The AFR View
A referendum tragedy that didn’t need to happen
Brexit-style recriminations in the divisive aftermath of the Yes vote failing would not be in the interests of heartbroken Indigenous Australians.
Short of a miraculous surprise turnaround, Saturday’s referendum on an Indigenous Voice to parliament is shaping as a national tragedy that will break First Australian hearts and set back the cause of reconciling the original inhabitants of this ancient continent with modern Australia.
This tragedy is unfolding despite the sincerity of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, the generosity of the offer from the 250 Indigenous Australians who took part in the process, the decades of commitment by leaders including Noel Pearson, Marcia Langton, Megan Davis and Pat Anderson and despite the inherent goodwill of the great majority of the Australian population towards overcoming unacceptable levels of Indigenous disadvantage in remote and regional parts of the nation. This worst-case result would be a further heartbreak in that the tragedy did not need to happen.
Reconciliation’s difficult beginning. David Rowe
Heading into the 2017 same-sex marriage plebiscite, The Australian Financial Review maintained that conservatives had failed to make out a case against marriage equality that a clear majority of Australians subsequently supported. In 2023, despite extensive funding, celebrity endorsements, and institutional support from big business, sporting codes, and academic, cultural and community organisations, the Yes campaign has failed to make a compelling case for how entrenching an Indigenous Voice into the nation’s Constitution would actually close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
In January this year, when support for the Voice sat above 60 per cent in the polls, the Financial Review said that most Australians would support recognising Australia’s First Peoples in the nation’s founding document and that the goodwill of most Australians towards ending the shameful disadvantage in rural and remote Indigenous communities should extend to supporting the principle of a well-functioning Indigenous advisory body to parliament to advise on practical measures to help close the gap.
However we warned that Anthony Albanese’s refusal to seek to legislate the Voice and get it up and running before trying to insert it into the Constitution was a high-stakes and high-risk strategy given the high bar for such referendums. By the time the prime minister announced the October 14 referendum date, support for the Voice had slipped below 50 per cent. The Financial Review said the best hope for the referendum was for the Yes campaign to use the next six weeks to convince Australians that the Voice would focus on Mr Pearson’s practical agenda of empowering Indigenous communities to take responsibility for turning the tide on entrenched social problems in remote communities such as welfare dependency, low school attendance, substance abuse, and child neglect.
The challenge for the Yes campaign was to give Australians a greater certainty and confidence about what they would be voting Yes for and about what the Voice might say and do. Yet as the weeks have passed, there has been no real debate or discussion by the Yes campaign about what concrete kind of policy action the Voice would advise to overcome remote Indigenous disadvantage. Instead, the question that has surfaced during the campaign is whether the Voice would focus on advancing the progressive Indigenous political agenda of truth-telling, treaty, and sovereignty.
That uncertainty has been driven home by Indigenous senator and No campaign leader Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s effective attack on the Voice as seeking to entrench “separatism” between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. That points to the differences between the successful 1967 referendum that garnered 90 per cent support and which was couched in the US civil rights language of the day as being about racial equality and overcoming racial differences, and a Voice referendum that appears to harden racial difference by inserting an extra race-based political right in Australia’s liberal democratic governing charter.
The Brexit-style recriminations and divisive aftermath of the Yes vote failing to achieve the double-majority of the popular vote and of the six states will likely include pouring blame on Peter Dutton and the Coalition along with the supposed latent racism of the Australian people. Blaming what in reality is one of the most diverse and tolerant multicultural societies in the world would only compound the tragedy for the Indigenous Australians who may feel heartbroken by Saturday’s vote.
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