Australia Votes (Resoundingly) No
A Retrospective Look At The Voice Debate
M. D. Kwak
AS OF 15/10 12.24PM, 75% of the national vote has been counted and nationally, 60% of Australians have voted No. In every single state (excluding the ACT, as it is a territory), the No vote is nearly, or in many cases above the 60% mark.
The Yes campaign has not merely failed – it has been utterly devastated. A seemingly reasonable aspiration for improving Australian Torres Straight Islander (ATSI) rights has been singularly rejected by the Australian polity, ruthlessly exercising their tyranny of the majority – a tyranny sanctioned by our democratic system.
A little more than a year ago, polls suggested that public support for the Yes campaign was over 60%. Now the figures have practically reversed – a remarkable (and for some, heart wrenching) change in only a single year. The question is: Why?
July 2022: Albanese commits to the Voice referendum.
Following his victorious election night speech in which he committed first Labour to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, Albanese released his draft wording to a 2023 referendum to recognise the Indigenous people in the Australian Constitution and enshrine their right to a Voice in Parliament. It was also announced that the specific details would come after the referendum (to avoid making it too prescriptive), perhaps a strategic error in light of the unrelenting criticism levelled against the supposed “vagueness” of the proposal. However, the “nebulous” details of the Voice would have been decided after consultation with Indigenous people, and then voted on by the legislative body in Parliament – making it a fully democratic process that people could participate in by writing to their MPs. But who cares about the truth when you can just fearmonger about some “nebulous” proposal that would take away our public holidays and engage in large-scale land repatriation.
July to November 2022: Jacinta Price enters the scene, and the Nationals publicly oppose the Voice.
Jacinta Price, in her first speech to the Senate, delivered three separate blows that would become common talking points for the No campaign down the track.
First, she characterised the proposed Voice as a virtue-signalling and impractical mechanism of change that would fail to deliver “practical” outcomes for Indigenous people, throwing around big (but really meaningless) words like “paternalistic” and “another level of bureaucracy”.
Second, she said that the Voice would create further racial divides between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians (supposedly under the idealistic impression that these divides didn’t exist at all in the status quo and ASTI communities weren’t one the most marginalised Indigenous populations in the world).
Third, in an ironic sense, her most powerful contribution was her appeal to identity politics (I thought conservatives despised that kind of rhetoric?). Her speech promoted the No argument, suggesting that Indigenous people didn’t back the Voice, despite polls estimating that 80% of Indigenous Australians actually do.
Soon after, Nationals leader David Littleproud publicly announced their opposition to the Voice (of course flanked by Price for that illustrious photo op). Knowing the track record of the Nationals, I couldn’t say this was a huge surprise. Nevertheless, Indigenous spokespeople, like Price and Mundine, played a crucial role as frontrunners for the No campaign – both in terms of the arguments they provided as well as the reassurance they gave No voters that at least some Indigenous people didn’t support this proposition.
Early 2023: The Greens kind of screw it up.
The Greens’ official party platform was to support the Voice despite preferring for the more radical treaty to happen first. Lidia Thorpe, who was the party’s Indigenous affairs spokesperson at the time, quit the party over her disagreement with this and sat as an Independent to lead a “progressive No” campaign. Obviously her reasons for a No vote were polar opposite to Price’s. Whilst Price opposed the Voice for being too “paternalistic” and “racialising”, Thorpe dismissed the Voice as being a powerless advisory body that didn’t go far enough in achieving Black sovereignty. But many Australians couldn’t differentiate between the two and saw Thorpe’s departure as further evidence of the conservative narrative that Indigenous people didn’t want the Voice (perhaps a sign that we ought reconsider how we conduct civics/political knowledge education for Australians in the future).
April 2023: Dutton cements his opposition.
Dutton had been in the backdrop until this time, raising doubts about the Voice (using many of the talking points raised prior) but never actually confirming his party’s stance. When he did so in April, any hope for bipartisan support in the referendum dissolved. This decision did alienate many prominent Liberals, including Leeser and Wyatt, but it still had the desired effect of isolating Labor and ensuring a hefty block of Coalition voters would oppose the referendum come October.
Historically, referenda are virtually impossible to pass without bipartisan support and Australians are usually hesitant to usher in constitutional change that they perceive as being monumental and irreversible.
The failed Voice referendum may feel devastating for many individuals. But watching politicians from both the Yes and No camps affirming their commitment to improving the rights and welfare of ASTI communities despite such a result, all I can hope for is that they are genuine in their remarks and find success in their renewed efforts. It would be woeful if Parliament remains in the same cycle of stagnancy and inaction that has gripped them for the past few centuries and Australia remains complicit in the face of continuing injustice and trauma.