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 have no idea what you watch or listen to, but I have not heard it broadcast on tv or radio. Nor have I heard it in sports - in reality, every code and sport is trying to stamp out any racism as unacceptable.

Perfectly reasonable to judge a whole country by something that happened to someone else 70 years ago.

I'm shocked that the BBC referred to the block in Redfern as a "ghetto". Wow. Talk about racist.

A referendum where the people on the losing side call those on the winning side names and dismiss them as Bad People instead of trying to understand their reasons for voting the way they did.

Familiar.

I'm Australian and the country is, in fact, overwhelmingly made up of stupid racist colonialists.

Five minutes on Google makes it very clear that every Australiangovernment has disbanded the advisory boards that offer the opinion of Aboriginals & Torres Strait Islanders.

Lobby groups aren't new, and neither is the deliberate dismantling of anything remotely resembling an indigenous voice to Parliament.

All this referendum was asking is "hey, shall we enshrine the right for an advisory board to exist, in whatever form the Elders choose?"

The excuses you listed are just makeup to poorly hide the racism and deliberate ignorance.

We deserve the scorn.

I have white nieces and nephews there and a mixed race niece (Islander) - all born and bred in Australia. They have very different experiences. No prizes for guessing which one can't get to work on the train in the morning without suffering racial abuse and being told to get back to her own country.

I wouldn’t be too shocked, yesterday a BBC interviewer on the radio said (I think to a representative of another country in the region), Many in Israel want the Gaza Strip to be ‘cleared of people’. Just like that, so casual. Just a bit of ethnic cleansing for you with your breakfast. Imagine them saying that about a white population anywhere.

You should have spent six minutes on Google because local voices are being established or already exist in two jurisdictions and Victoria is in the early stages of treaty negotiation.

Perhaps you consider yourself a stupid, racist colonial and who am I to argue with that? I am not, though, and nor are the people I associate with.

It's very easy to sit and think it must be racist, but with ballot initiatives, if the voters aren’t sure what the proposed change does, most will vote against the change.

Exactly what the voice advisory body would look like and how it would function were to be determined only once the concept had won approval.

Even more than the identity politics, this is the major political idiocy. Even if you are in favour of a vaguely defined "the voice", how can you be sure it is not turned into shit in the fine print by activists and bureaucrats? This way the Australian people had a divisive referendum over basically declarative gibberish. It was incredibly disrespectful towards the voter. Post-politics.

It's bizarre that a race based lobby group permanently fixed into the constitution was seen as the solution to politicians not adequately representing their constituents. The resultis having the same effect that other votes world wide have had, instead of introspection it's far easier to stick fingers in ears and denounce the result as being racist or from uneducated types.

And judging from state-level results, support was more or less inversely proportional to the percentage of native population living in the state.

To the surprise of absolutely noone with any critical thinking the baizuo are shocked.

We did it re the monarchy and we did it this time. We didn’t vote against the idea. We voted against what we were offered. I was desperate to vote yes but I wasn’t voting yes to that.

As we counted the votes, out of 1500, 6 were scribbled on/spoilt but only 11 were blank. The experienced vote counters were amazed at such a low number. The strength of opinion (in either direction) is not normally seen, apparently.

You may call us racist but most Australians really want to do the right thing. This referendum did not offer us that option. It was a complete schemozzle and the government can only blame itself.

Oh do bore off, may I suggest Australia. Brexit is a giant shitshow and we are all living with the consequences. Stop banging your tiny little drum and own it.

Legislature's should be reflecting public opinion else why vote them in? I think there should be referendum on many more decisions taken by government... trust people rather than treat them as children.

I think you're replying to me but weirdly the Reply button won't tag anyone. You have to click the 3-dot menu in the top right of the comment and click Quote or the person you're talking to won't always catch that you've said something.

Good posts @BlinkyBulldozer

Refreshing.

This indicates a very poorly-run campaign. As we saw with Brexit, it's vital to be specific and detailed and to identify lies and exaggeration. In Ireland, there's an organisation (formerly the Referendum Commission, now the Electoral Commission) that is legislated for and handles all referenda, offering clarification and guidance, it came into being after a confusingly worded referendum. I think it would be worth other countries looking to it as a model.

I've Indigenous Australian friends (Torres Straits and Muruwari) and they're pretty devastated at the result.

A ghetto is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially as a result of political, social, legal, environmental or economic pressure.

Ghetto - Wikipedia

"It is time for changes. This bit of land is like the Aboriginal graveyard. People come here to shoot up, to have drugs. In other words, they come here to die," said Mick Mundine, the head of the Aboriginal Housing Company, who has championed the redevelopment for more than a decade.

I have tried to upload a photo of the buildings. It is listed as a "sensitive image" so people would have to click on it if they want to view it.

It has posted anyway, I see!

But to answer your comment, it was sly and misleading to present those things as an either/or option. State-level treaty negotiations have always happened at the same time as federal advisory boards existing.

Just out of interest the Tories took the UK into the EC in 1973, Labour held a referendum in 1975 to decide whether to stay in or leave, the result was to stay in. The Tories did a referendum in 2016, the result was to leave.

Like it or not that is democracy in action - giving the people the vote. There are dictatorships across the world where referendum would never be held. I'd like to see more of them personally!

Surely the pp can respond in kind

Your drum etc

Note that some indigenous leaders also voted no.

Yep, this is key. I have to say I’m not fully up on this news yet but I did read a little and read that the Northern Territory where most indigenous Australians live voted no more than anywhere else.

Legislature's should be reflecting public opinion else why vote them in?

Even if public opinion is wrong ?

Not all Aboriginals wanted the referendum to pass. My first choice would have been to vote yes, but my friend and her whole family who are Aboriginal asked everyone they know to vote no. They want the government to use the mechanisms that are already in place and feel that this is just an empty gesture and won't address any of the actual issues effecting Aboriginal communities especially in the bush. I really didn't feel that this was an issue I should have a voice on, but before my friend spoke up I was 100% voting yea. My friend is directly effected by this and I trust her so I helped her families view be heard. It felt really wrong voting no, but after my friend had shared how her family felt about this it also felt wrong to vote yes.

This is interesting and I shall follow it up. Thank you.

I know what Wikipedia says. I also know what the block looked like. I used to live a few streets away.

Here’s an article from the BBC (!) outlining why perjoratively describing a poor area where black people live as a “ghetto” - particularly by people who are not from that culture - has racist connotations.