The Foreign Policy Impact of Australia’s Voice Referendum

Nov 4

Nov 4 The Foreign Policy Impact of Australia’s Voice Referendum

59 to 41, this is the proportion of Australians who cast their ballot on 14th October and shot down the prospect of an Indigenous advisory “Voice” to federal Parliament. The end of a referendum campaign which spawned vigorous national debate and highlighted the intense lingering of historic political gripes, will doubtless carry crucial implications for Australia’s current and indeed future foreign policymakers.

What must be made clear for an international audience, is the relative uniqueness of Australia’s history with indigenous relations. That is unique in a most avowedly negative sense of the word. Its distinct nature from its similar Anglophonic, former colonial states runs back to the very foundation of the Australian state. The legal definition of pre-settlement Indigenous territory as “terra nullius” by 19th century New South Welsh Governor Richard Bourke, imbued the foundation of Australian society with an overtly false belief. The result of which has been a longstanding negation of the legal and political standing and agency of the country’s indigenous communities.

The other central element of unique Australian relations is found in the present. It is the conceptual framework of Australian politics that presents any meaningful calls for increased indigenous representation as a politically threatening move against the very heart of the state.

The entire idea of an advisory body, conversely, is predicated upon an evident truth; that implementing policy to address complex disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians necessarily entails a strong engagement with those precisely affected by such legislation. What the referendum proposed was nothing revolutionary. All one must do is look across the Tasman Sea to Waitangi, or the Indigenous Advisory Council of our further flung Commonwealth cousins in Canada. Ultimately, the decision to reject such a mere advisory body in domestic politics, will send a significant message to the international community.

A stranger in its own backyard, Australian foreign policy has long battled an identity crisis over its place in the broader Asia-Pacific arena. Its place as an isolated Western outpost has granted Australia special access and power within and in shaping international liberal institutions. A founding member of the United Nations, GATT, and WHO, at the centre of Australian foreign policy has sat the clear unwavering adherence to the shaping of international norms.

However, this enviable place in the Western liberal institutionalist order cannot be separated, Dr. Michael Wesley argues, from its colonial history. Having succeeded in the colonial experiment of effective government and sound institution-building, Australia had built a relationship of trust with Britain and indeed the Western world. Just as its domestic political abilities granted Australia significant international political leverage in the construction of the liberal order, its future capacity to continue shaping global norms is equally dependent on its domestic visions.

A reading of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s (DFAT) latest iteration of its foreign policy objectives, makes abundantly clear the importance of the Referendum’s outcome. Highlighted in both the Department’s 2017 White Paper and in a 2021 Report, is the country’s “Indigenous Diplomacy Agenda”. Nowhere is the link between domestic political achievement and effective international norm change more pronounced than in the works of theorist Martha Fennimore.

Within her “norm life cycle” theory, the process by which a state may engage with the international community to shape international norms and behaviour, begins at home by setting an example. For Australia, this means itself becoming a “norm entrepreneur” in constructive, reconciliatory indigenous relations.

“International norms [begin] as domestic norms and become international through the efforts of entrepreneurs of various kind”. It is thus a process of domestic political advancements, of self-critique and development that must precede one’s ability to meaningfully change international norms, policy, and attitudes. Having domestically adopted a policy, Fennimore’s theory then allows for the persuasion of other states to adopt such changes themselves, before finally seeing such norm “internalised” within the international community. The lifecycle model provides clear insight into the impact of Australia’s domestic rejection of an indigenous “Voice” in jeopardising its foreign policy agenda.

Australian domestic politics as a bulwark against its foreign policy goals is not just a theoretical prediction. Just two years ago, in January 2021, as UN delegates gathered in Geneva to discuss Australia’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Faced by each member of the Human Rights Council every four-and-a-half years, Australia’s UPR saw heightened criticism over its repeated failures to address the over-representation of Indigenous Australians in incarceration rates. This international recognition of Australian domestic shortcomings signals a clear lack of faith and declining trust in the country’s ability to persuade the international community of the need for shifting policy and attitudes toward indigenous communities worldwide. If the international community criticises Australia’s domestic Indigenous relations, why would it take, with any gravity, lecturing from the very leaders under which disparities continue?

Whilst the outcome of the referendum will most certainly not slim Australia’s weight within geopolitical and security institutions, it will pose a risk to meeting crucial norm-influencing foreign policy objectives. Perhaps a word from Liberal Prime Minister Robert Menzies may lend assistance, “Our whole history has been a history of adventure, sailing wherever ships could sail…without that spirit of adventure, Australia can't become the great and respected country to whose noises I would hope to listen from the grave”. Let us not lose our spirit of adventure.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the wider St. Andrews Foreign Affairs Review team.