A teacher at our school carried around a wooden metre ruler.
I’d submitted a neatly hand-written assignment which had been returned with a discouraging “D”. No “D+”, just your every-day garden variety “D”.
It was a newly-created subject in which we discussed matters of law. Not complex law which draws from the doctrine of precedent.
This was much more futile, teaching us all the value of contracts and where to sign, the need to stop at red lights, and how not to be ripped off in a variety of consumer-related circumstances.
The course wasn’t rocket science, and in my effort to challenge certain legal points, I’d apparently forgotten to state enough facts to support my case.
“I’m just keen to ask why you haven’t marked me on what I’ve written,” I said to our keeper of wisdom.
He banged his metre ruler on my table, went red in the gills, and shouted in an octave I’d never before heard him reach. In fact, I’m sure he woke a couple of classmates in the third row.
“I’ve marked you on what you haven’t written,” he screamed.
For the best part of 50 years, his reasoning had me confused. I never quite understood how one could mark an essay on information that wasn’t there.
I was no mind-reader. How was I to know he didn’t want a well-thought-out argument, carefully constructed in compelling prose? Had I known he wanted a boring fact check, I’d have plagiarised from the text book and been done with my “B-“.
The arguments around this Saturday’s referendum however, have helped me get it.
Because the government, in their wisdom, came up with an idea – an extraordinarily good one – to give our indigenous population a voice in parliament.
But instead of allowing constitutional lawyers to explain in detail how it would be done, by whom and in what capacity, they handed the reins to the spin doctors who took us for stupid and expected us to buy a hypothetical void of fact.
Mark us on what we’re telling you, not on what we’re not telling you, they said.
At which point, many of us are left banging our metre-long rulers on the desk, telling whomever it was that spent millions of taxpayer dollars on a hollow advertising campaign that we’d be much more supportive if you gave us a little bit of detail.
Now, let it be clear that this is not an article for the “no” campaign. Indigenous affairs is an important issue, and broadly speaking, it always gets my “yes” vote.
But what I’m not willing to do is to give any government a blank cheque to do whatever it is they damn-well please because I gave them a whimsical three-letter signature on a ballot.
Neither am I pointing the finger at the constitutional lawyers. They’ve put many hours into devising structures that might be employed when and if a “yes” vote is enacted.
Rather, I’ve got my index finger firmly facing the buffoons who thought people would buy in to a change that might or might not be a change.
The referendum, if it fails, has not been a failure of positive intent.
It has been a failure of communication; the inability of our political leaders to construct a simple yet definitive case.
It shouldn’t have been difficult. Show us not what you’re trying to achieve, for there are few who will disagree with the resolve of wellbeing for our First Nations people.
Instead, show us how you intend to achieve it. Step it out. Allow us the luxury of seeing what the process might look like.
If polling is correct, Saturday will deliver a resounding “no”.
In my humble old-hack opinion, people do actually want a positive way forward for indigenous Australians. People really do want to vote “yes”.
What they don’t want is for self-serving politicians to be given free reign to manage that way forward however they please.
You see, it’s not necessarily our vote we’re protective of. It’s our trust.
And because spin doctors thought the easy way forward was to withhold details of a new “voice” for First Australians, they’ll have again failed their constituency.
Hey Wanda. Remember that teacher I told you about with the metre ruler? Turns out the grumpy old fool might have been right after all.
