To be shocked that Australia voted NO on this referendum?

[koalaknickers]

"The Voice to Parliament was proposed in the Uluru Statement from the Heart, a 2017 document crafted by Indigenous leaders that set out a roadmap for reconciliation with wider Australia.

Australia's Indigenous citizens, who make up 3.8% of the country's 26 million population, have inhabited the land for about 60,000 years but are not mentioned in the constitution and are, by most socio-economic measures, the most disadvantaged people in the country."

Australia rejects Indigenous referendum in setback for reconciliation (msn.com)

I have family out there. I just assumed that they would have voted YES. I hope they did. Perhaps I should ask them.

I thought you had the ability to just scroll on by? If you're going to write the stuff you have, not actual facts most of it btw, then expect to be challenged on it. Scroll by if you don't like being challenged. I think your posts about aboriginal people are incredibly offensive and ignorant.

I was staying in Maroubra with family. As I am sure you know Maroubra is an Aboriginal word

well, yes, you won’t find a decent Indigenous concentration around Maroubra. You would in other suburbs though, where house prices are, on average, as high as or considerably higher than Maroubra. Still no idea of your point - you didn’t see anyone who looked, to you, Indigenous, while you went shopping in Maroubra (and potentially right in CBD as from your post I can’t tell whether you went there or just Maroubra). So what? You seem to be making out they have all been banished from society, whereas if you went to some other suburbs that are as close to CBD as Maroubra is, you would have seen plenty of Indigenous folk, many of whom would have even looked, to you, obviously Indigenous. Again, your point here is what?

If you actually look at stats, instead of basing everything on a stay in Maroubra, you would know that there is a higher density of Indigenous in cities/metro than there is in rural/remote. They just face very different issues, which was part of the problem with the Voice, with those from rural/remote areas questioning whether they would be represented by city based leaders and whose Voice would be heard? Unfortunately it was all things like this where the government came back with ‘no detail on this but vote for it and we’ll just sort it out later’. That’s not a popular response.

I have to wonder OP if you are really interested in this issue, as you have basically ignored all the posts that talk about why this kind of change is controversial.

It seems to be all about some kind of performative element to you, which you think will somehow help people.

If you look at indigenous populations in countries around the world, you often do see the same two types of approaches. One is something like a reservation approach, where the government is responsible for supporting people. This was often an earlier approach, at a time when it was thought people might carry on living a traditional lifestyle.

Of course time marches on, so no one does live a wholly traditional lifestyle anymore than European-descent people do. But what became clear pretty much anywhere this was tried was that it was very bad for communities. There were a number of things that could influence that, like location and resources, but part of it seems to be that supporting any capable, adult population through the state has detrimental effects.

Which has tended to produce people who think integration might be a better approach. This too has had some serious failures but often because it was conceptualized as requiring a loss of culture.

There are a lot of complicated questions involved in how to approach these things, and it's not at all clear that the idea that giving people special government support will actually be better for them, or that constitutionalizing racial groups is a good idea - it runs very close to ideas about race essentialism, and giving special related to ethnicity it's a huge departure from liberal democatic principles.

That there are problems in aboriginal communities, that there is racism, does not wipe out those kinds of concerns, you have to actually address them.

I have to wonder OP if you are really interested in this issue, as you have basically ignored all the posts that talk about why this kind of change is controversial.

@Rudderneck why does the OP have to take those types of comments as the correct or accurate ones though, have you read the posts by @ALittleTeawithmilk ?

it runs very close to ideas about race essentialism, and giving special related to ethnicity it's a huge departure from liberal democratic principles.

So do British people think that us having greater rights in our own country or being recognised as British people is a bad thing too? What is the big deal with recognising that indigenous people exist and having that being reflected in a constitution?

The issue was not about constitutional recognition. Everyone I know including those who voted no all agree that constitutional recognition should happen. The issue was with the poorly thought out question with little to no detail on how it would all work. with even the First Nations People divided it was never going to work.

I have to say, in my reading on this (which has been fairly brief, but still) I have been unable to discern what they are actually voting on. “An indigenous voice” great- how does it actually work? I sincerely hoped that the Australian reporting of it would give some clarity on what it actually meant and that the reports I was reading in the British news were short on detail because it wasn’t a British issue. But actually it sounds like that was also the case in Australia too and that there wasn’t really any detail.

It’s easy to say aren’t they racist and isn’t it awful and it might be true, but you can’t expect people to vote to change their constitution without being sure what that means. What if it was all just tokenism anyway and it meant very little- if the indigenous people have a “voice” that no one listens to and which has no power then it can be used a smokescreen, people might feel enough has been done, it could actually prevent progress on the issue.

It sounds like it’s been handled terribly to be honest.

No your rudeness about my 'abilities' offended me, and your comments on the skin colour of indigenous people and views with what they would have experienced based on that. You can challenge me all you like, but you said I should scroll on by, that you had the ability to do so but then keep responding to me. make up your mind. You have not just provided facts on this thread at all, but your own opinions on the life experiences of indigenous people and then you've questioned why they should be owed anything after all that has been done to them. As I said, you represent a lot of what is wrong with Australia to me, ignorance and a lack of concern for what colonisation did to the people whose land you inhabit.

I thought this excellent post needed highlighting again for those that are confused.

My opinions are based on facts and experiences

No they're not. They're just your opinions. You have opinions I find offensive to poc. I shall continue to answer them if you continue to make them.

But you don't seem to appreciate it when it is you being challenged.

You've not challenged anything I've said about this vote or Australia, just my responses about your posts on indigenous people being offensive. All you've done, repeatedly, is reiterate your opinions are facts, which they're not.

Here's an example:

It's definitely not a bad thing anymore to be Aboriginal.

This is opinion @Olivesmum78 not fact.

They most certainly will not have problems accessing employment or progressing in life.

Also an opinion, from someone who is not aboriginal.

But they most certainly are being accessed by those in the non remote areas, who are no more disadvantaged that anyone else. In fact, they have access to free dental and healthcare, again not means tested.

This is opinion also, and it seems to be based on factually incorrect information as @ALittleTeawithmilk has repsonded to it. The ' they get things I don't get and its not fair' rhetoric is not new to me.

People have to read the information or they could listen to it or watch it: There was so much of it I got tired reading. Govt., First Nations websites, wiki, University constutional professors answering ALL the question re the constitution. you could ring people, there were live web chats , documentaries and so on and so forth. But what no one can do is magically zap the info into someone’s head. its s citizens obligation to inform themselves - from a plethora of sources. It wasn’t hard to do. A person won’t learn it by magical osmosis.

The Uluṟu statement was a one page statement and you can find it now all over the internet. It was in the papers. People read it out loud on tv. It’s a beautiful bit of writing, and I’d recommend you read it because it is history now. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have said it’s their intention to pack it up and put it away. It’s done.

There was a model for the Voice, but it’s only a model. Parliament couldn’t legislate on it until after a referendum. So a model of the Voice could not be presented to the people as the definitive one: that is impossible until after the referendum and after Parlt had done its thing:

Same thing happened under a liberal govt in regards to the Republican referendum 25 years ago: - the model coulld not be called the definitive one as that can only go to parliament to be discussed legislated, back and forwards between the house of reps and the senate etc., after a referendum has given the go ahead.

The referendum question had two parts. It was not complicated. I haven’t got a copy but you could find that on line too. A couple of lines and very straightforward . We knew the question before hand.

I find it really frustrating that people said there was not enough info.

The 1967 referendum that passed with a 96 percent or similar ‘yes’vote was to give all Aboriginal People the vote. Everyone understood it, because it had bipartisan support and no one was trying to muddy the waters: And that happened in a very racist political environment eg We still had The White Australia Policy. Bipartisan support was the difference.

I’ve explained earlier how both paries were for the Voice to begin with. One party, the opposition party, politicised this. Unforgivable.

I live in sydney, my area came out with a vote of almost 70% yes, as did most of the city, as well as Melbourne.

PP are right in many things, it was very poorly communicated what it actually meant, the 'don't know, vote no' campaign was very strong, and there's a big difference in education and understanding from the cities and country. Australia is also a very racist country,

It's a disaster and has created appalling divide, however nobody was surprised it didn't pass.

When you wake up, try answering my next response following this where I gave examples of your opinion you're stating as fact.

Its almost like people are ignoring your posts here! Thank you for trying though :)

I have to say, in my reading on this (which has been fairly brief, but still) I have been unable to discern what they are actually voting on. “An indigenous voice” great- how does it actually work?

I'm not trying to sound snappy when I say that if you RTFT this has been answered a couple of times

There were two questions, paraphrasing:

1. Do you want to officially recognise First Australians?
2. Do you want to enshrine the right for an advisory board to exist?

Advisory boards have always existed, this just tried to stop the gross habit of every successive Australian gov shutting it down.

If the answer had been yes, the exact structure of that board (called the Voice) would then be decided via legislation, where it could be changed with the times rather than having a particular structure cemented in the Constitution from the get-go.

The ‘don’t know, vote no’ slogan was shameful. What the opposition party, who led this campaign, should have been saying is ‘if you don’t know, here is where you go to learn.’ Or ‘if don’t know, don’t tick any box because you can’t answer’ This was a referendum question. It was the moral duty of both sides of govt to present the case homestly, not try to fuck it up.

What were the opposition scared of? Nothing. At this point things are so bad for them they could only go up. They are hoping this is a win for them politically. It was turned into a defacto election. Imo, Peter Dutton, opposition leader, sought to raise his abysmally low popularity ratings in the polls. He did not serve the Australian people and he certainly didn’t serve the First Australians. He served himself.

I don’t know about all you, but I’m sick of this sort of politics. It’s going to ruin us. Misinformation rules. Truth is the casualty. Shame no longer exists.

That’s it for me. Bedtime. And time to move on. But I will be supporting the First Nations Peoples in any way i can in future.

There’s a very good campaign, has been running all this time, for some time, ‘raise the age’ look it up. Let’s stop putting our kids into terrible custodial conditions from as young as 10 years of age - First Nationds kids by the way, not because they are ‘badder’ but just because they are much more likely to be given custodial sentences than a child of white heritage, (or any other racial heritage), who commits the same offence.

I wasn’t talking about this thread though, I was talking about news articles I’d read on it prior to the vote, which is where most people get their information from. As I said in my post, they were British articles and I assumed the lack of detail was because of that, but there are quite a few people from Australia here saying there was a lack of clarity in the reporting of what exactly it meant there and how it would work too.

After Brexit and the Scottish Indyref I’m amazed anyone thinks a referendum is a good idea.

I have seen racism in NZ. As for the history, Maori children were caned for speaking Maori in the early 20th Century in schools. Colonisation has never been pretty.

the referendum was right in that it required more than 50% +1 ( this is good enough for something that can be reversed every 3-6 years depending on what government and where, as term lengths vary) all major irreversible changes should require 60 % of electorate ( not 60% of voters where it is not mandatory) I think this should have applied to brexit, Scottish independance etc, the status quo stays unless a big swing to opposite view.
the problem with 50 % plus one is that side a could win but if you held same vote a week later the reverse could happen. even 490,000 votes versus 510,000 votes is not clear cut enough for major changes just 20,000 out of a million is just 2%,
I think all major changes should require an absolute clear majority no thinking well if the weather was better more people would have voted or if it was a different day more workers would vote at weekends

I think the Aus system means it had to be a referendum