DEAR News Of The Area,

IN reply to a letter in last week’s NOTA regarding The Voice to Parliament quoting studies by the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), I feel it is worth drawing your readers’ attention to the IPA and its track record.

The IPA has been a long standing conservative lobby group which has had a considerable influence on Australia’s coalition partners and their policy making.

When the coalition has been in government the IPA has been, surprise, surprise, a ‘Voice to Parliament’.

A very strong and effective voice at that.

It has influenced the coalition on matters such as climate policy.

It opposes action on climate change.

It advocates for abolition of the minimum wage, repeal of the racial discrimination act and privatisation and deregulation of government enterprises.

Without getting bogged down in the rights or wrongs of the IPA’s stance on any of these issues, nor arguing their right to lobby governments in pursuit of their goals, it seems passing strange that this powerful lobby group is warning of the dangers that might emerge from the establishment of an Indigenous voice to parliament, which is no more than another lobby group which politicians may take heed of or not.

Do they know something about the undermining of democracy by lobby groups that the rest of us don’t?

The Waitangi Tribunal is in no way analogous to the proposed Australian Voice to Parliament. The clue is in the word Tribunal: ‘a body set up to settle disputes’.

Maori people have had guaranteed representation in the NZ parliament since 1867, which is a more robust right than our modest Australian proposal for “a voice to parliament”.

There are no reports however, of the Kiwi sky having fallen as a result.

In the interests of seeking common ground with those we disagree with, the one common ground I have with Peter Weyling is that I firmly believe he is correct that Australians do need to think carefully about this vote, including the motivations of those for and against it.

Regards,
Stan WOOD,
Upper Orara.