YES campaigners in Sydney react to the failed referendum. Photo: Jenny Evans
As regular readers will know, this site publishes anything that has a relevance to the struggle of Indigenous Scots to reclaim their autonimous rights, anything in literary form from around the world that shows the lengths a controlling administration will go to impede progress for the ethnic minority that once lived off the land – and respected natural things – as free nomadic tribes. In this instance Australia appears to have fallen at the final fence to bring justice and shared governance to Indigenous Aboriginal Tribes. There was a long campaign and lately compulsory vote to include the ethnic minority in the Australian constitution. It goes without saying that the White usurper wrote the constitution.
NO ABORIGINIES IN THE CONSTITUTION
Australians have resoundingly rejected a proposal to recognise Aboriginal people in its constitution and establish a body to advise parliament on Indigenous issues. Saturday’s voice to parliament referendum failed, with the defeat clear shortly after polls closed.
To succeed, the yes campaign – advocating for the voice – needed to secure a double majority, meaning it needed both a majority of the national vote, as well majorities in four of Australia’s six states. One can argue the vote was loaded.
The defeat will be seen by Indigenous advocates as a blow to what has been a hard fought struggle to progress reconciliation and recognition in modern Australia, with First Nations people continuing to suffer discrimination, poorer health and economic outcomes. More than 17 million Australians were enrolled for the compulsory vote, with many expats visiting embassies around the world in the weeks leading up to Saturday’s poll.
The vote occurred 235 years on from British settlement, 61 years after Aboriginal Australians were granted the right to vote, and 15 years since a landmark prime ministerial apology for harm caused by decades of government policies including the forced removal of children from Indigenous families.
The referendum had been a key promise that Labor party [in Australia it’s ‘Labor’ not Labour]took to the federal election in 2022, when it returned to power after years of conservative rule. Support for the voice to parliament had been strong in the early months of 2023, polling showed, but subsequently began a slow and steady decline. All major polls had foreshadowed that the NO campaign would succeed and the voice would be rejected. Nationwide support for the voice was hovering at about 40% in the week before the vote, with coverage of the campaign being overshadowed by the outbreak of war in the Middle East in the crucial final days.
The concept for the advisory body, which would have included Indigenous representatives from each of Australia’s six states and two territories voted in by their local Indigenous electors, was developed and endorsed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders in 2017. A majority of Indigenous voters supported the proposal, according to polling. It was envisaged to provide Australia’s government with non-binding advice on issues affecting about 4% of the population who identify as Indigenous. While such an advisory body could have been created through legislation, the proposal was designed to enshrine its existence in the constitution so it could not be removed by future governments.
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. Opposition to the voice seized on this ambiguity, adopting a campaign slogan of “if you don’t know, vote no”. But reasons for the decline in support were broad.
Voters at St Kilda primary school polling centre in Melbourne. Photo: Asanka Ratnayake
The referendum question, to amend Australia’s constitution to recognise the first peoples of Australia by establishing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice to parliament, was deliberately vague. The failure of Australia’s previous referendum in 1999 – to become a republic and acknowledge Indigenous ownership – was seen to have failed because it put forward a specific model to voters.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and his ministers were prominent faces of the yes movement, and while Labor did not lead the campaign, the government’s focus on the referendum was seen alongside its handling of other national issues. It weathered accusations that it championed the voice push while failing to deliver tangible improvements for citizens facing cost of living pressures and a housing crisis hurt the yes side. Meanwhile, the Liberal party in opposition formally backed the no vote, with senior Indigenous members speaking out against the voice.
Arguments against the proposal included that no such representative body was needed, that it was introducing race into the constitution, and that the voice would divide the nation. Opposition also emerged from the far left of progressive politics and a minority of grassroots Indigenous activists, who rejected the voice while calling for more significant reconciliation measures, including a treaty with Aboriginal Australians.
Indigenous advocates from each side of the debate reported receiving a surge in racist abuse and prominent Aboriginal personalities across Australian media also complained of the toxic nature of debate and online vitriol.
There is an eight-year gap in life expectancy for Indigenous Australians compared with non-Indigenous Australians, a suicide rate twice the national average, and comparatively poorer outcomes for health, education and infant mortality.
74% voted YES of 11,000 Indigenous People in Northern Territory’s Lingiari.
POST SCRIPT
Regions with a high proportion of Indigenous Australians overwhelmingly voted YES in the referendum – including the community where prominent no campaigner Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s family is from. The YES vote in polling catchments where Indigenous Australians formed more than 50% of the population was, on average, 63% in favour. The knowledgeable will know Indigenous Scots voted 53% YES in Scotland’s 2014 Referendum, and of the NO’s 37% wanted greater political powers short of full autonomy. There is a hunger for liberty that will not be satisfied with colonial brush-offs. Sad to report, Indigenous groups are saying reconciliation is dead, and they will remain silent.
NOTES
Howard Cairns, our man in Australia, adds this: The Liberal Party (Tory) leader Peter Dutton (an EX-Policeman with the appeal of Lord Voltemort) and their partner’s in crime the Country Party (with check shirts and gumboots) both decided at the beginning that they would push the NO vote. They seem to think this would damage the Labor party when the next election is held. They may be right, time will tell. My opinion is that the typical Australian has learnt from the previous behaviour of the English Colonialists. They feel they need the Aborigines who were here for up to 65,000 years should stay where they are in poverty stricken, rundown villages without jobs, health services but with Alcohol and drug problems, and nothing to do. Support for Yes was strongest in the inner suburbs, while the majority of outer suburban, regional and rural voters said No. But analysts say the reasons why voters rejected the referendum question is more complex.
Anthony Albanese, the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese vows to forge a new way forward to close the gap in life outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, after voters resoundingly reject a Voice to Parliament.
Lorena Allam of the Guardian paper points out the lies being peddled by these forces to scare the population into voting No: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/13/indigenous-voice-to-parliament-referendum-fact-check-yes-campaign-no-campaign
This report partly comes from Elias Visontay, first published in the Guardian.
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Grouse Beater 
This result disgusts me. Shame on you, Australia.
Ditto.