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.

You only have to look at "Australia Day" and how angry a lot of white Australian's get if someone mentions the indigenous population on that day to know what a lot of people's attitudes are like.

Compulsory voting is one of those things that sounds a great idea, but I think it's actually the opposite.

I always used to think the Ask the Audience lifeline in WWTBAM would have been much more effective if they'd also had option E: 'not a clue', or just allowed people to abstain - so that you wouldn't have 19% of absolute certain correct answers drowned out by 72 of complete guesses - and actual voting is way more important than that.

I think there's a lot to be said for allowing people to voluntarily opt out if they neither care, understand nor have a preference one way or the other. People happily do it in other areas of life: leave things to the experts/people who know what they're doing.

Thank you @BlinkyBulldozer for explaining the issues in an intelligent way. Some of the posters on here remind me of the arrogant, smug remainders who derided the racist working class while not having a clue about any of the issues. When did people get so stupid?

I'm not remotely surprised.

Problem: indigenous aboriginal Australians are not well served by the democratic institutions of the country they live in, because they represent only a small minority of the electorate and consequently their voices aren't heard in parliament and elsewhere.

Proposed solution (headline): introduce specific representatives to give that small minority a voice, separate from the representatives which the majority of the electorate choose to vote for.

Sounds reasonable, tell me more.

Proposed solution (small print): the aboriginal minority can only have this is it's voted for by the mainstream majority. You know, the majority who have been consistently voting for representatives and policies which fail to serve the needs of the minority and result in their being dispossessed and condemned to poverty for generation after generation.

Hmm, what could possibly go wrong? 🤔

Some things shouldn’t be left to referendums. Going by opinion polls apparently the U.K. would vote to bring back the death penalty if it went to referendum…

I am Australian. I consider myself quite well educated and read, and I didn’t get what the voice would entail or mean exactly. I voted yes as from what I could gather it was largely a symbolic thing. The no campaign was quite strong and sadly yes, there was lots of overly racist ‘no’ posts I saw. Interestingly the fb friends and family who were most vocal about no sharing dire predictions about homes being taken away ect are the same people who shared Covid conspiracy theories. My mum voted no because she saw an interview with some aboriginal people who said they were voting no. She just didn’t know enough about it and thought if they didn’t want it then she would vote no. I’m not surprised qld (where i live) voted no the strongest. Qld is typically about 20 years behind the rest of the country in terms of progressive thinking. I feel very sad about the whole thing as I think it’s just made the entire country divided and look like a bunch of racists idiots to the world. Please remember the 40% of Australians that voted yes aren’t like that!

I’ve never thought that the mandatory voting they have in place in Australia seemed like a good idea. All it does is force people to tick a box, but you can’t force someone to engage properly with an issue. And surely if it’s a democratic right to vote, people should also have a democratic right to not vote.

Oh no how ghastly Tarquin. The lower orders who live in crime ridden streets want to have a say. Let them eat cake.

I saw this and it apparently failed due to the poor way it was presented with little facts or information for voters to make a decision. The failure for this is not on the voters as I saw that indigenous citizens also criticised the terrible campaign

I read this because I wanted to learn more about Jacinta Price and her thinking on this. She is the Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians.

Her background: Her father is Anglo-Celtic and her mother is indigenous (Warlpiri, to be precise).

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price - Wikipedia

Price has highlighted the high rates of domestic and other violence in Aboriginal communities. She advocates for law and order, and racial equality before the law.[38] She rejects the "white privilege" narrative and has criticised left-wing public discourse around Indigenous deaths due to violence and, in particular Aboriginal deaths in custody.[41] In her maiden speech, Price rejected the idea of racism causing Aboriginal deaths in custody as a "false narrative", and told Parliament: "We cannot support legislation that prioritises freedom of the perpetrator over justice for the victim, in an attempt to reduce rates of incarceration."[32]
Price rejects claims of systemic racism in the Australian prison system against Aboriginal people, citing the finding of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1987–1991) that there was no evidence that proportionately more Aboriginal Australians die in custody than non-Indigenous Australians.[42] In her maiden speech, Price said "Our greatest problem lies with the fact that in the [30 years after the Royal Commission], over 750 Indigenous Australians were murdered at the hands of other Indigenous Australians — yet there is little concern or acknowledgment that this is why Indigenous Australians are incarcerated at such high rates."[32]
Following a June 2020 Black Lives Matter protest in Melbourne, Price accused protesters of being ignorant and uncaring, stating: "70 percent of Aboriginal men and women incarcerated are incarcerated for acts of violence against their loved ones. [The Left] don't care because the perpetrators are also black, people only care if there is seen to be a white perpetrator. It's not racism that is killing our people, it is the actions of our own people".[41] She argued that Black Lives Matter activists have been "ignoring the real crisis" facing Indigenous people.[43]

The whole issue is far more nuanced than is being presented here (as a number of posters have intelligently pointed out). A lot of Indigenous people were on the "No". Yes historically Australia has has a problem with racism but I do not believe that this is the case any more, certainly in comparison to comparable countries.

It is frankly ridiculous and ignorant to just put the "No" vote down to racism.

I don’t have a strong view on the decision but I did look at polling before it happened. The downward slide from high to low was very marked

I also think by referendum was actually a good way to go

Why are you surprised? If 100% population vote for something that only effects 3.8% (ish could be wrong) then they will most likely lose unless they have extremely vocal supporters they are stuffed

What there government should do now is do a Cameron and say it was only "advisory" and (unlike Cameron) do the right thing and recognise them

And obviously Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have equal rights under Australian law, the referendum was not about that!

There wasn’t any box ticking. You had to actually write yes or no in the box.

I'm Australian and voted yes, but I do think it's over simple to say it's just that people are racist. Australia is undoubtedly a racist country and that played a significant role, but there were real problems with the way the voice and yes campaign were presented as people have noted above.

It's a very tough result for Australia's First Nations people, the majority of whom did vote yes, despite there being an indigenous movement arguing against a yes vote in favour of pushing for a treaty.

doesn't really change the point I was making,

Interpretation- ignore anything the elites don't like. How unifying that would be. I give up with people like you, so arrogant and ignorant.

They had a campaign where the message was “if you don’t know, vote no!”. I agree that if you aren’t informed about the details you should vote to keep things the same and wish this was the case with brexit. They shouldn’t really hold a referendum over these issues.

Worth a watch, only a few minutes long.

It also contains the video I referred to earlier. Even the other newsreader next to the woman who says "Good on ya!" looks askance.

As an immigrant to Australia of ten years, I have never experienced racism. I voted yes and I'm sorry it didn't go ahead. I know a few people who voted no after much thought. None of their reasons had anything to do with racism. Some of them made some good points that made me think. In the end, I felt yes was the right vote for me.

Absolutely!

The fact people think changing rights based on race is a good idea (and not racist!) is truly an odd thing to me

The advantage of compulsory voting is that politicians don't have to spend time motivating their base to vote by appealing to the more extreme ends of their party as we often see in the US - they have to pitch to everyone. In voluntary voting systems, the people most likely not to vote are the poor. In Australia, those people can't be ignored quite so easily because they're voting. As a former Prime Minister said, elections here are won in the centre.

On the yes campaign, halfway through the year I said to my husband that it was the worst run major campaign I can ever remember seeing. Far worse than the failed republican referendum. I hope the people involved in running it (and there were several organisations involved - Yes23 was just the one with all the big corporate donors) will be able in time to be more reflective than just "youse are all racists".

That's even more heart breaking.

Hmm, imagine holding a referendum on something that was completely undefined.

We'd never do that over here...