The 2023 Voice Referendum: The outcome (October 2023)
Last weekend the Voice referendum was lost, with more than 60% of Australians voting ‘No’. The result of years of consultation and the request of Indigenous Australians through the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart, the referendum was defeated in every state and territory except the ACT.
In my state of South Australia the result was even more emphatic, with 65% voting ‘No’. Queensland has the lowest ‘Yes’ vote at just 31%. The resounding national verdict left ‘Yes’ supporters shell-shocked, in tears, angry, or even devastated. It shattered many Indigenous leaders who had campaigned for years for a constitutionally enshrined Voice. A group of Indigenous leaders have since issued a statement announcing a week of silence, flags to be flown at half-mast and the brutal comment: 'We now know where we stand in...our own country'. They said the week will be used to “grieve this outcome and reflect on its meaning and significance”. Well that week has now ended, so I also end my silence on this matter.
While I’m saddened at the result, I am saddened at the way the campaigning played out, with leading ‘Yes’ campaigner and First Nations man Thomas Mayo saying “The racist vitriol we felt was at a level not seen for decades in Australia.” I’ll spare you examples of the horrible things that were posted online.
Lets focus on why the
referendum failed. Many
people blamed the referendum’s failure on the Coalition, in particular
Opposition leader Peter Dutton and Nationals leader David Littleproud. Others
pointed to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese who championed the failed ‘Yes’
vote. But I think both are to blame.
Firstly, no Australian referendum has ever been successful without bipartisan support, as the Prime Minister Albanese noted in his speech following the referendum’s defeat. Given this knowledge, the Government (Labor, led by Albanese) should have sat at the table with the Coalition at the very start, and asked what would be needed for the Coalition to support a ‘Yes’ campaign. Several years ago an expert panel that included Voice leaders Noel Pearson and Megan Davis specifically recommended: “The referendum should only proceed when it is likely to be supported by all major political parties, and a majority of state governments.” So a large portion of blame needs to sit with the (Labor) Government for this massive mistake, deciding to proceed, possibly because polls had the referendum tracking at around 60% support up until the National and Liberal parties decided to oppose it.
Secondly, the ‘No’ campaign ran a clever campaign designed to make Australians believe a number of things that are factually untrue or are misleading. The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) struggled to get Twitter (now known as X) to remove posts that it says are inciting violence against staff and promoting disinformation about the electoral process, with Twitter repeatedly ruling that tweets referred by the AEC were not against its terms of service, such as posts falsely claiming that enrolment fraud is occurring, that the AEC is corrupt, and stating “You pack of dogs will have your day” and “stop interfering in policy, or pay the price”, which the AEC unsurprisingly interpreted as a threat.
Examples of the lies and misinformation being spread by the ‘No’ campaign include:
1. ’No’ campaign figureheads Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Warren Nyunggai Mundine – two prominent Aboriginal people – put doubt in people’s minds that the vast majority of First Nations people supported the referendum, particularly as Price claimed that she had spoken to many mob in outback Australia and didn’t think there was strong support for the Voice. The referendum outcome proved that was incorrect, with more than 80% of First Nations people voting ‘Yes’. This was supported by opinion polls in the lead up, which also accurately predicted the referendum would fail. Importantly, remote Indigenous communities overwhelmingly voted in favour of enshrining an Indigenous Voice to Parliament in Australia’s Constitution. [Source: news.com.au article ‘Indigenous groups break silence in wake of Voice, condemn No ‘vitriol’ and vow to move forward’, 22 October 2023] For those unaware, the Aboriginal population in Australia is around 3%. Of course, prior to the First Fleet arriving in 1788 it was 100%.
It is possible that ‘a significant number of voters did not realise Price was a politician, instead mistaking the first-term senator for an organic voice emanating from the grassroots’. [Source: The Sydney Morning Herald article ‘The devil in the details: Inside the Yes campaign’s defeat’, 16 October 2023] Did they not realise that Price famously said “there are no negative ongoing impacts of British colonisation on Indigenous Australians, dismissing concerns about intergenerational trauma”? So Price is clearly not grassroots. One conversation with a local Kaurna elder made it clear to me how prevalent intergenerational trauma is. If Price has been speaking to as many mob as she claims, she would know her claim is totally false, so I can only assume she deliberately set out to mislead voters.
2. The ‘No’ campaign stated that a ‘Yes’ vote would be ‘divisive’. While it was unclear exactly why they were claiming this, many interpreted this a First Nations people being given greater standing that other Australians, by being named in the constitution and also having an advisory body to Parliament. Dutton in particular had no intention of ever supporting the referendum and instead aimed at inflicting as much damage on Labor and Albanese as possible throughout the campaign. In a speech Dutton gave in parliament in May he unnerved even some in his own party when he denounced the Voice as something that would “re-racialise” the country and make Indigenous Australians “more equal” than non-Indigenous Australians. In reality a ‘Yes’ vote would have brought Australians together, and promoted reconciliation through the constitutional recognition of our First Nations people.
3. The ‘No’ campaign claimed that the referendum was just the first step towards sweeping changes that would affect all Australians, such as having to hand over our homes in some sort of bizarre land rights scenario. It was interesting to note that the largest financial supporters of the ’No’ vote were mining companies and big corporations who possibly feared their work would be made more difficult if the referendum succeeded. However this was totally baseless and simple scaremongering, designed to create fear in voters.
4. ‘No’ campaigners warned the Voice would delay and disrupt government and foreshadowed decades of litigation, as outlined by former High Court judge Ian Callinan. However a raft of legal experts, including a number of former High Court justices and lower court jurists, all reassured the public that the proposed constitutional change was legally sound. Again, this was the ‘No’ campaign attempting to instil fear.
5. There were other lies and misinformation as well, mostly concocted by the radical right, but the ‘No’ campaign and the Coalition did nothing to dispel these myths, and at times even seemed to support them.
So I reserve the largest portion of the blame to the ‘No’
campaigners and the Coalition. Its so frustrating that the lies and
misinformation were allowed to continue. I am bemused that it was even legal. Businesses can be punished for false
advertising, however it seems in politics that anything goes.
I am bitterly disappointed and ashamed of the referendum result, and how this reflects on all of us as Australians. I am bemused at my fellow Australians being so easily duped into the lies and misinformation. I am saddened at how hard this referendum has been on First Nations people (largely due to the ‘No’ campaign and racist online trolls). Most of all I am fearful that this result has set reconciliation back decades.
Notable quotes regarding
the referendum:
Independent advocacy organisation, Australian’s for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTaR), said it was deeply saddened by the result and vowed to continue advocating for treaty and truth: “It was fair to say that “not everyone who voted ‘no’ is racist but [is] also fair to say that all racists voted ‘no’,” the non-profit wrote on social media.
Yes campaigner Thomas Mayo said “we have seen a disgusting No campaign, a campaign that has been dishonest, that has lied to the Australian people and I'm sure that will come out in the analysis.”
One article claimed that Mayo targeted Peter Dutton personally, quoting Mayo saying Dutton had been “dishonest” and “lied to the Australian people”. “There should be repercussions for this sort of behaviour in our democracy, they should not get away with this,” Mayo said. [Source: The Guardian article ‘Yes campaign sheds tears for a brutal result – but also for the dark victory of misinformation’, 14 October 2023]
After acknowledging “this is not the result we were seeking”, ‘Yes’ campaign director, Dean Parkin, addressed Australians who had voted “with hardness in [their] hearts”. “Understand that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have never wanted to take anything from you. All we wanted to do was to join with you, our Indigenous story, our Indigenous culture. Not to take away or diminish what it is that you have but to add to it, to strengthen [it], to enrich it.” Parkin also lamented the ‘No’ campaign, calling it “the single largest misinformation campaign that this country has ever seen”.
“We asked for this referendum and the government facilitated the process. The loss of this referendum falls fairly and squarely on us as Aboriginal campaigners.” Marcus Stewart, Indigenous leader.
'Just another deep wound to the blak soul,' Indigenous actress Naarah Barnes.
“Jacinta was always going to be star of the show. She will go down in the annals of history as the first-term MP who took on the PM and won.” Barnaby Joyce, former Nationals leader.
Katter’s Australian Party MP Bob Katter said it was a “wokie mob pushing the voice” and says “wokies are interested in their moral image” but “aren’t the slightest bit interested in the people”.
Sky News host Rita Panahi reflected on the referendum outcome saying “if the people's vote is to be respected, it should mean abandoning, or at least scaling back, recent concessions to separatism”. He said this includes flying the Aboriginal flag co-equally with the national one and the routine acknowledgement of country by all speakers at official events. “I don't know about you but I'm thoroughly sick and tired of being welcomed to my own country and listening to endless, unnecessary and frankly sometimes incoherent acknowledgement of country announcements,” Ms Panahi said.
Grace Tame, a survivor of child sexual abuse, said she was disappointed with Mr Dutton’s politicking and pointed out the irony of his hard-line stance after months of actively campaigning against a Voice to Parliament: “It is clearly a self-serving and cynical attempt to leverage the momentum of the political football that is still in the air, which is almost guaranteed to further exacerbate the intergenerational trauma of First Nations communities,” she said. “I find it incredibly ironic that the Leader of the Opposition was so strongly against the Voice to Parliament for reasons including that he did not want to divide a country by race, yet is now calling for a royal commission that singles out First Nations communities. If the Leader of the Opposition is so invested in addressing the nationwide epiademic of child sexual abuse and all the issues facing our First Nations communities, it would have made logical sense to encourage bipartisan support for an advisory body intended specifically for such purposes.”
TV personality Waleed Aly reasoned on The Project earlier this week that “the biggest dividing line seems to have been education. If you were in a seat with high levels of tertiary education, Bachelor or Post you were at the very top end of the Yes vote. If you had the lowest levels of socio-education you were at the low end of the Yes vote.
And I’ll leave you with the lyrics of a song by one of my favourite bands, Midnight Oil, written way back in 1986, The Dead Heart:
We don't serve your country
Don't serve your king
Know your custom don't speak your tongue
White man came took everyone
We don't serve your country
Don't serve your king
White man listen to the songs we sing
White man came took everything
We carry in our hearts the true country
And that cannot be stolen
We follow in the steps of our ancestry
And that cannot be broken
We don't serve your country
Don't serve your king
Know your custom don't speak your tongue
White man came took everyone
We don't need protection
Don't need your hand
Keep your promise on where we stand
We will listen we'll understand
We carry in our hearts the true country
And that cannot be stolen
We follow in the steps of our ancestry
And that cannot be broken
We carry in our hearts the true country
And that cannot be stolen
We follow in the steps of our ancestry
And that cannot be broken
Mining companies, pastoral companies
Uranium companies
Collected companies
Got more right than people
Got more say than people
Forty thousand years can make a difference to the
state
of things
The dead heart lives here.
