Rethinking Australian democracy as a deliberative system

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between Australia’s Indigenous and settler colonial systems of democracy through the lens of deliberative systems theory. It suggests that the ongoing effects of colonialism have rendered Indigenous democracy largely invisible causing a harmful divide in Australia’s democracies. A pluralist conception of democracy is necessary to understand the disconnect between the two systems, evidenced by a striking absence of literature on Australian Indigenous democracy. In response, this paper first theorizes a conceptual framework of a concurrent deliberative system, then describes the Indigenous deliberative system and the colonial system’s efforts to eliminate Indigenous democracy. Against this theoretical and empirical background, it considers whether the recent referendum for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament was just a colonial legacy or represented a pathway towards a shared postcolonial democratic future.

Introduction

In 2023, the Albanese government committed to a referendum for a constitutional amendment to institute a permanent Indigenous Voice to the Australian parliament (the Voice). The referendum proposal was firmly rejected by voters on October 14, 2023. This paper reflects on the implications of this result for the future of Indigenous participation in Australian democracy in the broader context of Indigenous-state relations, viewed through a deliberative democracy lens.

The Voice was a core outcome of the Indigenous Uluru Statement from the Heart (the Statement) (2017), which resulted from a 2-year deliberative process involving over 3,000 Indigenous participants from across Australia. The Statement represents a significant moment in Indigenous democracy and was the culmination of Australia’s greatest exercise in deliberative democracy (Turner, 2022). Despite its importance, the broader Australian society has not recognized the Statement as an expression of Indigenous democracy. Equally, scholarly literature has not fully considered Indigenous democracy as it remains invisible within Australia’s unitary representative democracy, which privileges state democratic institutions. The conceptualization of the Voice, along with other initiatives aimed at reconciling Indigenous-state relations, often presupposes the primacy of state democratic institutions without fully engaging with the inherent democratic nature of Indigenous governance systems. In this paper, I argue that understanding Indigenous-state relations requires a pluralist understanding of democracy that recognizes Indigenous contributions to Australian democracy.

Theoretically, Australian democracy can be seen as a concurrent Indigenous and state deliberative system (Davis, 2021, 2024; Parkinson & Mansbridge, 2012; Stevenson & Dryzek, 2014). I suggest that within Australia, there exist parallel deliberative systems: one rooted in the Indigenous traditions and practices of deliberation and democracy, and the other in the established structures of the settler colonial state. However, in practice, the interaction between these two systems has been marked by tensions and often outright conflicts due to the imposition of colonial power structures that have sought to marginalize or erase Indigenous governance practices (Veracini, 2015; Wolfe, 2006). This paper proposes a more pluralistic understanding of how Indigenous and non-Indigenous deliberative systems coexist, interact, and enrich the democratic landscape.

To understand the concurrent deliberative system, it is important to recognize that Indigenous peoples have a system of democracy that predates and coexists with the colonial state (Banerjee, 2021; Behrendt, 2011; Keane, 2009; Sen, 2003; Sirna, 2012). Every day, Indigenous groups make decisions about their affairs through gatherings in unofficial spaces such as sports clubs, bingo halls, and on their traditional lands (Davis, 2021). In a concurrent deliberative system, these gatherings can be seen as multiple sites of deliberation where Indigenous political authority is enacted through collective binding decisions.

However, the Australian colonial system seeks to eliminate Indigenous political authority (Veracini, 2015; Wolfe, 2006), along with their enabling deliberative processes. This elimination causes a divide between the Indigenous and colonial deliberative systems in the form of a lack of substantive engagement, with the colonial state typically failing to recognize Indigenous democratic processes and Indigenous political authority. As explored by Banerjee (2021), settler colonialism deploys representative democracy to suppress Indigenous democracy, by ensuring the main expression of power is by voting and Indigenous people are small minorities almost everywhere except in the Northern Territory, thereby structuring settler state solutions to remedy the inequalities resulting from colonialism. This privileging of representative democracy, enacted through state institutions as the principal site of democracy and political power, creates a myopic lens from which to view this critical relationship between Indigenous peoples and the state, making Indigenous democracy, and hence Indigenous political authority, largely invisible. In contrast, pluralist democratic theories such as deliberative democracy (Cohen, 1989; Habermas, 1996) and deliberative systems theory (Parkinson & Mansbridge, 2012; Stevenson & Dryzek, 2014) do not privilege the state as the sole democratic actor (Curato, 2015) or as the only source of political authority (Tamura, 2014). However, the field of deliberative democracy must also confront its Euro-centric origins and its relationship with colonialism (Asenbaum et al., 2024). This involves looking beyond formal state institutions to explore deliberation from Indigenous perspectives in spaces where Indigenous communities engage in deliberation and exercise autonomy and self-determination (Parkinson & Mansbridge, 2012). In this way, using a deliberative democracy lens can be seen as an emancipatory political project (Curato et al., 2019; Hammond, 2019) that can provide insights and intellectual tools to recognize Indigenous democracy on equal terms with the colonial deliberative system.

There must be a shift in how Australian democracy is understood and practised which acknowledges and simultaneously engages with the concurrent state and Indigenous deliberative systems. These exist within a broader deliberative system that comprises both an Indigenous deliberative system (Hebert, 2018; Keane, 2009; Sen, 2003; Sirna, 2012) and a colonial deliberative system. This recognizes Indigenous state relations as part of broader dialogues that occur across multiple sites of deliberation throughout the system (Parkinson & Mansbridge, 2012; Stevenson & Dryzek, 2014). In this more inclusive democratic system, Indigenous individuals and organizations located at the interstices of the Indigenous and the colonial system are required to transmit their discourses within both the Indigenous system and an official state system (Davis, 2021, 2024; Fan, 2020, 2021; Hebert, 2018). Importantly, Indigenous organizations can act as connectors by transmitting the presence of Indigenous empowered space that can amplify Indigenous discourses, keep state institutions accountable, and build shared discourses with the colonial system (Davis, 2021, 2024). The Voice represented an Indigenous democratic innovation that could directly connect the Indigenous and the colonial systems, to deliberate between the elected Indigenous representatives, non-Indigenous elected representatives, and the executive of the colonial state. Nevertheless, many political actors and scholars have overlooked the theoretical and practical possibilities offered by the Voice and other Indigenous democratic structures to understand and deepen the connections between Indigenous governed organizations and the state system which holds the potential to enhance Australian democracy.

This paper proceeds in four parts. First, I theorize a conceptual framework of a concurrent Indigenous and state deliberative system. Second, I contextualize this by outlining the Australian Indigenous deliberative system. Third, I describe the colonial system’s efforts to eliminate Indigenous political authority and the democratic divide this has caused. Finally, against this theoretical and empirical background, I examine the recent model for the failed Voice to Parliament to analyse some of the factors required to bridge the divide between the Indigenous and state deliberative systems.

Deliberative democracy and the deliberative system

In this section, I describe the deliberative system as a theoretical framework to understand how colonialism has caused a disconnect between Indigenous and colonial state democracy. Deliberative democracy (Cohen, 1989; Habermas, 1996) is a normative critical theory of democratic legitimacy that emphasizes the importance of allowing those affected by a collective decision to have the right, opportunity, and capacity to participate in deliberations about those decisions (Dryzek, 2000, 2010). The systemic turn in deliberative democratic theory recognizes each deliberative forum as part of a whole system (Parkinson & Mansbridge, 2012; Stevenson & Dryzek, 2014) focusing on their connectedness and interaction (Dryzek, 2010). In exploring the interplay between Australia’s Indigenous and settler colonial systems of democracy through a deliberative systems lens, it is critical to acknowledge the diversity within deliberative systems theories themselves. One conceptualization adopts a macro functions-based strategy focused on deliberation within many kinds of legislative bodies such as parliament and the courts (Mansbridge et al., 2012), while the other strategy emphasizes more micro, site-specific analyses (Dryzek, 2010; Stevenson & Dryzek, 2014) such as Indigenous deliberative forums (Davis, 2021, 2024). Importantly, both theoretical perspectives emphasize the existence of concurrent multiple, overlapping deliberative systems, including policy sub-systems and international systems, which are embedded within and entangled with legal, economic, and administrative frameworks (Parkinson, 2018). This paper recognizes that the real challenge lies not in the theoretical underpinnings of deliberative democracy, which already accommodates pluralism, but in the practical assertions by powerful actors within existing systems who claim monolithicity and deny the legitimacy and standing of Indigenous voices and practices (Veracini, 2015; Wolfe, 2006). Such assertions overlook the rich tapestry of Indigenous deliberation which happens outside formal state structures.

The deliberative system has two main components: public space and empowered space. Public space is composed of a diverse range of virtual and actual civic views and discourses, and empowered space is where legitimate binding decisions are made and enforced (Dryzek, 2010; Stevenson & Dryzek, 2014). The other deliberative system components: transmission, accountability, meta-deliberation, and decisiveness play a key role in connecting discourses between public and empowered spaces, helping to generate legitimacy in the system (Curato et al., 2019; Dryzek, 2010; Hendriks et al., 2020; Mendonça, 2016). Transmission of messages is critical for connection within the deliberative system. Boswell and colleagues (2016) identify three transmission mechanisms: transmission through existing institutions, through new deliberative institutions linked to the state, and by building shared discourses.

But existing state colonial institutions frequently embody the logic of elimination (Veracini, 2015; Wolfe, 2006) which tends to eliminate Indigenous empowered spaces (Davis, 2021, 2024). This makes it difficult to find and transmit shared discourses because recognizing Indigenous political authority is necessary for discourses to be truly shared. Transmission of messages is also critical for connecting the Indigenous and colonial systems in the concurrent deliberative system (Davis, 2021, 2024; Fan, 2020, 2021) that recognizes Indigenous peoples have their public and empowered spaces which are independent and must coexist with the nation-state (Keane, 2009; Sen, 2003; Sirna, 2012; Tamura, 2014). Indigenous peoples are required to:

operate simultaneously at the interstices between these dual processes of deliberation, the governance of Indigenous nations . . . and the “official” modes of state and colonial institutions. (Hebert, 2018, p. 100)

This deliberative system conceptualizes on equal terms the seemingly informal deliberations which occur in the Indigenous deliberative system and the formal deliberations, which occur in colonial state institutions such as parliament. Both can be seen as a concurrent deliberative system which constitutes a broader deliberative system.

The democratic quality of the connection between the Indigenous and the colonial system can be determined by the presence of authentic, inclusive, and consequential structures for hosting deliberation (Curato, 2015; Dryzek, 2009), which must be seen in both Indigenous and state terms. These structures should promote mutual recognition of the legitimacy of disputed values, rather than a fight to eradicate the values of the other side (Dryzek & Niemeyer, 2006). An effective deliberative system coordinates the functions of all deliberative spaces and promotes their best characteristics (Curato et al., 2019). In contrast, colonialism creates a disconnect between the Indigenous and the colonial system mostly by the poor democratic quality of transmission, which is underscored by how colonialism continues to make Indigenous democracy invisible. In the next section, I examine the Indigenous deliberative system before then considering the effects of the colonial elimination of Indigenous empowered spaces.

In this section, I refer to the Indigenous deliberative system outlined above (Parkinson & Mansbridge, 2012; Stevenson & Dryzek, 2014) to analyse Australian scholarly research from the law, history, anthropology, and other disciplines (Behrendt, 2011; Bell, 1982; Collings & Falk, 2008; Graham, 2008; Hunt et al., 2008; Myers, 2009; Pascoe, 2016; Sutton, 1998) to describe the features of the Indigenous deliberative system.

The Indigenous system functions despite being largely invisible to both non-Indigenous people and the state. In this literature, Behrendt (2011) stands out as the only scholar to refer to Indigenous decision-making practices as democratic. This scholarly silence reflects the lack of Indigenous scholarship in Australian political science (Maddison & Strakosch, 2019), and the absence of Indigenous democratic discourses in the Indigenous and wider public sphere (Maddison, 2019; Parkinson et al., 2022).

Maddison (2011) is particularly sceptical of deliberative democracy’s contribution in settler colonial societies, pointing to systemic issues within deliberative democratic practices, including the marginalization of Indigenous voices, entrenched power imbalances, and a consensus-seeking approach that may disregard critical Indigenous perspectives. She calls for more inclusive and flexible democratic processes sensitive to Indigenous methodologies and epistemologies.

In response, in this paper, I suggest a recalibration of the deliberative democracy model that not only respects but actively incorporates Indigenous deliberative traditions by advocating for a concurrent system approach that recognizes and integrates Indigenous deliberative systems as equal and vital components of Australia’s democratic fabric. Although power imbalances remain, I aim to challenge the monolithic unitary assertions of democracy that marginalize Indigenous voices and to highlight the potential for deliberative democracy to inclusively and respectfully encompass a diversity of deliberative practices. In undertaking this research, I have sought to engage with Indigenous knowledge systems respectfully and ethically, adhering to methodologies prioritizing Indigenous voices and perspectives (L. T. Smith, 2021) and recognizing that Indigenous epistemologies are important in shaping our understanding of democracy and deliberation.

Deliberation is central to the transmission of messages in the Indigenous deliberative system, in what has until recently been a largely oral culture. Behrendt (2011) argues that throughout the Australian continent, Indigenous decision-making was characterized by systemic deliberation and communal participation. Collective agreement-making is prevalent and reinforced by acts of reciprocity that were rooted in a shared Indigenous epistemology. There were: “strong commonalities in worldviews, governance structures, and philosophy across the continent” (Behrendt, 2011, p. 150; Collings & Falk, 2008; Graham, 2008; Langton & Corn, 2023; Sutton, 1998). In these Indigenous deliberative systems, Indigenous empowered space is legitimized through the collective decision-making of Indigenous elders, who often oversee a council of both men and women separately, sometimes together (Pascoe, 2016). This deliberation was the primary source of Indigenous law (Levy et al., 2021). Although decisions were made collectively (Behrendt, 2011), some people were more influential than others because they were able to mobilize people and resources to create order and collectively get things done (D. Smith, 2008). But achieving influence, or gaining a strong voice, in decision-making was effectively granted by the rest of the group, no one individual had ultimate decision-making power: “Except for very close kin, no individual simply on the basis of being an elder can tell one what to do” (Myers, 2009, p. 368). In addition, whether patrilineal or matrilineal: “Aboriginal governance never operates without the involvement and consent of senior women” (Bell, 1982, p. 182).

The transmission of messages in the pre-colonial Indigenous system was frequently conducted using a message stick, which was essential to Indigenous diplomatic exchanges (Kelly, 2020). The message stick identified the messenger as having the right to travel into a neighbouring country unhindered and always contained a signature motif identifying the sender or recipient, acting as a royal seal function (Kelly, 2020). The message stick transmitted the message and the recognized authority of Indigenous empowered space to other Indigenous nations. As colonization took root across the Australian continent through the 19th century, settlers increasingly became privy to the negotiation of sophisticated treaties between various tribes or the consultative and deliberative mechanisms employed in group decision-making (Behrendt, 2011). Although these treaties were not written down and so remained largely unknown to the colonizers (Watson, 2012). These treaties, which governed future relations between Indigenous nations, are evidence of deliberative system qualities of meta-deliberation, the ability to make decisions about other political forces and develop new narratives about the future and decisiveness, the ability to act on them.

As identified by Parkinson and colleagues (2022), today’s Indigenous deliberative system extends beyond traditional gatherings, embracing digital platforms, formal international networks such as the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, and many informal Indigenous media, professional, and scholarly networks to facilitate dialogue and decision-making which enrich the Indigenous deliberative system. In Australia, there are more than 3000 Indigenous governed organizations (Office of the Register of Indigenous Corporations, 2018) that reflect a vibrant and adaptive Indigenous deliberative system that frequently intersects with global Indigenous movements, highlighting the importance of recognizing these practices within the broader framework of Australian democracy. Created and operated according to Indigenous rules and procedures, these Indigenous organizations are sites of Indigenous political agency. However, because these Indigenous deliberative democratic sites are subsumed as corporate entities under Australian laws, their underlying Indigenous deliberative system function is obscured (Davis, 2021, 2024).

These Indigenous deliberative organizations continue to function in a way that reflects traditional forms of Indigenous deliberative decision-making. For example, in Indigenous water management in the Murray-Darling Basin, an Indigenous representative from Northern Basin Aboriginal Nations (NBAN) describes their contemporary deliberative process:

When you look at it from a governance point of view its very similar to the way things were done traditionally so that decision-making is pretty much consensually . . . I think that if you look at how things were done for thousands of years, I think pretty much that’s what we do at the table when we meet. (Interviewee 3, as cited in Davis, 2024, p. 11)

Despite the growing participation of Indigenous organizations in Australian policymaking (Davis, 2021, 2024), the colonial state through the elimination of Indigenous empowered space and its associated democratic practices is unable to hear Indigenous voices because it continues to render Indigenous democracy invisible to the broader Australian society. The Voice was an attempt to connect the Indigenous deliberative system to the state system, to bring Indigenous empowered spaces into the state by creating a voice to parliament. However, the proposed model (National Indigenous Australians Agency, 2021) was deeply compromised because Indigenous empowered spaces had been largely eliminated or made invisible by the colonial system.

The colonial elimination of the Indigenous deliberative system

Colonialism can be characterized by its efforts to eliminate Indigenous empowered spaces that may challenge the legitimacy of the colonial state (Hebert, 2018; Veracini, 2015; Wolfe, 2006). This process is more pronounced in Australia (Russell, 2017) than in other settler colonial societies (Bruyneel, 2017; O’Sullivan, 2022a; Samson et al., 2016; Tully, 1995, 2004). This has resulted in an almost complete absence of Indigenous democracy discourses in the Australian public sphere (Maddison, 2019; Parkinson et al., 2022), which can make it difficult to build a shared discourse that recognizes the Indigenous contribution to Australian democracy.

Indigenous democracy, with its collective deliberative empowered spaces, was not obvious to the early colonial state. Compared to the first colonial encounters with Tahitians with their kings and chiefs, or the Māori who appeared to be united under one head, Australian Aboriginal society “appeared to have no polity, with no sovereign authority nor regular government” (Keane, 2012, p. 11). Initially, colonizers struggled to understand the decentralized and egalitarian nature of Indigenous governance systems, which lacked the hierarchical structure of European monarchies (Behrendt, 2011). To address this, early British governors sought to create a more recognizable form of Indigenous empowered space by appointing individuals as representatives of their communities and granting them symbols of authority, such as breastplates engraved with titles like King Billy (Goodall, 2008). This made Indigenous empowered space more visible to the colonial state but it is unlikely these individuals embodied legitimate empowered space in the Indigenous deliberative system.

This pluralism in governance and decision-making, which existed in the early days of the Australian colonies, gave way during the 1820s and 1830s to the self-proclaimed assertions of authority by settler institutions based on the Westphalian unitary territorial nation-state (Ford, 2010), which resulted in the increased marginalization of Indigenous forms of democracy. The colonial state suppression of Australian Indigenous empowered spaces was underwritten by the doctrine of terra nullius, meaning land that is legally deemed to be unoccupied or uninhabited (Strelein, 2013). This doctrine was enacted by Native police forces in undeclared frontier wars across the Australian continent through much of the nineteenth century, which dispersed Indigenous people from their lands (Bennett, 2020; Kidd, 1997; Reynolds, 1995; Richards, 2008; Rosser, 1990). There were no treaties between Indigenous nations and the colonial state in Australia because Indigenous empowered space was deemed not to exist. Indigenous resistance has been shaped by the state as a narrative of criminalisation (Lovell, 2012), where Indigenous peoples were seen as criminals in the unitary state rather than combatants of a sovereign Indigenous nation. This served to delegitimise Indigenous empowered spaces, reinforcing the state’s authority over Indigenous peoples. By contrast, in other settler states such as the USA and Canada, wars were fought by state armed forces, and treaties were made between the state and Indigenous nations for most of the 19th century (Bruyneel, 2017; Russell, 2017). These treaty settlements were deeply disabling (Bruyneel, 2017), but this codification recognized Indigenous empowered spaces and made them visible to the state despite the ongoing power imbalances and contestation.

In Australia, the colonial system has continued to resist explicit pluralist assertions of Indigenous empowered spaces until fairly recently. In Indigenous water policy, for example, the Chairman of the Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations (MLDRIN) and elder from the Ngarrindjeri Nation in South Australia, Mathew Rigney, complained in 2006 about the reluctance of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission, the precursor to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, to recognize Indigenous empowered space:

They took two and a half years to debate the word “Nation”—they didn’t want it in our name. We told them to go and jump. It held up negotiations. (Jackson et al., 2021, p. 13)

This assertion of Indigenous empowered space as Indigenous nations continued into the next decade, an NBAN representative commented:

One of the objectives of NBAN and, I think, MLDRIN [. . .], is for the federal government to recognise us as sovereign first nations because we haven’t signed a treaty, we haven’t ceded and so on. (Interviewee 1, as cited in Davis, 2024, p. 13)

Over the last 50 years, Indigenous organizations, such as land councils, art centres and other Indigenous-led organizations, embody Indigenous empowered spaces that are incorporated and operate under state legislation and so are strongly interconnected with state representative structures (D. Smith, 2008). Parkinson and colleagues (2022) found that these Indigenous organizations played a crucial role in aggregating different perspectives and connecting Indigenous and non-Indigenous framings. Indigenous democratic practices, albeit within statist representative forms, are readily apparent to those within these organizations where decisions are made according to Indigenous law, authority, and custom (Davis, 2024). However, Indigenous democratic practices and legitimacy manifest as decisions of the board, as corporate governance rather than as an expression of Indigenous democracy. This systemic elimination and continued denial of Indigenous empowered spaces underscore the democratic divide in Australia which has led to a comprehensive failure in Indigenous public policy. The Voice to Parliament can be seen as an attempt to bridge this divide, but still, the Indigenous deliberative system remained invisible.

The democratic harm of a divided society

Colonialism’s systemic attempt to eliminate Indigenous empowered space (Veracini, 2015; Wolfe, 2006) is responsible for making Australia a divided society where the basic problem is: “that one identity can only be validated or worse, constituted by suppression of another” (Dryzek, 2005, p. 219). Colonialism is sustained and legitimated by the elimination of Indigenous political authority which is rationalized through unitary conceptions of state sovereignty, citizenship, and democracy that are deployed to formally exclude Indigenous empowered spaces from decision-making (Banerjee, 2021; Bruyneel, 2017; Dryzek, 2005; O’Sullivan, 2022a; Sampson, 2016; Tully, 1995). However, this colonial unitary epistemic privilege is problematic because it renders Indigenous political goals as a false binary (Bruyneel, 2017), allowing them to be framed and evaluated according to a statist pattern (Alfred, 2009) thereby structuring state solutions to remedy inequalities resulting from colonialism (Banerjee, 2021). This false binary fails to recognize pluralist Indigenous conceptualisations of sovereignty (Bruyneel, 2017), Nation (Fleras & Maaka, 2010), citizenship (O’Sullivan, 2017, 2020, 2021), and Indigenous democracy (Fan, 2020, 2021; Hebert, 2018; O’Sullivan, 2021; Pristed, 2006; Valadez, 2010, 2018; Van Cott, 2005), which challenge these unitary colonial constructs and point to the divide between the Indigenous and the colonial systems and the need to connect them.

Colonialism represents an ailing deliberative system (Curato et al., 2019) because it leaves its components fragmented and creates enclaves that foster division which is inhospitable to inclusive and authentic deliberations and fails to generate discursive legitimacy. This is fundamentally because, as O’Sullivan (2022a)’ suggests:

Colonialism requires neither listening nor reflection because it is self-justificatory. It does not need to consider the rights of the colonised because its essential and foundational assumption is that some people’s rights are less worthy than other people’s interests. (p. 3)

Given this, colonialism is existentially unable, and therefore unwilling, to recognize the Indigenous system and its empowered spaces on equal terms and so creates a divided society. However, the paradox of the liberal democratic state is that it neither accommodates absolutely nor rejects entirely Indigenous claims (O’Sullivan, 2017). This is because the logic of elimination conceptualizes a limited recognition of Indigenous cultural rights, those that do not impact the legitimacy of the settler state (Veracini, 2015; Wolfe, 2006). So, what appears as a connection between the colonial and the Indigenous deliberative systems is typically located in public spaces that do not require recognizing Indigenous empowered spaces. In liberal settler states, this often appears to be sufficiently inclusive. The proposed model for the Voice to Parliament (Calma, 2023), was solely advisory and thus did not challenge the state’s foundational legitimacy. Furthermore, it was a model (National Indigenous Australians Agency, 2021) based on electoral representation that privileged state democratic forms thereby marginalizing Indigenous empowered spaces.

This divide is evidenced by the complete absence of discourses of Indigenous democracy in both the Indigenous and colonial Australian public sphere (Maddison, 2019; Parkinson et al., 2022). Parkinson and colleagues (2022), in a recent quantitative analysis of the Australian online public sphere, found between 2015 and 2017, there was no unified national conversation about Indigenous constitutional recognition. They found that non-Indigenous sites emphasize the colonial political system and participation by Indigenous leaders. These leaders are primarily seen as individuals, which obscures their democratic role as representatives of Indigenous collective political authority and empowered space.

This divided society, caused by the colonial elimination of Indigenous empowered spaces enabled by a unitary concept of statist political authority, has far-reaching negative impacts on Indigenous public policymaking. It has contributed to the: “considered exclusion of Indigenous peoples from policy development” (O’Sullivan, 2019, p. 398) which can be seen as a lack of opportunity to deliberate in ways that respect Indigenous empowered space. This is a principal underlying cause of the system-wide policy failure in Indigenous affairs in Australia for the last 50 years (Australian National Audit Office, 2017; Maddison, 2019; Westbury & Dillon, 2019). This has severely limited the full expression of Indigenous values and aspirations in diverse policy areas such as Native title jurisprudence (French, 2002; Webber, 2000), Indigenous health (O’Sullivan, 2015), and Indigenous environmental planning and management (Davis, 2021).

Bridging this divide requires Indigenous groups and individuals to negotiate within the contested institutions of the colonial system which are typically inhospitable to Indigenous claims (Rollo, 2014). This results in the internal exclusion of marginalized perspectives (Young, 2000) and creates an asymmetrical inclusion where the burden of contestation falls heavily on the shoulders of the marginalized, who lack the resources, capacities, and social recognition to effectively challenge democratic agreements (Bohman, 2000). As Parkinson and colleagues (2022) conclude, this burden disproportionately affects the 3.4% of Indigenous peoples who must educate the remaining 96.6% of Australians who have little incentive to act.

I now shift my focus to evaluate the potential of the co-designed model for the Voice to Parliament (National Indigenous Australians Agency, 2021), to bridge Indigenous and state deliberative systems, or whether it merely reinforces existing state democratic institutions.

Connecting the Indigenous and the colonial deliberative systems

For a deliberative system to generate legitimacy, its constituent parts must be meaningfully connected: “Deliberative systems do not exist naturally” (Curato et al., 2019, p. 101). Work needs to be done to support connectivity across different sites of the system (Mendonça, 2016). Dryzek (2005) suggests the key to resolving social division in divided societies is to decouple deliberation and the decision-making moments of democracy by locating deliberation in the public sphere at a distance from the sovereign state. State decision-making usually overwhelms deliberation, especially when it is tied to sovereign authority. Locating deliberation in institutions in the public sphere can potentially play an important role in resolving tensions in divided societies (Dryzek, 2005).

In Australia’s divided society, Indigenous organizations at the interstices of colonial and Indigenous empowered space play an important role, but they must carry a heavy democratic burden because these organizations must operate simultaneously as Indigenous empowered space accountable to Indigenous public space, as well as be recognized and accountable to the empowered spaces of the colonial state and colonial public space. Importantly, such Indigenous organizations must also facilitate the deliberation which is at the heart of Indigenous democracy (Davis, 2021, 2024). Karpowitz and Raphael (2014) describe how such Indigenous organizations act as enclave forums providing empowered spaces where the less powerful can deliberate together, enabling self-determination and sanctuary from state rules and cultural domination. These new institutional mechanisms can also enhance the ability of Indigenous groups to influence the state in policymaking (Bruyneel, 2017; Rao & Sanyal, 2010; Valadez, 2010), for example in Taiwan (Fan, 2020, 2021), Australia (Davis, 2021, 2024), and New Zealand (O’Sullivan, 2022b).

Indigenous people have been seeking an institutional voice to influence Indigenous policymaking by the Australian government since the 1950s (Calma, 2023). This most recent proposal, the Voice to Parliament, is a core outcome of the Uluru Statement from the Heart (2017). Certainly, the aspirations for the Voice were tempered by the harsh practical necessities for amending the Australian constitution, which demands majority support in at least four of six states, alongside a national majority (O’Sullivan, 2022a). The Voice was conceived as an advisory body to parliament and the executive, hence it could not introduce, modify, hinder, or veto legislation, and the national parliament would not be required to follow the Voice’s advice (Calma, 2023). It was developed with nationwide Indigenous deliberation co-designed with Indigenous leaders and endorsed by the current Labour but opposed by the former Liberal government.

Based on the preceding deliberative systems analysis, to be effective, the Voice needed to provide deliberative spaces where Indigenous and colonial representatives can directly connect. The main concern is, that the Voice model does not recognize or articulate a pluralist model of Australian democracy. Seen in terms of democratic quality (Curato, 2015; Dryzek, 2009), the Voice demonstrates low levels of authenticity because it doesn’t explicitly recognize the legitimacy of Indigenous empowered spaces. Instead, it is framed around a statist model of Indigenous inclusion consistent with the colonial logic of elimination, which does not impact the existential legitimacy of the settler state (Veracini, 2015; Wolfe, 2006). This is seen in the efforts by Prime Minister Albanese to reinforce to Australian society the subservience of the Voice to the Australian parliament. Similarly, the Voice is inclusive but on colonial state terms, with Indigenous candidates selected in elections conducted by the state. This representative electoral model obscures the underlying Indigenous deliberative democracy and potentially loosens the connection to Indigenous empowered spaces because representatives are elected and acquire political authority and legitimacy by the state, based on their ability to represent Indigenous electors, not Indigenous nations or communities.

The Voice model falls short of fully realizing the potential inherent in Indigenous deliberative systems. In settler states like Australia, where Indigenous peoples are often electoral minorities, the importance of deliberation extends beyond mere participation. Indigenous people must rely on the sharing of reasons in deliberative forums to have any influence on public policy (Williams, 2000). In deliberative forums, communicative power says Habermas: “is exercised in the manner of a siege. It influences the premises of judgment and decision-making in the political system without intending to conquer the system itself” (Dryzek, 2005, p. 234). Yet, the Voice model did not provide a mechanism for high-quality, transformative deliberation that could reframe policy debates on terms that reflect Indigenous values and knowledge systems.

Furthermore, Indigenous deliberative systems, characterized by their emphasis on collective community deliberation and decision-making, stand in contrast to the limited representational scope of the Voice. By not adequately validating Indigenous democracy, the Voice model despite the 2-year deliberative process used to develop the Indigenous Uluru Statement from the Heart (2017), risked perpetuating the systemic marginalization and policy failures that have historically undermined Indigenous peoples’ rights and well-being. The Voice, without a clear connection to Indigenous deliberative processes, would likely have continued to sideline Indigenous democracy from the mainstream policymaking process.

Conclusion

This paper seeks to address the problem of the marginalization of Indigenous voices within Australian democracy caused by the historical and ongoing legacy of colonialism that continues to impact Indigenous deliberative democratic practices. It applies and extends deliberative systems theory to argue for a pluralist approach to democracy that challenges the unitary notions of democracy in settler colonial states by looking for ways to integrate the Indigenous deliberative democratic tradition into state institutions, on Indigenous terms. The Voice was an Indigenous-led democratic innovation, yet it fell short of its potential to bridge the divide between Indigenous and state deliberative systems, primarily because it perpetuated the dominance of state-centric representative democratic institutions and practices that undermined the recognition and empowerment of Indigenous democracy. Ultimately, this paper contributes a critical perspective on the integration of Indigenous and state democratic systems in Australia, offering a roadmap for future research and policymaking that examines Indigenous state relations at the critical intersection of the Indigenous and state deliberative systems (Davis, 2021, 2024) that honours the complexity and diversity of Indigenous democratic traditions. By doing so, it takes a step towards reconciling Australia’s colonial past with a vision for a more inclusive democratic future.