As New Zealand did, Australia should reserve Parliamentary seats for indigenous people
if history has taught us anything, it is that treating our most
vulnerable members like we treat everybody else can be the very source
of their disadvantage.
The pursuit of equality often requires that we
treat people differently because it is by attending to the specific
needs and histories of diverse populations that they gain the ability
to participate in society on a par with everybody else. That is why
breaking glass ceilings requires that we treat women not like men, but
as a group encountering unique social barriers to promotion…..
A better voice for indigenous Australians, SMH, February 4, 2013
George Vasilev Reserving parliamentary seats for indigenous citizens
is about equality. The vexed issue of indigenous representation has
surfaced again with Julia Gillard’s controversial endorsement of Nova
Peris as a Labor Senate candidate for the September 14 election.
Australia has an abysmal record on indigenous representation. Only
three indigenous people have ever been elected to federal Parliament.
Of those, the Liberals’ Ken Wyatt is the only candidate to ever win a
seat in the House of Representatives.
In a country where indigenous people comprise 2.5 per cent of the
population and with a federal Parliament with 226 seats, we fall way
short of the most basic standard of representative fairness that
demands legislatures reflect the societies they govern.
Both the Labor and Liberal parties identify indigenous exclusion as a
matter warranting urgent attention. Both parties have courted
indigenous people as potential representatives to demonstrate their
commitment to overcoming this injustice. But if our mainstream parties
were serious about dismantling barriers to indigenous representation,
they would reform Australia’s electoral system. This is the only
realistic way to establish a meaningful parliamentary presence for
indigenous Australians.
Australia’s electoral system is doubly hostile to indigenous
candidates. First, its reliance on preferential voting in the House of
Representatives ensures that seats won are always skewed in the
direction of the major parties. Second, the absence of even the most
rudimentary institutional provisions to level the playing field
between the indigenous few and non-indigenous many seals the fate of
Australia’s first peoples as perpetually marginalised.
New Zealand offers Australia a valuable lesson in how to design an
electoral system that promotes parliamentary access for its indigenous
members. New Zealand has had reserved seats for Maori citizens since
1867. After a referendum in 1993, it scrapped its first-past-the-post
system in favour of a proportional representation system to allow the
share of seats political parties gain to more accurately reflect the
share of votes cast for them. This has generated an enduring and
politically consequential presence for Maoris in Parliament.
Variations of this model tailored to Australia would offer a promising
remedy for indigenous marginalisation in our politics. Through
reserved seats and a route to Parliament not dependent on preselection
in major parties, indigenous Australians would gain genuine autonomy
over their affairs. They would acquire the ability to speak for
themselves and the latitude to convey indigenous perspectives in
policymaking, rather than remain under pressure to water down their
claims in order to make them fit with the ideologies of non-indigenous
parties.
What’s more, other legislators would be compelled to show a greater
level of accountability towards indigenous interests, because the
presence of indigenous representatives would raise the political
stakes of ignoring them.
These are the conditions that would enable indigenous Australians to
be genuinely self-determining. Unlike the experience of the Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Commission, they would not be pursuing
their goals in the shadow of a central authority that can revoke their
political existence at the stroke of a pen…….
if history has taught us anything, it is that treating our most
vulnerable members like we treat everybody else can be the very source
of their disadvantage. The pursuit of equality often requires that we
treat people differently because it is by attending to the specific
needs and histories of diverse populations that they gain the ability
to participate in society on a par with everybody else. That is why
breaking glass ceilings requires that we treat women not like men, but
as a group encountering unique social barriers to promotion…..
It is this unique history that distinguishes indigenous Australians
from other cultural groups and makes their case for dedicated seats so
much more morally compelling.
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