According to a survey conducted for the Nine papers and reported yesterday, support for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament has dropped from 58% to 53% over the past month. It’s a boost for the two major No campaigns, which had consolidated a week earlier, though some of the shine might have been taken off by the revelation they had misidentified Millwarparra man Stewart Lingiari as land rights activist Vincent Lingiari’s grandson in their advertising.
Following on from our survey of the groups advocating a Yes vote, here is our rundown of some of the key figures opposing an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
Australians for Unity
Until their merger as Australians for Unity on May 11, the two main groups opposing a Voice (at least on the conservative side, more on that later) were Recognise a Better Way led by Nyunggai Warren Mundine, and Fair Australia, most prominently associated with opposition Indigenous Australians spokesperson Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.
Mundine has travelled a long way in politics and in life — not least in his movement from support for a Voice to fierce opposition. The ninth of 11 children in a devoted Catholic and Labor-voting family, he worked his way from Dubbo City Council in the mid-1990s to National Labor Party president in 2006. Since letting his membership of the party lapse in 2012 after a series of preselection snubs, to his current position opposing the ALP’s most ambitious policy, the shift has not been sudden.
As early as 2004, Mundine joined John Howard’s National Indigenous Council, and criticised his then-party’s “politically correct” approach to Aboriginal policy. When the Coalition returned to government in 2013, Mundine was appointed chair of the Indigenous Advisory Council by “kindred spirit” Tony Abbott. He ran for the Liberal Party in the seat of Gilmore in 2019, but still Parliament eluded him, and he opted against nominating for the late Jim Molan’s Senate seat in 2023.
Price, a Warlpiri/Celtic woman and Country Liberal Party senator, has been a go-to on Indigenous issues for the conservative media for many years now — most notably in her detailing, while an Alice Springs town councillor, of her experiences of domestic violence, her contention that Indigenous culture can be used as a shield for abusers in communities like hers, and her regular campaigns in defence of Australia Day.
In her alignment with the right wing, Price has followed a similar path to her mother, Bess, a minister in Adam Giles’ Country Liberal government in the Northern Territory who expressed strong support for the Howard government’s Northern Territory intervention.
Indeed, Price’s recent visit to Alice Springs with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton — in which the pair made claims of “rampant child abuse” and the area effectively being a “failed state” — was met with strong criticisms from locals, furious at, among other things, Price’s “discrediting the Arrernte country of Alice Springs”, something they argued she had no right to do as a Warlpiri woman.
Then there is Gary Johns. Where Johns, former Labor MP and secretary of Recognise a Better Way, falls on this issue will be no surprise to those who have followed his work since he left Parliament in 1996. Within a year of losing his seat, he’d become a senior fellow at conservative think tank the Institute of Public Affairs, and he was president of another conservative think tank, the Bennelong Society, dedicated to Indigenous Australian affairs.
It is one of the many conservative think tanks championed by hard-right businessman Ray Evans, which helped shape decades of debate around Indigenous affairs (as well as climate change and industrial relations). In the past decade, Johns has been a prolific author on Indigenous affairs for hardline conservative publisher Connor Court with titles like Aboriginal Self-determination: The Whiteman’s Dream (2011), Recognise What? (2014) and No Contraception, No Dole: Tackling Intergenerational Welfare. The Turnbull government made Johns head of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission.
The Black sovereignty movement
As Darumbal and South Sea Islander journalist Amy McQuire wrote last month, while the media has happily given time to the conservative No campaigners, they do not represent the totality of opposition to — or at the very least scepticism about — the Voice:
The Black conservative No campaign reeks of hypocrisy and self-interest, and the most egregious part of it is that it undermines a very sophisticated No campaign from other Blackfellas who are approaching the issue from a different viewpoint. Many Blackfellas I have spoken to are still concerned that the Voice may not lead to change or a challenging of the status quo. There are concerns about the racist rhetoric inevitably drummed up in a referendum year, and concerns about what a Voice design could look like. There are legitimate concerns about when and how we can ask questions and whether a Voice will be truly representative.
Some of the most explicit hostility to the Voice has come at this year’s Invasion Day rallies, held to mark January 26. Several speakers in Melbourne and Sydney, such as Meriki Onus, Lizzy Jarrett and Gary Foley, have urged a No vote (“Beware of Blak bourgeoisie trying to sell you a referendum, trying to sell you a shonky proposition called the Voice,” Foley told the crowd in Melbourne).
Lidia Thorpe, a Djab Wurrung, Gunnai and Gunditjmara woman and independent senator, has been the most prominent Voice critic representing the idea of Black sovereignty — the power over the lands that make up Australia, which was never ceded by Indigenous people.
Thorpe was initially elected by the Greens in 2020, taking up the Victorian Senate spot vacated by former party leader Richard Di Natale (she had previously held the state seat of Northcote between the 2017 byelection and the “Danslide” in 2018). She returned to office in May 2022. By February 2023, she had split with the party over differences on the Voice.
“This country has a strong grassroots Black sovereign movement, full of staunch and committed warriors, and I want to represent that movement fully in this Parliament,” she said, announcing her resignation.
“It has become clear to me that I can’t do that from within the Greens.
“There is a Black sovereign movement out there that no one wants to listen to, so I will be their voice.”
Other figures Thorpe has identified among the Black sovereignty movement include Chelsea Watego, a Mununjali Yugambeh and South Sea Islander woman, Professor of Indigenous Health at Queensland University of Technology and author of Another Day in the Colony; pro vice chancellor of Aboriginal leadership and strategy at the University of South Australia Irene Watson, who belongs to the Tanganekald, Meintangk and Boandik peoples and has written that the Voice offers “no hope and no future for First Nations”; and Gunai-Kurnai and Gunditjmara activist and author of Black and Blue Ronnie Gorrie.
I’m trying very hard to understand the No point of view, but failing. Uluru trumps all.
It’s cynical political wedging for the sake of denying Labor govt., ‘yes’ supporters and the Voice, supported by any PR opp or media stunt, real or confected.
Twitter is full of accounts, bots, both professional PR and the committed (with many followers), pushing any BS that supports No.
Made even easier by Musk’s change of algorithms so that one sees anti Voice messaging, along with a flood of all the other RWNJ issues……
In fact I saw one doing an Oz audience, but preceded by also addressing a UK Tory audience on e.g. ‘immigration’, what else?
But promotion of wedge issues, conspiracies etc. is all that the right has left in lieu of no grounded policies for any constituency except noisy RW ‘elites’ wit a media profile?
There is more than one possible rationale for not supporting the proposition, drastic.
e.g.
I’m not endorsing any of those views – just imagining and repeating what other people who have other interests and different ways of thinking to myself might think.
I can see a few valid reasons:
Politics is the art of the possible. Ceding all Australia to First Nations people will never happen. What does need to happen is to enable indigenous peoples to have a say in how the money is spent , the priorities and who carries out the operation of projects. The indigenously run intuitional college of Tranby in Glebe in an example of what can be achieved with indigenous control
Don’t want to be rude but if you think the Yulara statement from the Arse trumps all then you’re not trying very hard. There’s much to learn.
Seek out the Dialogue Transcripts and read the final report of the Referendum Council. Seek out the interviews and facebook of people who were there. Con Rec was rejected. No one wanted a Govt controlled advisory body with no power. Google what Michael Mansell has to say. Leader, lawyer, activist and he was there.
Seek out the opinions of the protest movement who are the real grass roots leaders that don’t get paid but have devoted their lives to Aboriginal Self determination. Because they are saying no.
But mostly read the proposed wording. Then imagine the country was invaded by anyone… say Iran. Then substitute all the words “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander” with Australian and “Australia and Parliament /Govt” with Iran and see how that feels.
If the colonial state makes the decisions then there is no self determination and that’s in breach of the UNDRIP.
Also read the Crikey articles on Mark Textor because he has been the strategist for Con Rec since before Recognise. Its also sponsored by BHP, Rio Tinto Woodside Energy and PWC.
Thorpe is quite mad. We are stuck with her for five years and she can fade from politics. That she beat the very talented Julian Burnside KC to become a senator is a poor reflection on the Greens.
Nobody has ever accused the Greens of being sensible and logical, and I am not going to try.
Is X “mad” or have you not yet managed to consider X’s arguments from a context other than your own?
What do you consider not valid about Thorpe’s view that sovereignty was never conceded by pre-colonial people?
What do you consider “mad” about not wanting to settle for something less than a treaty, given that sovereignty was never ceded?
If it’s just that you consider that more is unlikely to be won, because of a power imbalance, and so you’d settle for less, then what you have with Price is simply a divergence of strategic thought — not a “mad” person.
A divergence of principle. Can there be justice without addressing sovereignty?
She stole her platform and salary. This is not a comment on her position on the Voice, but on the fact she has a megaphone she didn’t earn.
Any detail to back up “She stole her platform and salary…”?
Do tell – the AEC would be interested were it true.
She was elected as a Greens candidate and only a few personal votes. Standing in her own right she would still be a private citizen and not a senator? She did deceive those who voted Green.
That’s how Senators are elected, only a fish’s handful have ever received a personal quota, not even the unlamented Butcher of Baghdad.
Is it the party at fault for selecting her as a candidate?
Who deceived whom, where, when & how?
Be specific, name names!!!
Both Price and Mundine have done very well out of the way things are, and I believe their reason for opposing the Voice is purely self-interest.
This could apply equally as reasoning against it. Actual successful indigenous people without even having a voice… who wold have thought?
Voice to Parliament: the brains behind the No campaigns. Brains????? That is a bit generous!
Yes, I’m more interested in the money behind the campaign. Price’s mob are ‘powered (ie funded) by Advance, the right-wing mob with secret funders trying to be a right-wing alternative to GetUp.
These highish placed Indigenous people opposing a Voice for Indigenous people are self-seeking opportunists who know they would not be newsworthy if they simply went along with the idea. They are getting a kick out of notoriety. Particularly Thorpe who is now the spokesperson for indigenous people whether they like it or not.
When they provide some sound reason for opposing the Voice I will listen (but probably not change my view). Until then I will ignore them. I would urge the Indigenous population to do the same.