no democracies where, uh, people get different rights based on qualities they're born with. Call it race, call it historical, it doesn't matter what you call it. It goes down the group rights. It's identity politics and it undermines the very idea of equal citizenship. There will be no going back.
Uh, another problem on the moral level, they're not funding the no case. Um, Scott implied that was all labors during, but actually Julie and Lisa waived that through as attorney of shadow Attorney General. Again, you know, disgraceful. Um, the idea on the moral level that this will lead to reconciliation, just beggars belief. It's not gonna lead to reconciliation.
Just see what's happening with the three waters in New Zealand.
And on the current expert group, there's not a single skeptic. Albanese just, you know, they played to win. Labor plays to win and the Liberal party plays to lose. It's just so on the moral level, those are the core problems.
On the legal level, the problem is, look, it says may make representations. My bet is that within 10 years, the high court will turn that into a sort of pseudo constitutional right to be consulted. It won't be a veto, but it'll be a right to be consulted. It's not.
And the other thing is, it says on matters relating to aboriginal peoples. They didn't say exclusively. So that basically will leave it for the judges to say every single bill, cuz every bill affects us.
And so what you're gonna get is a defacto fourth arm of government. It won't have a straight veto, but it doesn't need to have a veto. It will slow things down. And my bet is that the activist class will capture it.
And then you're in this position. And one of the reasons Labor likes it is, well on most bills, big spending bills, this body, the Voice is gonna agree with them. So they're not gonna have a problem passing laws.
If you sort of have right of center small government focus on the individual, it's going to be very difficult. They'll slow things down.
The temptation to get into the rent seeking business is gonna be very high. Give them some money so we can get this bill through, right? That's, there's a good chance that's going to happen. And we already have one of the countries in the world that's the hardest to get laws enacted. I mean, people think that all democracies look like Australia.
They don't, there's only three democracies in the world with a strong upper house. Our constitution is a direct copy of the Americans, so they're the another one. And Italy and Italy's been trying to remove its upper house.
So Canada Scott said it's appointed. They don't block anything. You, you know, you can't, in today's world, an appointed body can't second guess a democratic body, you know, in Canada, basically you get appointed to the Senate if you're a, a political hack.
And then they usually throw in a few people who win gold medals in the Olympics, or you know, you get a Nobel Prize. So they get, and they get a salary for life, but they never block anything. And in the UK it's a House of Lords, which is partly hereditary, partly appointed. Again, you know, if you win an election in Canada, you just do whatever you want.
You don't go and bargain with some woman from Tasmania who's got an extended family and a few extra friends than anyone else. You know, that's the problem. It's, it's very difficult to get laws enacted here already.
Throw in a Voice body, it's gonna become even more difficult. So you've got all those sort of problems.
They're going to make this a separate chapter in the constitution. No constitutional referenda has ever done that before. And why does that matter? We have activist judges, the whole world, right now, democratic world has judges who are second guessing politicians.
It's particularly bad in the anglosphere. Anyone who's read the Love case, our high court just made stuff up. It's one of the worst reasons decisions ever.
When these people stand up and say like, you know, Robert French, we don't have to worry about the high court. I don't know what planet they're living on. Right?
And if you see the kind of kids who are turning out in law schools, whatever you think of the judges today, wait 10 years and I lived through a change in Canada in 1982, and everyone who promoted the constitutional change said, we have the most interpretatively conservative judges. This is Canada, it won't happen. And it was true.
They were the world's most interpreted conservative. They're now more, uh, aggressively sort of second guessing of the leg legislature than the American Supreme Court. The Canadian Supreme Court is one of the most activist.
Everything you were promised in Canada was a lie. Or if it wasn't a lie, it was wrong and naive, although I do tend to think that some of the people who are making these assurances don't want the assurances to be true. Um, so that's just a taste of the legal problems.
The political problems are even probably the worst.
So even if I'm wrong about the law, it doesn't matter because we are voting for the political situation. And the political situation is this, will parliament stand up to the Voice body? Well, Albanese said it would be a brave par, uh, parliament Labor won't, and the right of center parties don't have the will to do it. The left won't want to, and the right won't have the will. That's what we've seen in Canada since 1982.
They put in this provision to allow parliament to stand up to the judges hasn't been used once in 40 years. And can you look at today's liberal party and think they will stand up to the Voice, but you've got to be kidding me. Um, so it'll be like a fourth arm of government. It's, it won't take too long for the activist class to take over it.
Um, when you read what they claim will be the benefits, it's really hard to know what the benefits will be. It, it's all symbolism, you know, it's, it's gonna be symbolic and lead to reconciliation.
Gary's gonna tell you, you know, just where things stand on the ground. But this is, uh, just probably it's gonna be incredibly divisive. I went over and did a report in New Zealand, pu Pua, it has not led to better feelings once you go down the identity politics group rights race-based thing, or even if it's not race-based, just group rights. It's like India after 1948. You know, it doesn't lead to good outcomes. So bad politics, bad sort of high level moral problem that we should all be treated equally in a liberal democracy and bad legal outcomes.
But other than that, this is a wonderful proposal. I mean, really, you can't find any faults with it at all. This is their first rate proposal.
Have I hit 15 minutes? I'm not even sure I'm okay. Okay. Alright. So I got a bit more time.
I wanted to make sure I got through everything. So look, uh, again, on the legal level, what they are trying to do is to tell you that the high court will not take those two key phrases, may make representations into a constitutional right. I bet my mortgage had ha it won't happen right away. So in Canada, the judges didn't do anything for four or five years. And then almost certainly what they'll say is because in terms of constitutional interpretation, judges will never interpret based on what the lawmakers say the bill is meant to do.
Do they just say that's irrelevant? They say that's irrelevant. Interpreting statutes, they say it's irrelevant interpreting constitution. So it really doesn't matter what whatever guarantees you're being given, the judges will not pay any attention to that down the road.
That's unfortunately, the judges used to interpret based on the intentions of the lawmakers, but they don't do that anywhere in the anglosphere anymore. It's bad interpretation.
And on matters relating to Aboriginal, uh, peoples, we know that's gonna be everything. This is one of the most aggressively, uh, sort of ambit like proposals you have ever seen. And again, the only one ever that gives itself, it, it's supposed to be a new, a new chapter.
I never really told you what the problem with being a new chapter in the constitution is, but the two biggest forms of judicial activism in this country. One is, uh, when I first got here and had to teach stern constitutional, I'm used to Canada, Britain, and they have this thing here called the separation of powers.
And the judges basically made it up from both the fifties on and they made it up because different arms of government get their own separate chapter.
And so the fact a separate chapter is one of the key modes of reasoning in this country. Oops. So you, so you know why Albanese is putting it in a separate chapter that is not by, by, uh, oversight. It's a signal to the judges that this is really important and you can do whatever you want with it.
The other one is the implied freedom of political jurisprudence or of political communication. Again, I'm, I'm the most pro-free speech, you know, law professor in the country. I like the outcome, but nobody with a straight face can say this as honest interpretation.
The judges made it up in 1992. It's disgraceful. You know, you have to separate in your mind, do I like the outcome from, is this an honest, plausible, uh, form of interpreting? You know, if your wife gives you a shopping list and says, you know, get cherries and you come home with cherry brandy, you know, that's not an honest interpretation. Might be something you want. Uh, and so they just made this up. And the problem is, in that line of cases, they also focused on the fact, the structure of the constitution with its separate chapters.
So this is just a sort of quiet wink or, or sort of nudge to the judges that once this gets in, you know, you use this, I could write it up for them now, how it's gonna go. So it's bowed on all those fronts I'm handing over now because there's nothing worse than people who go over time.
