The Voice would have renewed Australian democracy. Its failure leaves us all worse off

There’s long been a fundamental issue underpinning Australia’s approach to Indigenous affairs. The state makes laws specifically about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples without any protected mechanism giving them a say in the process.

The proposed Voice to Parliament sought to remedy this democratic deficit. Had the referendum succeeded, it would have established a formal representative connection between Indigenous peoples and the Commonwealth parliament.

The Voice proposal was a reform to democratic representation. Its failure was a missed opportunity to renew Australian democracy.

But it was also an explicit choice: to sustain the political subjugation of Indigenous people by denying them representative channels for making their voices heard on matters that affect them.

This enduring structural limitation leaves the parliament without any representative mechanism to consult with, or be accountable to, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

What does Indigenous representation look like?

Even as we have seen increasing numbers of Aboriginal members in the federal parliament, they do not represent all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Nor are they empowered to. In the 125 years since federation, there has never been a Torres Strait Islander representative at the Commonwealth level.

A key aspect of political accountability is the ability of a constituency to remove their representative at the ballot box. If a majority feels their MPs have failed to advance their interests or otherwise represent them, they can vote them out.

This article is an edited extract from the new book The Failure of the Voice Referendum and the Future of Australian Democracy, edited by Professors Gabrielle Appleby and Megan Davis.

For minority populations, this mechanism fails because their votes will, by definition, always fall short of a majority. This has long been called “the tyranny of the majority”.

While this is a problem for all minorities, the political claims of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are distinct from other minority groups. This is because they’ve been politically subjugated through unlawful dispossession.

Voting rights alone cannot remedy this. We need to move beyond this narrow view of political representation.

More than politics

Being represented is not just about aggregating votes or delegating decision-making power to elected parliamentarians.

There are many types of democratic representation, far beyond formal political institutions. There are also unions, nongovernmental organisations, social movements, media organisations and community advocates.

These actors represent themselves and others through various channels, such as:

Through this lens, we can see Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have long maintained and exercised their representative power, even when formal political institutions exclude or silence their voices.