“negative reply,” early 13c., from O.E. na (adv.) “never, no,” from ne “not, no” + a “ever,” from P.Gmc. *ne (cf. O.N., O.Fris., O.H.G. ne, Goth. ni “not”), from PIE base *ne- “no, not” (see un-). Second element from PIE *aiw- “vital force, life, long life, eternity” (see aye (2)). As an adj. meaning “not any” (c.1200) it is reduced from O.E. nan (see none), the final -n omitted first before consonants and then altogether. No-no (n.) first attested 1942. No problem as an interjection of assurance, first attested 1963. Phrase no can do “it is not possible” is attested from 1914. Construction no X, no Y attested from 1530s (in no peny no pardon).

A few issues stand out.

1. The proposal is driven by self-interest, not what is in the best interests of the country. A panel of self-apportioned tax payer funded ‘experts’ – usual suspects – have come up with the proposal. Normally referendums are initiated by the people via some type of convention, not a closed elitist shop. There is no mass movement wanting these changes. The only support for this proposal is from those that stand to benefit, both in status and financial standing.
2. The whole proposal seems to give legal status to a latter-day leftist endorsed aristocracy, where special legal privileges and access to taxation are provided to a group of people based on genealogical connection, and where rights are hereditary – able to be passed on to children without recourse to merit or justice (not fake social justice). Unlike the Queen however, these people would actually enforce their claims over laws and taxation. As a consequence the whole proposal is hideously anti-democratic and an affront to the principles of private property, individual liberty and equality before the law. Better suited to some type of medieval kingdom than a democratic Commonwealth.
3. What is an aborigine and how does one qualify? Recent legal cases seem to suggest that one need only have a vague distant genealogical connection to have the cash registers ring and emblems thrown in your direction. Is this a fair method of determining who gets access to these aristocratic like privileges over laws and taxation?
4. The proposal claims that the constitution racially discriminates against aborigines. I’ve read the constitution and I can’t find the section that is racist. There is a section that allows the Commonwealth to make laws for Aborigines, which was passed overwhelmingly in a referendum. There is nothing racist about the constitution. Presumably the ‘expert’ panel would not want that section abolished and along with it the privileged access it affords them to Commonwealth taxation.
5. The whole proposal is predicated on an historical fraud. The concept of Australia is a strictly non-indigenous idea. The first people to recognise that Australia was an island continent, to call themselves Australian and to envisage a nation for a continent and a continent for a nation were not Aboriginal. So for instance, when the ‘experts’ claim that: “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages are the original Australian languages..” they are mistaken. The original Australian language is English.

MORE

Looks like the advocates are going to take there time:

THE deadline for holding a referendum to acknowledge indigenous Australians at or before the 2013 election has been abandoned, because the expert panel fears it would face certain defeat if it were rushed.

I’m pretty confident it would face certain defeat, period.

As far as I can tell, Keating thinks that because China’s economy is growing we need to change our flag and constitution to accommodate the Chinese politburo. NEWSFLASH: China does not care nor have they asked and if they did no self respecting nation would comply. Australia was respected by Asia more under monarchist John Howard than of any other PM we have ever had or currently have.

The Queen and Britain are now part of Australia’s past

The latest Roy Morgan poll this month is very bad news for republicans. Support for an elected presidential republic has collapsed since the 1999 referendum to only 34 per cent. This is the lowest level of support for a republic since 1988, on a poll dating back to 1953. The even worse news is that the youth support for a republic is even less at only 31 per cent. Clearly the past is still very much in the present.

UPDATE

And British republicans seek refuge in ‘our’ ABC, Brendan O’Neil:

As a republican of the roundheaded variety – who believes the execution of King Charles I in 1649 was one of the greatest moments in British history and the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 one of the worst – it gives me no pleasure to admit that republicanism is in a dire state.

Oh dear.

“Of course we won’t be supporting a rescission motion by Tony Abbott. This is, of course, central to the Greens.

“While ever we are drawing breath in the Senate we will defend the outcome – unless it can be improved.”

So much for democratic mandate – the Greens have none.

So what to do? Assuming the Coalition wins government and fails to win a Senate majority, the following options are real:

1. Move an amendment, while in opposition, for a sun set clause on the legislation, thereby requiring the Greens to be dependent on the HoR to continue the future policy. If Gillard finds the Greens too difficult to deal with, there maybe some room for the Coalition to gain this concession in return for a conscience vote. This essentially would free Turnbull and the few Coalition Senators who support ‘action on climate change’ to cross the floor and give Gillard the numbers. A welcome by-product, given the nation’s hatred for the tax, would be the end of the Liberal Party left.
2. If the above fails, turn the Co2 tax into a de facto voluntary tax through a deliberate policy of Greek-style government inefficiency. The Treasurer could move to ‘de-fund’ ATO Co2 tax compliance functions, both legal, policy and IT; essentially leaving the ATO unable to enforce the tax through collections and auditing. This would not require a Budget measure and therefore the support of the Greens in the Senate. Businesses if they wish could ignore the tax without fear of penalty. Others may choose not too, but the power of competition would eventually force nearly all businesses to abandon the tax.
3. Depending upon how the Co2 tax legislation is written, there maybe some room to fast-track the move to a Co2 trading scheme. Again through a policy of government inefficiency, ASIC regulatory functions could be ‘de-funded’ causing a crisis of confidence in the Co2 market, which would see the price fall. Once investors abandon the market, volumes would fall and the market would be forced to close on its own accord. With no Co2 market the whole system would collapse much like in Chicago (lack of volumes) and in the EU (corruption) over the past 12 months.
4. If the worst happens and the government feels it has no other options open to it, then it would need to seek a double-dissolution election to try and get rid of the Greens from the Senate. This might also coincide with a referendum to make the Co2 tax unconstitutional and therefore no enforceable.

Only time will tell.

If the current republican leaning heads of state under our constitutional monarchy continue to involve themselves in political debate, how do you think they will act if they become heads of state in an Australian republic? Over time we will end up with some type of Russian style republic in which who ever happens to be the ‘strong man’ of the day, be it the PM/Premier or President, determines who runs the show and to hell with the constitutional uncertainty such a situation would create. Of the top 20 nations that the Economist Intelligence Unit rates as ‘full democracies’, half are constitutional monarchies. Russia didn’t make the top 20.

AUSTRALIANS will within the next three years vote in a referendum on whether to recognise indigenous Australians in the Constitution. The plan to recognise indigenous people in the Constitution was announced today by Julia Gillard.

Apart from the fact that this is a desperate attempt to divert attention from the PM’s own failings as a leader, I think Abbott supports this, so it will be interesting to see who forms the ‘no’ campaign.

How it would work legally remains to be seen, but abiding by the law is not exactly high on the ALP agenda.

Speculation that the EU could start levying trade barriers on countries that don’t comply with their climate religion is also likely to have some impact on Gillard’s current and future thinking.

This is all pie-in-the-sky stuff at this point, but I fully expect any treaty with the EU to have something to say about carbon control and enforcement.

Gillard’s back flip on carbon taxation is also no surprise. Gillard has commitment issues. Consider the parallel with fellow de facto living UK Labour leader Ed Miliband – UK Telegraph:

Ed Miliband strikes me as one of those Labour types who are worried that the institution of marriage is “judgmental” of cohabiting couples. (Never mind the fact that Labour judges people the moment they reveal something as damning as a private education or belief in God.)

And forgive the jargon, but are we also talking about that syndrome so common among men these days, commitment phobia? Ed Miliband likes to talk about the “closeness” of his family ties, but his behaviour towards his brother suggests the opposite: that this is a man who has problems with relationships.

Consider Gillard. She has gone from one unfamily friendly relationship to another. Remember her marriage destroying affair with Craig Emerson? Now that she has shacked up in the Lodge with a hair dresser she met on the high street, Gillard probably has become even more entrenched in her commitment phobia. She is at the top, why commit and get married now?

Gillard’s politics is much like her life: fleeting and conditional, certainly not moral. Get ready for more lies backflips.

However, in rejecting Christianity and in the customs that follow,why did Gillard (and Abbott!) endorse and attend the aboriginal ‘welcome ceremony’ for the new parliament today? The ‘welcome ceremony’ is a quasi-religious event that has nothing to do with the Constitution or Westminister custom. More to the point, ‘welcome ceremonies’ have nothing to do with Australia: the political idea of the world’s only unified, democratic and free continent-nation, a distinctively non-aboriginal concept. What type gall must a person have to think they can ‘welcome’ Australians to the country they and by implication their ancestors conceived of and built up?!?!

“On the occasion of this opening of the 43rd Parliament I welcome you,”

So said the chief witch doctor:

“With this welcome I express the hope of a united, reconciled nation, the oldest living culture joined with the many diverse cultures of a modern successful Australia.”

Apart from the fact that when Howard was PM no one from the left was calling for unity or political consensus, and also the habitually dubious claim that aboriginal culture is the oldest living today: what aspect of Aboriginal culture are we all meant to be reconciled with at this time?

(pause….silence….crickets chirp)

Gee where to begin, ritual torture and abuse? Welfare and drug dependency? Don’t say happy unified families and communities. This is not an aboriginal idea more an aspirational ideal shared by most Australians.

—–

Now we have Gillard via the GG pushing the ‘first Australian’ mantra.

….the need for constitutional reform to recognise the First Australians and local government were also of “great significance in this term.”

And of course the political elite don’t mean the first people to actually identify and call themselves Australians. The first recorded English usage of the name ‘Australia’ was by Matthew Flinders in 1814. Governor Macquarie began to use the name from 1817 and from then onwards British people born in Australia began to call themselves Australian. The first Australians, a geographic and then a demographic term.

As far as we know aboriginals had no coherent concept of a continent. Supposed mythical dreams and maps interpreted and ‘discovered’ by sympathetic academics are not a substitute for the former. Nor were Aboriginals unified as a common people who identified themselves as Australians or anything of the like.

Federation gave birth to a Australia as a political and economic concept. Aboriginals were by and large separate from the Federation process, and hence debate occurred as to if they were entitled to all the privileges of citizenship, etc…

In any of this how can the political elite claim that aboriginals of today, with all their genealogical and mitochondrial dna complexities, be the ‘first Australians’? It is a claim that simply says, a group of people today, who at times have a tenuous link to another group of people who lived 222 years ago, are the first Australians. If that was all one needed to do to be Australian – just turn up and have a genealogical link – then virtually anyone arriving at any of our international airports would qualify. It make very little historical sense and I’ve yet to see an explanation for it.

For goodness sakes why would Abbott agree to a deal that keeps the independents in power? Where is his incentive? Assuming there is an ALP speaker, the government will still have a voting majority of one – with the independents and Green MP.

The facts of the matter is that there is conflicting legal advice about how constitutionally valid the whole pairing deal is. Even the Solicitor-General in his advice to the ALP seems to indicate that the arrangement would only escape a constitutional challenge if it operated informally.  Until/if the High Court passes a ruling on the issue we just won’t know. Introducing that level of uncertainty into the parliamentary process seems completely unnecessary when the government still retains it majority.

These sorts of rational arguments seem completely lost on Windsor.

Abbott has already backed pairing if the former speak Harry Jenkins is allowed to continue in the job. Oakeshott is unhinged, claiming that it is a test for a ‘new’ style of politics. Who exactly voted for or agreed to that? What exactly does it mean? Oakeshott should drop his current narrative and adopt some plain speaking by telling us what he really wants.

UPDATE

…..leading constitutional lawyer Geoff Lindell, raises doubts about the validity of key parts of an agreement struck by Labor and the Coalition with independent MPs over the powers of the Speaker.

Professor Lindell’s view is in line with that of legal academic Greg Craven, the vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University, who argued that the parliamentary reform agreement ran contrary to the intention of the Constitution.

“What the agreement does is allow the Speaker almost to vote negatively by taking one vote off one side of parliament,” Professor Craven said. “It gives the Speaker a negative vote.” This meant the “parliamentary reform” agreement was “pushing against the intention of the Constitution”.