Division.

It is often in the apparently passing statements or actions by which one can tell the make-up of a politician.

And so it is with Anthony Albanese. Just look at his treatment of former Shorten deputy and potential leadership rival Tanya Plibersek. A former Minister for the Status of Women in the Gillard-Rudd Governments. Appointed Shadow Minister for Education and Women after the 2019 election. After six years learning about the Education portfolio, with Australia investing in Plibersek obtaining that knowledge, Mr. Albanese moved Plibersek to the Environment and Water portfolio in his new Ministry. Or his failure to act on the bullying charges made against his factional allies, the so-called ‘mean girls’, Katie Gallagher, Penny Wong and Kristina Keneally, following the death of the senator from Victoria, Kimberley Kitching. Indeed, Gallagher was given not only the prestigious portfolio of Finance but also, almost to rub salt into the wound, Plibersek’s former role, as Minister for Women. Bringing people together. Governing differently. Leaving behind past conflicts. Hardly.

Which brings us to the issue of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament. The Voice was hardly mentioned in the federal election campaign, yet, it became, on election night, after an introduction from Penny Wong along similar lines, in Mr. Albanese’s victory speech, his cornerstone policy. A policy not discussed with the Australian people. A policy full of complexities. However, one which is to be implemented, so says Mr. Albanese, within his first term of office. So it begins – a new government – founded on a policy of division. Because that is what the policy of implementing an Indigenous Voice to Parliament appears to be. Not least of all, and, perhaps, most of all, within the Indigenous community itself. Fundamental questions such as who will be entitled to vote for the members of the Voice remain undiscussed – but carry the potential for very acrimonious debate within the Indigenous community. Who will be regarded as Indigenous for voting purposes, and who will not? This debate will most likely lead to a wider and equally difficult debate within the broader community, potentially leading to further division.

An example of this are statements by Noel Pearson, a member of the the Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australians and the Referendum Council, as reported by The Australian on 3 June 2022:

Mr Pearson has long believed Australia has three stories: Indigenous foundations; British institutions; and multicultural migra ­tion. On Friday, he told an assembly of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students – including migrants – that the referendum Australia was heading towards was a chance to reconcile them all.

“We must bring these three ­stories together. These – our own stories – are, indeed, staring us in the face. They are our reality. We only need open our eyes and ears and hearts to them,” he said.

“Recognition and justice for the country’s original peoples is necessary if we are to bring Australians – Indigenous, colonial and migrant – together.”

How many people actually think this? That Australia is divided into three quite distinct groups. Very few, I would suggest, but they might start to think so now. The debate around the Voice may compel them to do so, most, very unwillingly.

Yet, the proponents of the Voice, led by Mr. Albanese, are propelling us in the direction of division, not in the direction of unity, no matter how much they claim the opposite. The unevenly mixed but cooking along together combination of the great Australian omelet is to be extracted back to the three original eggs from which we are told it was created. We need to divide people in order to bring them together – apparently.

Why do we need to do this to ourselves? Especially given that we have just elected eight Indigenous Members of Parliament and Senators, who will be joining two Indigenous senators, making a total of ten Indigenous parliamentarians, of whom eight are women.

Ken Wyatt, the former Indigenous Affairs Minister and Liberal M.P. for Hasluck was voted out to be replaced by the ALP’s Tania Lawrence – a non-Indigenous person.

In terms of representation, Indigenous members will account for 9.6 per cent of the 76 Senate seats, and 1.2 per cent of 151 House of Representatives seats.

That leaves total representation at 4.4 per cent, above the Indigenous Australian population of 3.3 per cent. (National Indigenous Times, 23 May, 2022)

Bitterness.

The second issue, hardly, if ever, discussed during the election campaign, but clearly at the forefront of Mr. Albanese’s mind, is the Republic. Just as the Commonwealth was preparing to celebrate what will be most likely the unique occasion of the Platinum Jubilee of a sovereign, in this case, Her Majesty, the Queen, Elizabeth II, Mr. Albanese could not contain his underlying bitterness towards the institution of the Constitutional Monarchy. An institution, incidentally, which has provided him with employment in its parliamentary processes ever since he departed the portals of the University of Sydney in 1984, making Mr. Albanese perhaps the first ever full-time political staffer who has never worked outside politics, apart from two years working in a bank prior to attending University, to become Prime Minister. Pause for a moment to digest that thought.

Rather than allow the Platinum Jubilee celebrations to occur, unblemished by controversy, Mr. Albanese had to make his bitter little point. In announcing his first ministry, Mr. Albanese included the appointment of Matt Thistlethwaite as Minister for the Republic.

The report in the Sydney Morning Herald of 2 June 2022 perhaps sums-up the situation well :

Thistlethwaite, who has represented the south-east Sydney electorate of Kingsford Smith since 2013, said the creation of an Australian republic was one of the issues that drove him to enter politics.

In his first speech to parliament, he said: “I hope that during my time in this place, we see our nation fully recognise our maturity and become a republic.”

He held responsibility for the republic as a shadow assistant minister since 2015, a position that went largely unnoticed.

Quite. The whole issue of the Republic has gone largely unnoticed in Australia since the failed Republican referendum in 1999, over 20 years ago. In all that time there has been no mass movement evident for a Republic. Nor does the nation appear to believe that it is suffering from some form of immaturity – a somewhat offhand remark by the little-known long-term ALP operative, Mr. Thistlethwaite, and probably emblematic of the level of debate which we can expect from now on.

Not satisfied by launching the Republican debate during the week of the Platinum Jubilee celebrations, Mr. Albanese then proceeded to cause further insult, not just to the Queen, but also to the whole Commonwealth of Nations, by determining, unlike most, if not all, previous Australian Prime Ministers, not to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) to be held on 20 to 25 June 2022 in Kigali, Rwanda.

Mr. Albanese insults primarily, however, the host Government of Rwanda, a country which Mr. Albanese appears to have forgotten, if he ever knew, was at one time a French, not a British, colony. After the horrendous genocide in Rwanda in 1994, Rwanda has been gradually rebuilding and, in 2009, joined the Commonwealth of Nations of its own volition, welcomed by the other members. Mr. Albanese appears to regard the Commonwealth of Nations as some sort of hangover from the British Empire, which he appears to despise, rather than a unique organization bringing together many disparate nations to discuss issues of common importance. We have come a long way, and not in a good way, from the days of Malcolm Fraser urging the Commonwealth at the CHOGM held in Lusaka in August 1979 to condemn the apartheid regime of South Africa and the ongoing strife in Zimbabwe and being instrumental in the issuing of the Lusaka Declaration of the Commonwealth on Racism and Racial Prejudice of which this is an extract :

‘We reject as inhuman and intolerable all policies designed to perpetuate apartheid, racial segregation or other policies based on theories that racial groups are or may be inherently superior or inferior.’

However, isn’t this an ambition which, whether intentionally or naively, the Voice contradicts – by creating a separate class of Australians? Indeed, by potentially creating an elite group within that separate class?

To conclude, at the time of writing this article, 5,128,049 individuals had cast a first preference vote for the Coalition parties and 4,661,599 had cast a vote for the Australian Labor Party. 759,290 had cast a first preference vote for independents – and not for the ALP or the Coalition.

So, at a bare rock bottom, the Coalition, even after being heavily wounded by the Teal party candidates, received 466,450 more votes than a struggling ALP.

Yet, Mr. Albanese wishes us all to believe that he has a mandate for policies never discussed during the Federal Election Campaign.

He doesn’t.