Neville McCloy writes: I can see the headlines in the international media if the Voice to Parliament fails: “Australia rejects reconciliation with its Indigenous people” (“There’s nothing surprising about the No campaign’s success”). What a racist lot we would look like if that were to prevail, nothing more than a little wealthy white country getting rich off the one thing we do — mining.
The latent uncovering of the real Australia as a racist mob, exploited by John Howard and continued shamelessly by Peter Dutton, confines all of us to being utterly tarred with the brush of hateful ordinariness and brutish white entitlement that apartheid South Africa would have been proud of.
Steve Brennan writes: The referendum’s outcome will depend on Anthony Albanese waking up from his complacency (and hubris) and deciding to fight, as he did after the disastrous start to his election campaign. Dutton is a thoroughly toxic, unprincipled creature, we know this. But in this fight, he is a formidable opponent as he’s tapping the politics of populism like John Howard masterfully demonstrated. White supremacy is alive and well here in Australia and has deep support from the mining sector. The miners always win and are deeply worried that they will somehow lose the right to dig up any part of this country they want to.
There is big money, powerful right-wing media and very clever communications strategists standing behind the No campaign. This has been a huge miscalculation on the part of Albanese. The Voice referendum is pretty much his baby and if it fails, it’s going to have deep repercussions for him. If I was a betting man, I’d put money on a No win. Naturally Dutton will delude himself this is a win for his credibility as leadership material. Laughable, of course, because that man will never, ever win an election.
I also must add the reality of a No win is the effect this will have on the fabric of the nation. It will be a dark cloud that will hang over us for a very long time and will mean the end of Indigenous reconciliation. There will be much more division in society and many more Indigenous people will suffer and die. Will Dutton reflect on this as the chief protagonist? Absolutely not. But it will come back to visit him.
Tor Hundloe writes: I am not surprised that Labor voters are drifting to the No side. In my in-depth focus group work commencing earlier in the year when the Voice was not as prominent, I was surprised to find there were Labor voters — at that stage a minority — who took the traditional socialist position that society should not be divided on racial grounds, while being very supportive of the marginalised Indigenous peoples. As time has passed the Labor cohort’s No vote has grown.
These voters were all for assisting the poor and disadvantaged in remote communities, with better-directed policy — and a Voice. But they viewed the Indigenous spokespeople as a very well-paid, self-serving elite (e.g. Stan Grant and the various professors) with nothing in common with the outback poor Indigenous folk.
As I have continued with my focus group work, the impression I get, particularly from the Labor voters, is that they do not want to be associated with Dutton. He is disliked. Some will say they have no choice if they stick to their No vote. Those more engaged point to Warren Mundine (a former president of the Labor Party) and Indigenous peoples they associate with the grassroots. Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price is much admired; Senator Lidia Thorpe is anything but.
However, there is one group of Labor or Green supporters where Yes voters are in the majority: the young.
Jan Jeltes writes: It’s either “you’re with the Voice, or you’re categorised as a right-wing opportunist and a racist by the solemn intelligentsia”. Well, I am not a right-wing opportunist, nor a divisive individual. Nor am I a racist. My view is simply that this is an inappropriate measure that does not correspond to the intent of a true democracy and which will aid and abet the practice of partisan wedge politics rather than decision-making for the common good. Please note the term “common good”. Assuming, indeed, that it is acceptable to hold an opinion of your own that is totally disconnected from any ideology.
It is entirely possible that I am wrong, and that it is no such thing, and that my concerns are unfounded in truth and in fact, but the job to convince me otherwise falls to those who seek to change our constitution and method of government. Calling me a racist, a person who divides society for ideological reasons and a mindless right-wing hate-monger shows me what this campaign sets out to achieve, and is essentially a strongly reinforcing stamp of approval on the views I hold.
Christopher Kyriacou writes: It was interesting that Dutton announced his opposition to the Voice days after his humiliating loss in the Aston byelection. He clearly wished to avoid the loss being used as any indication of support for the Voice, and true to form opened the gates of hell on Indigenous peoples with his feigned quest for the details (that were all around him) and to rally the decimated Liberal base.
Dutton’s claims that a Yes referendum result won’t make any difference in closing the gap only illustrate his malevolence and hypocrisy. This is because we all need to remember he was a senior member of a government that had 10 years to close the gap and failed miserably. How can he reconcile the fact it was the LNP government that advanced the process resulting in the Uluru Statement, yet almost immediately binned the invitation made by the most consultative process ever undertaken by Indigenous peoples?
The only conclusion any reasonable person can arrive at this point of the referendum process is that Dutton will do anything to return his party to government. He is prepared to strip Indigenous peoples of hope just as brutally as they were stripped of their lives, culture and lands over the past 250 years. He knows the failures of his own government in closing the gap and the recognition of Indigenous peoples in the constitution was to commence a long overdue change to address the fact all previous efforts had failed and to right a wrong created in 1901.
Dutton may succeed with his relentless No campaign based on misinformation, stoking paranoia and racism, but it reveals he is clearly prepared to destroy any prospect of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples for decades. Any political euphoria of a successful No campaign will quickly give way to a deep malaise and realisation that we again failed our Indigenous brothers and sisters.
Terence Mills writes: Perhaps if Dutton were to say he would resign as leader of the opposition if his No campaign on the Voice fails, it may just get the Yes campaign across the line.
Jeffrey Byrne writes: Crikey’s articles on the Voice are one-sided in favour of the Yes vote. Why don’t you provide some balance? It’s not “Peter Dutton’s negativity” that will carry the No vote. It’s the people of Australia who are wise to refuse to allow racial discrimination to be written in the constitution.
Geoff Thompson writes: The federal opposition’s targeted questioning of Linda Burney in question time two weeks ago continued its attempts to generate confusion about Voice. The pile-on of potentially problematic scenarios was simple fear-mongering and demonstrated what Bernard Keane described as “the effort to find [in the Voice] some sort of damage to non-Indigenous Australians” (“White resentment, zero-sum games and the populist politics of Voice opponents“).
It also displays a lack of confidence in Parliament — and future parliaments — to learn how to fine-tune the Voice. As Thomas Mayo and Kerry O’Brien point out in their book The Voice to Parliament Handbook: “As a permanent institution, [the Voice] would be guaranteed to mature and evolve, just like the Parliament itself.”
None of our great national institutions began as risk-free enterprises. As a nation, we have had the maturity and capacity to navigate the risks and develop effective institutions. By multiplying and magnifying the risks, the opposition implies that we lack such maturity.
As a non-Indigenous Australian I have nothing to lose from the Voice but most Indigenous peoples believe they (and the whole nation) have much to gain. That possibility — so graciously offered in the Uluru Statement — outweighs the risks, especially those concocted by the opposition.
Haydn Radford writes: To say I am disillusioned after reading Maeve McGregor’s article (which is a concise and disturbing exposé of how impotent the Yes campaign’s approach to date has been) is understating my disgust with our conservative politicians and those who support them. Will we ever reflect honestly about our role in Indigenous disadvantage and how white privilege has so poisoned our collective psyche?
Regardless of blame, I cannot see how the referendum failing would be a win for the No campaign, which has provided no real alternative pathway. One outcome of a No vote win should be a focus on establishing a treaty, and this should be arbitrated internationally at The Hague. This at least would result in some international pressure on Australia over what we are doing about reconciliation with First Nations peoples and a move to real power over their present and future.
When the international community starts to publicly examine past and present treatment of First Nations peoples, there will be nowhere to hide from our collective shame.
Ray Armstrong writes: The same scare campaign the Coalition used to infer that Mabo would take all your land, a leg of lamb would be $100, Whyalla would close down, the carbon tax would destroy our economy, refugees will arrive on our beaches in their thousands if Labor was elected, same-sex marriage laws if passed would turn the country into Sodom and Gomorrah, is being used in the Coalition’s No campaign.
Fear, scaremongering, dogwhistling and three-word slogans are tools that have served the Coalition well over the years in winning elections, but the people have woken up. None of the aforementioned occurred. The hysteria and blatant misinformation being whipped up by those in opposition are dividing our nation like never before.
John Peel writes: Hearing intelligent friends beginning to trot out some of the No campaign’s sillier furphies — they’ll change Australia Day, they’ll clog up the courts, they’ll have a veto over everything — is a sure sign the referendum is doomed. Where this nonsense originates is irrelevant. What counts is that it has now become socially acceptable, regardless of political leanings, to be on the same side as Dutton and Howard, not to mention the inevitable crowd of racists and bigots.
Against that, my usual, rather timid response that people who have been here 60,000 years longer than we have might indeed deserve special treatment simply falls on deaf ears.
Bill Gye writes: For the past several years I have been a member of the Close the Gap steering committee as a person with community mental health expertise. If the Voice referendum fails, the details of why it failed will be lost to the public eye, both in Australia and worldwide. It will be the symbolism and shock headline messages from the global media coverage (mass and social media) that will burn bright for a long time.
Whether we think it fair or not, we will be seen as the nation that refused to recognise its Indigenous peoples. Messages such as that the white Australia policy lives on or “terra nullius preserved” will be prolific and viral. It will be seen that in Australia the human rights of our most disadvantaged are trounced and we may well be typecast as one of the most racist countries on the planet.
So we need to face the fact that there will be at least three very negative consequences if the Voice referendum fails:
- The mental ill-health, suicide and crime rate of many Indigenous peoples across the country will increase significantly and extensively. I have no doubt the gap will widen;
- Australians and Australian politicians will not be able to criticise human rights abuses in other countries without being justly accused of hypocrisy;
- Australians travelling overseas will be seen by many coming from one of the most racist countries on the planet.
People may think this unfair, but these will be the consequences of the attention-grabbing global headlines (“Australia rejects reconciliation”) and the permanent reputation damage following the referendum’s failure — which I dread.
Grant Wood writes: So to vote No means you are a right-wing racist? As McGregor writes, Labor is maintaining a narrow path between the Voice having no effect yet being meaningful. The question asks for three things: recognition in the constitution; a Voice to federal Parliament; a voice to the federal executive.
Why not ask the three questions and give us the opportunity to vote on each? Not doing so makes it so easy for the No vote to attack on two fronts. Throw in that it seems the Yes case is largely being pushed by eastern state academics and NT Indigenous Elders to date, you can bet your bottom dollar the No campaign will start banging the Western Australia versus the east drum.
Grant Wood writes: So to vote No means you are a right-wing racist?
You might not realise it, but yeah, in most cases, probably…
Jeffrey Byrne is confusing Crikey with the abc, Crikey does not have to have a ‘balanced’ view.
Good to get the peoples view. That said, does Rundle write for Crikey anymore?
I hope not. I don’t need to hear a 1950’s Stalinist view of the world.
Jeffrey Byrne (letters 4/7) is concerned that a ‘yes’ vote will racialise the Constitution. Yet it was the 1967 referendum that gave the Commonwealth Parliament the power to make laws regarding ‘any race’. Best to argue for ‘no’ based on facts and not myth.
Not quite correct…
s 51 (xxvi) of the constitution empowered the Parliament to make laws with respect to: “The people of any race, other than the aboriginal race in any State, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws”. The Australian people voting at the 1967 referendum deleted the words in italics.
The Australian constitution was and is an explicitly racist document. It empowers the Commonwealth government to legally discriminate on the basis of race. That section provided the legal foundation for the White Australia Policy. Anyone claiming that the Voice proposal is introducing racial discrimination into the constitution is suffering a factual deficit.
A “No” vote does not indicate a rabid right-winger. My 40 yr old son was very angry when he finally learned about aboriginal history since settlement. Having gone to school here when the curriculum ignored it he was angry that the brutal facts were withheld. So I would put a “No” vote down to lack of the background information which is required to make an informed decision. It’s a no-fault mistake. Many people over about age 30 simply don’t know the guts of the argument and think Dutton’s red herings are all there is. It’s heartening to read that most younger people intend to vote yes. I will still refuse to believe that most Australians are sufficiently racist as to prevent justice even if the referendum fails.
Indeed. I suspect a non-trivial chunk of the “No” vote will be due to the “Yes” campaign’s dismal efforts to justify change by way of describing practical, useful and relevant outcomes. Ie: “You haven’t convinced me this change will actually do anything productive.”
The No campaign is doing its utmost to muddy the water; directly related is how (RW) media distort the Voice to create doubts and confusion; actual ‘commissioners’ in the background are masked.
Worse, the same is then promoted via opaque Twitter campaigns involving significant No Voice accounts, influencers, bots, trolls and astroturfers to drown out any centrist or pro Voice views (presumably understanding that open ‘No’ arguments will not cut it).
Surely Howard’s favourite pollsters are not involved; allegedly like they did a mining campaign, commissioned by a global player, done in QLD several years ago…… against any policy threats, too easy.
The No campaign is doing its utmost to muddy the water; directly related is how (RW) media distort the Voice to create doubts and confusion; actual ‘commissioners’ in the background are masked.
Worse, the same is then promoted via opaque Twitter campaigns involving significant No Voice accounts, influencers, bots and astroturfers to drown out any centrist or pro Voice views (presumably understanding that open ‘No’ arguments will not cut it).
Surely the Lib’s favourite pollsters are not involved; allegedly like they did a mining campaign, commissioned by a global player, done in QLD several years ago…… against any environmental policy threats, too easy.
How does knowing the history help with a “yes” vote?
I mean if people really knew their history they’d realise that the voice is playing directly into the hands of the far right without achieving much.
But on the specific issue of Australia’s own genocidal past, how does knowing that inform my decision to vote “yes”?
Most countries have had genocidal pasts: it was the modus operandi of nearly every invader and empire in history from the Roman’s to the Vikings to the Aztecs to the European colonialists. There were 5 officially recognised genocides in the 20th century including the Armenian genocide, the holocaust, Rwanda, Bosnia and Cambodia.
How does knowing all that awfulness tell me anything about the voice?
If people really knew their history they’d bury it and move on. How will the voice help us move on?
The past has caused the present. If we think the present is great, OK. But in the Voice case it is so obviously not so, that we need to know the past in order not to keep doing the same. Intergenerational trauma is a circular process which will continue into the future unless a circuit breaker can be introduced. the Voice is proposed as the beginning of one.
Secondly, unless we respect aboriginal people in general and stop consigning them to the rubbish heap, as many white people do, nothing will change. Unless we respect them we will not listen to their ideas and proposals which, after all, are likely to be better than ours. And with this Voice we are more likely to a) listen to them and b) respect them. Simply listenng to someone is a sign of respect.
To your last line. We do know our history, and we have buried it. That is the problem. And the Voice will not, by itself, open up a golden future – nobody claims it will. But it is the beginning of a change. Step 1: listen. The helmsman of a big ship spins the wheel and nothing happens for a couple of kilometres, but it eventually will, onto a new course.
I am a racist I admit. Fred Hollows gave his opinion. As an eye surgeon he worked in East Africa and in outback Australia. He said that he thought the races with the best eyesight were the most intelligent. The Africans had better eyesight than white people, but the Australians had the best eyesight of any. Consider also Darwin’s Galapagos finches. Seperate a race from the main population for long enough and they alone adapt to the conditions of the new country. So for these two reasons I have enormous faith in Aboriginal ability. I don’t generally spruik this theory of mine as most people immediately write me off as a complete idiot. But I spent 18 years as an ambulance officer in a large country town in WA which had a significant aboriginal population, and spent alot of time thinking about the causes of their disabilities and diseases and social conditions. e.g. burning the floorboards to keep warm in winter. I wasn’t brought up in this country, so I came to the problem fresh, with no preconceptions. It was against all odds that I formed the idea that I was working with a (however slightly and whatever the reason) superior race of people. That radical change of belief helped my work. Reading the Uluru Statement has not undermined my opinion, also.
They need us to stop throwing money at dumb ideas that make things worse, but we won’t listen. We should.
There needs to be absolute water tight, scientifically proven evidence of “inter-generational trauma” otherwise that is an extremely dangerous term to throw around.
It has the potential to paralyse people with a sense of victimhood and loss, it makes resolving disputes and sectarianism virtually impossible.
How would ever achieve peace in the Middle East if there is “inter-generational trauma”?
How would we ever have moved on from wars?
How is it that the Jewish community have experienced some of the most trauma for centuries including in the very recent past, and able to not only continue, but in many cases prosper?
If the voice is to be founded on the notion of resolving “inter-generational trauma” then that itself is an indication that it is not only going to be ineffectual, but also possibly damaging.
The very fact that it promotes the idea that we need “indigenous solutions” to “indigenous issues” is potentially hugely damaging because it separates indigenous people from the institutions and power structures which are responsible for the position that they are in. For example parliament, the judiciary and the police.
There is no issue here with “listening”. We don’t need to “listen” about deaths in custody. We need to act. It is a lack of acting that is the issue and the lack of acting comes from the institutional racism.
My concern is the voice reinforces institutional racism, keeps things focused on the past, reinforces debilitating myths around “inter-generational trauma”, and will generally do more damage than good.
OK. Institutional racism, as you’ve called it out, refuses to listen and act on what black people say they want and need. But aren’t you doing the same? They have told us what they need in the Uluru statement but you are saying they are wrong. “Listening” means more than just hearing, it means following it up with action. I agree the lack of action is the issue, but it has to be action that will work. Howard took action when he sent in the army, but it didn’t help. Put it like this: you can tell an alcoholic not to drink, and that will not change their behaviour. Or you can, with a little education, put the responsibility for the drink problem on him to solve for himself with, naturally, support along the way. That approach has a chance.
I’ve watched three generations of aboriginal people here, and inter-generational trauma is a fitting term for their lives It describes the facts as they are within a section of their society. The barefoot toddler walking on broken wine flagons at the family fight does not grow up with the same beliefs and hopes that I did. He will already have difficulty hearing due to untreated ear infections, and that will negate school, which will prevent employment and will probably lead to prison “College”, violence and maybe suicide. Alcohol and drugs are a way of life. Happen to look at an aboriginal teenager on the street and you risk them yelling at you, “What are you looking at, you white c**t?”! Or it’ll be a pair of girls running out of a clothing shop, laughing and clutching a dress each, stolen. You say we need to act, not listen. Well, we’ve been acting for a hundred years and it has dismally failed. So now it is their turn. And they have a plan. A plan which they formulated after years of consultation among themselves all over the country, and it is a wise plan. All we have to do is say, “Yes”. And listen, and accept their guidance in our actions.