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> and focus on the power disparities of today's society

That's basically what this is about. Aboriginal people have much less power and much worse outcomes. This referendum was proposing to give them a little bit more, in a pretty gentle, non-binding way. That was rejected.

In general, I've found that many many arguments about systemic inequality basically boil down to a fairly simple question: is it better to solve a problem slow and steady, or fast and (maybe) risky. Generally the people with more to lose, the people with more power, tend to say 'slow and steady is good enough for me'. The disadvantaged however would prefer a faster solution. Those with power often argue for slow and steady by saying 'the fast way is also risky'. That's basically what happened with this referendum. People voted for doing nothing over a measure which may have not done what it set out to do, but also may have helped.

Genetics have nothing to do with it, it's more about culture and identity. These people see themselves as a separate people the same way Americans see themselves as separate from Canadians and Mexicans or how Californians see themselves as distinct from Texans and vice-versa.

They want that to be recognised in a similar way to how the Maori were recognised in New Zealand.

Genetics absolutely has something to do with it. If a non-native Australian came along and started self-identifying as an aboriginal they'd be lambasted, and excluded from this advisory body as it's not meant for them.

States and nationalities =/= ethnicities. Someone can be an American by being a citizen of that country, past or present. Someone can be Californian by being a resident of that state, past or present. Someone is Aboriginal Australian by virtue of being born to another Aboriginal Australian. Nation states and ethnic identities are utterly different concepts. When I fill in a government form, I am a UK citizen, and identify as a British person; not as any of the other multiple options available to me. There are two separate boxes. I can become a US citizen, or a Canadian citizen, or a Mexican citizen, and identify with that nationality. I can't decide one day to become an Arab or Gypsy ethnicity, even if I lived on the Arabian peninsula or replaced my car with a horse and trap.

I’ll agree with a nitpick. Nationality is also an ethnic concept. A nation is the political manifestation of an ethnic group. Not all states are nations, but we use the term imprecisely. Citizenship is something else entirely.

You said "Having "the advisory body of the whites/blacks/asians/indigenous/aboriginal/etcetera" enshrined in a constitution seems utterly bizarre to me."

That's an advisory body based on genetic traits that manifest superficial changes, that's what I was responding to. You're right that you can obtain a nationality but not an ethnicity. That's why I explained that you shouldn't think of it as ethnicity but closer to nationality.

Look at the beginnings of Australia. Would you think it odd if the colonial government had decided to somehow recognise the current inhabitants of the land?

Given that they didn't and instead committed various atrocities, why do you think it's wrong to retroactively recognise the affected people? The people today in our reality are just as descended from the people from then as the people of the fantasy land.

I suggest kindness and empathy in dealing with those less fortunate.

Aboriginal people ARE special in Australia.

They were here for 60,000 years until we turned up.

They are deeply disadvantaged and need and deserve every possible assistance to address the terrible social issues their community faces.

Not much was being asked for here except the requirement for parliament to listen to aboriginal take on issues impacting aboriginal people.

Look, if you don’t feel the love that’s fine, but would you mind not blocking other people from trying to lift others up?

People in Australia are so selfish and greedy and grasping and unwilling to let someone else receive some kindness in case they miss out.

>People in Australia are so selfish and greedy and grasping and unwilling to let someone else receive some kindness in case they miss out.

That kind of rhetoric likely isn't going to convince anyone who voted No to vote Yes instead. Personally, if I was called anything along those lines I would just vote No harder.

>Not much was being asked for here except the requirement for parliament to listen to aboriginal take on issues impacting aboriginal people.

Idk I heard there was a multi-page addition to the constitution that used Aboriginal people to 'empathy-wash' increased powers for the government to infringe on the rights of citizens. Pretty big ask. Also heard that part of the failure was Aboriginal people saying 'hey yo, this doesn't actually represent us.'

But what do I know? Maybe Aussies are just mean nazis who want to keep brown people down forever.

I'm with you for most of what you say. It's a hard situation in Aus because the Aboriginal people were treated like shit and there's no recourse for them.

In New Zealand the Maori were treated slightly better, not much, but they did sign a treaty with the settlers and that legal document has forced the government here to say yeah the land was taken and there should be recompense, and various ideas around what the state should look like. There's push and shove on the issue, it's not perfect, probably never will be. But it seems like a better setup. Part of it is a number of reserved seats in parliament that Maori only vote for.

I do think that representation and the treaty has had an impact on cultural integration and it could have had similar benefits in Australia.

Say in WWII, the nazi's stole some valuable art from a jewish family and it ended up the position of some german family who passed it down to their kids and their kids. Now descendants of the family that were robbed find about who now has that art and wants it returned. Do they have rights to it seeing as how they were not the ones who were robbed?

This appears to be the logic here. Current law says it has to be returned. But how many generations have to pass before it becomes like the land taken from indigenous populations?

> In my eyes, it seems unreasonable for anyone in today's day and age to expect something from someone else based on the actions of their ancestors,

So you say, but in finance there exist hundreds of years old loans and annuities.

Inheritance is real. If your grandpa robbed my grandpa and passed the wealth down to you, what to make of that?

I’ll take the other side. There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging race. Today people equate race with a biological essentialism that was grafted onto it in the recent past, but that’s not what race ever meant. Acknowledging race is nothing more than acknowledging that different peoples exist and exhibit group differences. Those differences can generally be readily assessed based on cultural and phenotypical cues without resorting to genotyping. It’s a social construct, but so is all human knowledge. And there are rough edges, but that doesn’t invalidate it. The distinction between “chair” and “table” is also socially constructed and can have rough edges, but that doesn’t render them or “furniture” as a whole useless.

I wholeheartedly agree with liberals that indigenous minority groups, and some others with special circumstances, like Blacks in the US, should receive special protections to preserve their identities and safeguard their interests in the face of a situation where they don’t have the numbers to counteract majoritarianism. I also think that the founding people of a nation deserve similar recognition. My father is from an immigrant family. My mother has ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War. They have qualitatively different relationships with America on that basis. He comes from an aspirational, urban, working class family, she from a well-established, rural, petit bourgeois family, and they have qualitatively different relationships with America on that basis, too. Solving one problem doesn’t require giving up on the other.

A return to the original meaning of tolerance is warranted. Which is learning to cooperate despite differences, not erasing them. And, importantly, it’s a two-way street, not a struggle session in which one side is made to atone perpetually for real or perceived past sins.

There’s a point where these differences disappear, but they’re surprisingly durable. Just read Albion’s Seed and you can see how smaller ethnic differences between groups of English colonists are still at work in the political landscape today.