So, the Voice

[Ozgirl75]

I’m trying to follow it from the U.K. where I’m living this year and it seems massively political and divisive, is that what it’s like over there or is that just being started by the media?

I voted early yesterday - I live in an area of very conservative voters, lots of very elderly folk - the people at the gates handing out the Vote No leaflets were doing a roaring trade. Very dispiriting!

I do see plenty of houses with Vote Yes signs in their windows - I just doubt it's enough in this area at least (coastal NSW).

Coastal NSW here too @Turquioseblue and its not looking good for a YES result, if what I’m seeing in my area is anything to go by.

On the motorway north of Sydney, somebody(somebodies?) turned all the ‘110 speed limit’ signs from ‘110’ to ‘NO.’ That’s how mean and petty it’s all become. If ‘no’ gets up, I’m going to be so ashamed of my country. And I hope the arsehole with a spray can, and too much time on their hands, got caught on camera.

Misinformation is rife.

I dread fear and racism winning out.

I have to vote on Saturday and I shall be voting Yes.

I've been following trends in Polls of Indigenous people, and it certainly seems that support for Yes is declining in that group. It's difficult to know how accurate these Polls are, given that a significant number of Indigenous Australians live in areas that are hard to get to and have limited communications. I wonder if Warren Mundine is accurate in estimating that 'around 30 per cent of Indigenous people are in favour of the Voice, 25 per cent are against, and 45 per cent aren’t aware a referendum is being held or haven’t decided.' It's troubling.

As of yesterday the majority of First Nations People still support the YES vote.

“A clear majority of First Australians are backing the Indigenous Voice in the final phase of the referendum despite a big fall in their support this year.” — Sydney Morning Herald, 11th October.

How has this been ascertained though? By polling First Nations people in cities? Because it's really hard to poll First Nations people who live in rural and remote areas.

@theveryhungrybum Here is a clip (if it works) from Parramatta last Sunday, when a message was delivered from the peoples of Arnhem land unanimously supporting the Voice.

The Land Councils are also clear in their support of the Voice.

If you have a look at Linda Burney’s feed on your preferred platform, you can see a range of diverse groups and individuals supporting the Voice :)

I happened on a video (Utube) of John Alexander (former Member for Bennelong) encouraging a No vote - and the comments below the video were disheartening.

I am still hoping the press is wrong and the Yes vote will get through...

I have a couple of friends who are wearing Yes tee shirts and are copping some abuse from people for wearing them.

The thing, though not the only thing that gets me about the No campaign is that fuckwitted "If you don't know vote No". Apart from the obvious if you don't know vote Yes being just as reasonable, who on Earth would wish to be associated with such a bottom-feeder non-argument? Embarrassing or what?

Even the Tories, when flogging Brexit had some monster lies on the sides of buses.

I just voted early with lots of others. The polling place was packed. I felt quite emotional. Such a small ask of us.

I think so many people have lost the ability to hold more than one thought in their head at the same time. It’s ok to feel that Australia is a great country which is somewhat thanks to the British coming in 1770, the institutions they put in place, as well as the people who have come here since then. Australia would never have stayed as purely a country for indigenous people after all.

It’s also ok to, at the same time, realise that the lives of especially rural indigenous Australians is woeful and that if there are ways to improve this, we should, especially when they are solutions proposed by the communities themselves.

It’s also ok to feel that, yes, sometimes the problems are of their own making, but does that mean we should just throw up our hands and give up?

The problem with these referenda (Brexit included) is that naturally they have to be yes/no and so we lose nuances of discussion and force people to come down on a “side” which makes them feel that they have to condense their thoughts into one answer.

The ABC has also done half the No campaign’s work for it, in showing some of the more extreme positions held by some indigenous Australians (paying rent, likening the struggle to Hamas, separate government etc) which I think most people didn’t even know they had before.

My DH is concerned that if this fails, there will be a wing of IAs that feel that taking to violence is their only remaining option. I truly hope not.

@Ozgirl75 I don't think your DH's fears will come to fruition. We are more at risk from violent right-wing, white supremacists. But I do feel like a no vote will make Indigenous Australians feel even more disenfranchised, and it will set back the reconciliation movement decades.

A quote from Adam Briggs:
Until Australia as a country and a nation embraces Blackfullas we won't have a real national identity. Until then, it's little Britain here.

And one more:
Referendums are a question of principle. Detail is legislated in Parliament after the fact. Asking for more detail is a hole-in-the-bucket argument – you can never bring them enough. It's a deliberate tactic by the opposition to derail Indigenous advancement.

So personally I feel that Adam Briggs is wrong about that - I’m British and it certainly doesn’t feel like “Little Britain” to me. I feel that Australia has a very clear identity different to British, partly because that suggests that the population is uniformly Anglo which it isn’t - nor obviously is it in Britain either.

I do agree on the “details” quote though and this is a big problem with referenda in general. People want to know some of the details behind big, relatively fixed changes, but equally it’s obvious that this is used in a way to make a non racist argument “well I would agree but I don’t know the detail so I can’t” as if people are somehow all over the detail of every legislative change that comes through.

Equally, the Yes campaign must have known that people would ask the question and they’ve dropped the ball by not being better prepared with a “this is what we would do on day one, month one, year one”. They must have more detail and I think in not fully sharing it, people wonder what they’re “hiding”.

Lastly, Albanese didn’t help himself by trying to be all things for all people early on. He was doing the “Ross from Friends” where he was saying to one set of people “it won’t affect many people, it’s just a way of recognising IA in the constitution” and then saying to others “yes it will make big changes” and not clearly articulating what he meant.

I think, understandably he didn’t want to say “look, non IAs, this is a non issue for you, it won’t affect your daily lives so just say yes” because it kind of diminishes the value of IAs to Australia.

i may be wrong about some of the coverage- I’m not currently in Australia and this hasn’t been covered by the press over here.

@Ozgirl75 thing is, though, that’s not how the Constitution works. The Constitution doesn’t have details, just principles - like (paraphrased) “The Parliament will have powers to make laws about trade and commerce” (s51(i)) or tax (s51(ii)). Then the Parliament enacts those laws, and that’s where we get the detail - like the very lengthy Australian Consumer Law or the appallingly complicated income tax laws.

In this case, the Parliament - including every party and independent - would get to participate in deciding on the legislation for the Voice. The No case knows this, but they are happy to mislead the public about it.

If you haven’t seen the local coverage, then you will have been spared some of the blatant lies from outlets like Sky.

Yes that makes sense - my point really was that for referenda people will want some level of detail and that (I think) is why they tend to fail (not just this one). Australia is culturally a pretty conservative country and tends to want to maintain the status quo.

I think the govt should have learnt the lessons from the Monarchy ref - they weren’t given the details of what might replace it and so people said no.

They should have thought this time, people will expect to know some details so let’s make sure we can present that.

Equally, there are some really awful articles and I don’t really understand why - it’s no skin off my nose (or the noses of the vast majority of Australians), and it won’t affect me in the slightest, so why would I say no?

Hmm, I don’t think that’s quite true about the Republic referendum. The Constitutional Convention spent ages working out a very detailed model, but the No case then wedged the vote by saying the model wasn’t right and we should wait for a better model - the “people’s president” bizzo - and of course a second referendum was never on the cards.

Yes sorry, in the monarchy one I think they were given some details but they didn’t like them!

So maybe they DID learn from that one!

Yes maybe they did! :) but unfortunately they didn’t learn that we must have bipartisan support for a referendum to succeed. With Dutton as opposition leader that was never going to happen.

I am so sad that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are going to be badly let down, over such a small, modest request.

@Ozgirl75 you’re right in that for us non-Indigenous folk, it doesn’t feel like little Britain, but I’m sure that for a lot of Indigenous people it does.

I remember the last referendum. John Howard deliberately proposed a model that he knew would be unpopular to undermine the yes vote, and it worked. That’s why Malcolm Turnbull (head of the republic movement) made the famous quote, “He will be remembered as the prime minister who broke Australia’s heart.”

I’m not sure how that could ever be different though, whatever the constitution said. You can’t erase the fact of history.

Yes I agree.

I'm a Brit (though have lived in WA,NSW, Victoria & the NT and still have lots of Aussie work/family connections). I would be voting Yes if eligible, but I see Yes reproducing many mistakes of the pro-Remain campaign in the UK (which I also supported), and I think they will end up with the same outcome.

If you characterise all your opponents as bad actors - racist, colonialist, anti-progress, 'Basket of Deplorables'- you don't win them over: you entrench their positions. That is exactly what happened in the Brexit referendum. IRL, if you want someone to support your position, you don't start by sledging them: you try to find common ground and to convince them to come across it, to your side. But that has not happened, from what I have seen in the Aussie media/SM I follow (I'm not talking about Indigenous campaigners here, but about how Yes has been run politically).

The other big mistake that Yes have failed to learn from Brexit is that exerting too much pressure from the Establishment (Government/legacy media/support from big corporations) is counterproductive and will reinforce the suspicions of floating voters/waverers about what you are trying to do. There are always more people suspicious of the government of the day (any government) than uncritically supportive of it - even many people who voted for the party in power will have done so unenthusiastically, thinking of them as the 'best of a bad lot'. So, if the government then sets themselves up as the proponents of one side of an argument, and offers the voters the chance to vote on that issue alone, without all other factors that determine voting in a GE, the government is always likely to get a kicking.

I think a powerful common denominator in both the British referendum and the Australian referendum is Murdoch media. Not to be underestimated.

The disparagement of No Voters is mostly happening on social media, not much anyone can do about that. We have had the Murdoch media (which is the largest in Australia I believe ) reporting things like ‘Marcia Langton called No voters racist and stupid’ which is not what she was saying & there was a lot more context (but effectively gets across the message. Or his media (especially sky news) pushing the falsehood that the Uluṟu Statement was really, ‘secretly’, 26 pages long and not one page, and that ‘they’ were hiding something. These are just two of the representations/lies used to cause resentment, and cast doubt, in the minds of Australian voters. Murdoch is not the only media that has indulged in this behaviour either. Others have followed suit.

And as has been mentioned up thread, Australia does not easily vote for a change in the constitution. It has to be a majority of votes in a majority of states. We are fully aware that the govt has to obey whatever way we vote in a referendum (I think that’s a difference between Britain and here - a referendum is not binding for the British govt?) And, as mentioned by a PP, constitutional change has always needed bipartisan support. To my mind Dutton/LNP has used this very important referendum for his/their own ends. He’s negotiated this referendum like it is a general election. In doing so, He just didn’t do the right and fair thing. (His ex Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians, Julian Leeser has). Sowing doubt had been most effective. Hopefully not totally (I still have a small hope).

I think Albanese has been quite moderate in getting his message across . He’s been seeking not to divide the country. (I’m not an Albanese fan btw - I would have been a teal voter in the last election, but I live in an area of Australia where voting teal was not an option). Albo has been accused of not being loud enough - ‘not getting his message across.’

I do agree a common denominator is lack of trust in our govts. The citizens of Britain, Australia and US are increasingly untrusting of govt.. Trump, Morrison and Johnson didn’t help.