Bar brawl over The Voice … Incandescent outcry over Walker SC’s comments about The Voice … New scheme from right of centre to cauterise The Voice … Planet to the rescue … Muddled thoughts from indentured hacks … Peace, order and good government 

In recent times Planet at The Australian has given acres of coverage to ACT police who thought it misguided to prosecute rising Liberal Party star Bruce Lehrmann for rape, and to Senator Linda Reynolds who wasn’t raped but thinks she was treated poorly as a result of Brittany Higgins allegedly being raped in her office. 

Now it is the turn of Louise Clegg, wife of Liberal frontbencher Gussy (Herbicide) Taylor, who has been pouring her grief about Bret Walker SC into Planet’s ear. 

Ms Clegg portrays herself as a barrister at the forefront of debate about The Voice. Needless to say, she’s not keen on the proposed constitutional amendment, saying it would give rise to a “fourth arm of government” or a “third chamber of the parliament”.  

Ms Clegg BA, LLB, has shared a Possum Hollow platform with enlightened greats Alan Jones, Mark Latham and serial plagiarist Tanveer Ahmed, where Jones told the ancient highland whites that welcome to country was a “pretentious and indulgent practice”. 

Clegg proposes a reworked s.51(xxvi) – that the parliament would have power to make laws with respect to: 

“Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws after the parliament has received representations about proposed laws from a body which represents Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people.” 

Ms Clegg’s focus seems to be on special laws that are “necessary”, after representations from a body representing Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people. 

This is different from an advisory body having input to parliament and the executive on a range of policies and programs that affect Indigenous Australians. 

Parliament already has the power to make laws for First Nations Australians. Clegg’s proposed voice is a voice that squeaks, conceivably inviting litigation about “deemed necessary”, “special laws” and “a body which represents”. 

It doesn’t advance the bigger cause of reconciliation, which is at the heart of The Voice. 

Chris (The Tamil) Merritt, from the Law of Rulers Institute, climbed on board and hailed Ms Clegg’s contribution as a masterstroke that will save the nation from division. 

Complete with the usual Tamilesque over-egging, Merritt said the Garma scheme … 

“… would create a race-based lobby group that would give indigenous voters a second say on public policy issues of general application – something that is not available to other Australians.” 

He kept putting his size 15 foot in it: 

“That amounts to a direct attack on equality of citizenship – the principle that the views of every citizen are of equal value when it comes to governing this nation.” 

Bret Walker SC shafted the Tamil’s infantile thoughts, telling the ABC that citizens never have shared equally in government. Just consider the Senate, where tiny Tasmania has the same voice as New South Wales with a population 15 times larger. 

Further, every log-roller in town is busy twisting the arms of MPs and ministers, yet somehow First Nations people shouldn’t have the same access, because a constitutional amendment would give them moral force. 

Cardinal Michael Pelly at The Financial Review reported Walker’s talk at a recent Clayton Utz panel discussion, where he wanted to address “some of the obstacles or supposed disadvantages that have been talked about in a range of public opinion from supposedly legal and informed opinion to out-and-out tribalism”. 

He described the complaint about The Voice being able to advise the executive as well as parliament as a “justiciability scare … that lawyers should think carefully before they lend themselves to it”. 

The notion that The Voice would be a “fourth arm of government”, needs to be “exploded”, Walker added. 

“It’s not the power to legislate. It’s not the power to administer the law. It’s not the power to adjudicate. So it’s not legislative, executive or judicial. When one rapidly unpacks, the power they’re talking about is a power of influence …” 

[snip]

“The notion that The Voice is to be abominated because it may have moral force is, I’m sorry, I believe it to be racist because nobody has ever professed that that’s a reason there should not be lobbyists …” 

“I think, unpacked, that notion is one of the most depressingly unkind, anti-social views of this whole thing – ‘don’t let’s have a Voice because it might give blackfellas some moral force’. Really? Really? Is that we think? …”

The Tamil has not accused Walker of calling him racially prejudiced, but Ms Clegg was promptly on the blower to Planet Janet complaining that the mighty silk deemed her a “racist”. 

“A prominent Sydney barrister has issued a stinging rebuke to Bret Walker after the senior silk branded arguments against the proposed model of the Indigenous voice as racist,” Planet scribbled for the Murdoch fish wrap. 

“Barrister Louise Clegg has written to the NSW Bar Association, labelling the accusations as ‘grotesque and offensive’, and called for Mr Walker to be publicly reprimanded. 

“Ms Clegg also indicated she was considering her legal options, declaring she was ‘giving consideration to what private action I should take against this appalling slur’.”  

She insists that Walker’s comments are “clearly directed” at her. 

“I am currently the most vocal lawyer speaking publicly about this issue.” 

Walker said he had not directed the slur of racism at Clegg: 

“This Voice to First Nations is somehow worse than the Voice that everybody else gets because it would be given moral force … a notion that inescapably attaches to the First Nations identity of the character of the Voice and says we can’t have that being given moral force by a constitutional amendment. That’s what I identify as a discrimination between Indigenous interests and other interests, adversely to Indigenous interests, and therefore racist.” 

Retired judges from the Last Chance Saloon are on board with The Voice and do not anticipate it will be bogged down in constitutional appeals. But what would Smiler Gleeson, Ken Hayne and Robert French know about the Constitution?