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’m 6th generation Australian. Grew up in the country, moved to the city as an adult. ‘If you don’t know vote no’ is the most Australian tagline ever. Why would you get off your lazy arse and understand something when you can just say ‘nah’ instead?

We are world leaders in harnessing people’s base instincts to score political points. We deserve every criticism for this outcome.

Makes us look like racist rednecks but it wasn't that at all. A lot of aboriginal people said they were voting NO

I was neither for nor against, my stance was that it should have been a purely Indigenous decision. I’m not unhappy though as it seemed very premature. It seemed as though it really was just a conversation starter for many Indigenous communities and then there started to be a wide range of ideas on what would be best. That aspect should have been allowed to run to fruition with overwhelming Consensus (as opposed to a straight yes/no), then that should have been put to the Vote if necessary in a referendum, but honestly many things would not even have needed one. This was too rushed, although Albo says years in the making. If years resulted in that top line effort with zero detail that’s pretty poor. There was also the risk that if it got through there would be wiping of hands for the opportunity of anything better and Indigenous peoples could have been sold short essentially.

There now must be something. Something better. This conversation starter must now carry on in the Indigenous population to formulate a meaningful, palatable path they ALL feel happy to move on with. And we should accept what that is. I am hopeful and look forward to this. It will take a few years to establish whatever this path should look like, and that should not be rushed.

I have four Indigenous friends and all of them voted No - I think they have a general mistrust of the government which I guess is understanable.

I also think it's a matter of education - the higher No vote in the regions compared to the cities - I lived for years in the Central West of this state and the public schools were poor quality, people who could afford it send their kids to private schools -I had several friends who were high school teachers and they said parents in general were disinterested in their kids' educations and the kids themselves weren't interested as a result. Also good teachers were poached from the public schools by the private schools who could pay higher money

We need to get education in the regions improved so literacy rates are improved. It's small wonder the No vote was higher where people have little education and poor literacy.

“A STATEMENT FROM INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS WHO SUPPORTED THE VOICE REFERENDUM14 October, 2023

A Week of Silence for the Voice
Recognition in the constitution of the descendants of the original and continuing owners of Australia would have been a great advance for Australians. Alas, the majority have rejected it.

This is a bitter irony. That people who have only been on this continent for 235 years would refuse to recognise those whose home this land has been for 60,000 and more years is beyond reason. It was never in the gift of these newcomers to refuse recognition to the true owners of Australia.

The referendum was a chance for newcomers to show a long-refused grace and gratitude and to acknowledge that the brutal dispossession of our people underwrote their every advantage in this country.

For more than six years, we have explained to our nation why the Voice was our great hope to achieve real change for our families and communities.
**
To the Australians who supported us in this vote – we thank you sincerely. You comprise many millions of Australians of love and goodwill. We know you wanted a better future for Australia, and to put the colonial past behind us by choosing belated recognition and justice.

We thank the Prime Minister and his government for having the conviction to take this referendum to the Australian people at our request. We thank him for his advocacy and all parliamentarians who did the same, including members of the Teals, Greens, Nationals and independents who stood by us. We pay particular respect to the Liberal parliamentarians who bravely advocated for the voice.

We also thank our fellow Australians from all sectors of the community, including multicultural, faith, professional, business, creative and sporting organisations. To the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets, knocked on doors and made over a million phone calls, thank you for your love and support.

Our deep chagrin at this result does not in any way diminish our pride and gratefulness for the stand they had the moral courage to take in this cause now lost. We know we have them by our side in the ongoing cause for justice and fairness in our own land.

Now is not the time to dissect the reasons for this tragic outcome. This will be done in the weeks, years and decades to come. Now is the time for silence, to mourn and deeply consider the consequence of this outcome.

Much will be asked about the role of racism and prejudice against Indigenous people in this result. The only thing we ask is that each and every Australian who voted in this election reflect hard on this question.

To our people we say: do not shed tears. This rejection was never for others to issue. The truth is that rejection was always ours to determine. The truth is that we offered this recognition and it has been refused. We now know where we stand in this our own country. Always was. Always will be.

We will not rest long. Pack up the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Fly our flags low. Talk not of recognition and reconciliation. Only of justice and the rights of our people in our own country. Things that no one else can gift us, but to which we are entitled by fact that this is the country of our birth and inheritance.

Re-gather our strength and resolve, and when we determine a new direction for justice and our rights, let us once again unite. Let us convene in due course to carefully consider our path forward.

We are calling A Week of Silence from tonight (Saturday 14th October) to grieve this outcome and reflect on its meaning and significance. We will not be commenting further on the result at this time.

We will be lowering our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags to half-mast for the week of silence to acknowledge this result. We ask others to do the same.”

A Statement From Indigenous Australians…

Always was, Always will be

My Indigenous friends all voted yes. They have all expressed heartbreak and sorrow over the result.

We have failed them, again.

Sadly I think this is what sunk it for a lot of people. They just don’t believe this and fear what the Murdoch press said a lot about how we would all be paying rent etc because that’s what a small band of IAs were talking about. Sadly I think some people grasped onto those extreme ideas and based their voting on that.

So many factors including the fact that nobody has read the constitution and have picked up a US based reverence for it which it frankly does not deserve. DH is a constitutional lawyer so this is a live topic on our house. Mostly I will never forgive Dutton for deciding to politicise it.

@StartupRepair that’s very true. Our constitution is a purely pragmatic document which was not written in the context of a revolution. I was disgusted to see no-supporting lawyers blatantly misrepresenting the constitutional effect of the proposed amendment.

Polling details now showing strong support for the Voice in remote communities. Another big fat lie from Dutton and Price.

‘Always was, Always will be’

“I think this is what sunk it for a lot of people. They just don’t believe this and fear what the Murdoch press said a lot about how we would all be paying rent etc because that’s what a small band of IAs were talking about. Sadly I think some people grasped onto those extreme ideas and based their voting on that.”

I don’t agree. But think on this extreme idea.

Terra Nullius:

From the time of Captain Cook's arrival the British Government acted as if Australia were uninhabited. So, instead of admitting that it was invading land that belonged to Aboriginal people, Britain acted as it were settling an empty land. This is what is meant by the myth of terra nullius.

And that’s held up for how long? The bloody brutal history of the past 235 years in Australia is based on it. And once you say ‘no-one lives there’ - the floodgates open for unrecognised dispossessed, massacre, forced labour, rape, stolen children and all the rest.

@StartupRepair 👍

If Dutton had given it bipartisan support, this could have been so much different.

And yes, I just saw a results coming from the remote polling booths in at least 2 states showing very strong support for Yes. More to come.

I think people voting No weren’t thinking of what has happened in the past, but what might happen in the future. The press picked up on what a few very extreme IAs said about “paying the rent” and restricting access to various popular areas and extrapolated that to the idea that they would be paying rent to IA to live in their own house, or not being able to access their local beach etc. Sadly this was believed by a lot of people even though it’s clearly nonsense.

Terra Nullius was overturned in 1992 with the Mabo case.

https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/mabo-case

Yeah that isn’t really what we’re talking about.

What I’m saying is that some extreme IAs talked about things like “paying the rent” and reducing access to popular destinations and that was leapt on by the Murdoch press as something that would actually happen, whereas that was never going to happen.

Most educated people know that Mabo doesn’t randomly give all land (even land owned by other people) to IAs but I think some people believe that all IAs think all of Australian land is theirs and they can decide how it should be controlled. This misunderstanding was used by the Murdoch press to evoke fear that somehow IAs would “take” their land or demand payment, when that would just never happen.

I don’t think most people thought they might have lost their homes or to have had to literally pay rent. Obviously I don’t know the numbers, but I would think that kind of misunderstanding is in the minority.

What I do think is the “voice of division” argument got traction. That people thought is was not about inclusion and a seat at the table, but it was somehow going to fracture the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people even more.

And then there were the loud voices of people like Senator Price and Warren Mundine, who while they didn’t represent 50% of Indigenous Australians, they still managed to get 50% of the airtime and media attention for the sake of “balanced reporting”. Mundine was still going off and spewing vitriol at Marcia Langton on TV, even after the No vote won, which to me really shows you the measure of the man.

Laura Tingle, at the risk of her job, expressed despair at the airtime ABC reporters were forced to give the No campaign, and the lies they allowed them to repeatedly express on air.

At the end of the day, it just seems that for whatever reason, the Yes campaign couldn’t cut through to average voters who aren’t politically engaged and weren’t motivated to find out more themselves. I was shocked at the number of Vox pops in the last week leading up to the vote, where people interviewed either had no idea the referendum was coming up and/or were “confused” about it.

I agree. I remember seeing an interview on the streets of Adelaide and it was shocking how many people hadn’t even heard of the Voice. It’s like, do you literally never turn on the news or even glance at a newspaper? I just can’t fathom that level of lack of engagement and maybe the Yes vote people couldn’t either.

Like with Brexit, I think people voted for various reasons. My parents were Leave voters which I just found utterly bizarre because they love Europe and had traded in their business for years. But they said it wasn’t that they disliked what they had NOW, it was that the they believed that Remain meant greater future integration including losing sterling and losing the power to make our own laws and various other future fears. Nothing to do with racism or passports or jobs. For other voters presumably it would have been other things like fear of losing their jobs and for others, simple xenophobia.
Same for the Voice, I assume it was a mixture of reasons that the Yes campaign just failed to cut through with.
I also think it was a huge mistake to label No voters as racist idiots. They should have learnt from Brexit and also the Trump vote that firstly no one thinks that applies to them, and secondly no one thinks “oh the elites think I’m racist so I’ll change my vote so they don’t think that”. It just doesn’t happen like that.

I also think it was a huge mistake to label No voters as racist idiots. They should have learnt from Brexit and also the Trump vote that firstly no one thinks that applies to them, and secondly no one thinks “oh the elites think I’m racist so I’ll change my vote so they don’t think that”. It just doesn’t happen like that.

Agree. Also, people resent being made to feel guilty for the actions of their ancestors. I'm not saying that that is what the Yes campaign intended. But Yes made it too easy for No to spin it that way - which was predictable.

There seemed to be a lot of stress from Yes on righting previous wrongs and - while there are some huge and terrible wrongs to be righted - that isn't a message likely to fire up potential supporters. Political campaigns tend to win by being future-focused and offering a better tomorrow, not by looking back. Yes didn't seem (to me as an outsider, anyway) to have a clear enough offer to non-Indigenous Australia, to get the support of the majority.

All it ever was was an advisory council with no veto or legislative rights. Completely blown up by the Coalition and the right wing media using Trumpian tactics. It was a humble request.

And right on time, the inevitable "Australians are all racists" thread on AIBU...

100% agree. Even I (a relatively centre left person) don’t actually feel responsibility for the actions of the past - I wasn’t involved, and I just don’t feel guilt by association. I don’t feel that a debt is owed by me and I think lots of Australians feel like that, especially more recent immigrants who don’t even have a British background.
However, for me, talking about how this would make a difference for the future is much more compelling because this IS in my hands.