By Richard Whitington
Fun Referendum Facts
Fun Referendum Facts #1: The ballot paper for a referendum has just one box on it and you must write “Yes” or “No” in it. If you use a tick or a cross or a number (1), your vote will be invalid.
Fun Referendum Facts #2: The 24-year gap between the last referendum (1999), and this year’s, is by far the longest there’s ever been (the previous longest was the 16 years from 1951 to 1967).
Fun Referendum Facts #3: Nobody under 42 years of age has ever voted in a referendum. More than 40 per cent of those enrolled will be voting in a referendum for the first time.
Fun Referendum Facts #4: Our Constitution can only be altered if a Referendum wins: a “Yes” from a majority of voters in at least four of our six states (i.e. a majority of the states) AND a “Yes” from a majority of all the voters in Australia, overall.
Fun Referendum Facts #5: If no more than three States vote “Yes”, even if a majority of Australians say “Yes”, the referendum fails. Even if four states vote “Yes”, but a majority of Australians say “No”, the Referendum fails.
Fun Referendum Facts #6: Just like an election, it’s compulsory to vote (fill out a ballot paper) in a Referendum. In a Referendum, it’s a “Yes” or “No” question. But you must be “on the roll” to vote! If you’ve turned 18 since the last Federal Election (21 May 2022), go here: Enrol to vote – Australian Electoral Commission (aec.gov.au)
Fun Referendum Facts #7: A “Voice” for Indigenous people involves two steps (the Referendum is just the first of them): 1. Include a permanent mechanism in our Constitution to assist Indigenous people to express their views to the Australian Government. 2. If that’s approved at the Referendum, the elected Parliamentarians design how The Voice will be organised and operate.
Fun Referendum Facts #8: Since Australia became a nation, in 1901, there have been 44 Referendum questions put to voters, on a range of issues, seeking approval to change the Constitution. In only eight cases did the “Yes” vote prevail (it was a “No”, to the other 36 questions).
Fun Referendum Facts #9: Since the start of World War 2, Australians have voted in referendums on 11 occasions (first in 1944, most recently in 1999). In this “modern era” voters were asked a total of 26 questions. They said “Yes” to only five of them.
Fun Referendum Facts #10: Between 1944 and 1999 nine of the 26 Referendum questions were asked while the Liberal/National Coalition was in power. Four of them won. Four out of nine is not bad, when you consider only eight of 44 questions have passed, since we became a nation in 1901.
Fun Referendum Facts #11: From 1944 to 1999, 17 questions were put up while Labor was in power. Only one received a “Yes”, and that was back in 1946. So, on this analysis, the Liberals are four “Yes” out of nine referendums they put up; Labor only one “Yes” from 17.
Fun Referendum Facts #12: The 2021 census says there are nearly two million Australians aged 75 or older. Some of this group cast their first-ever vote at the 1967 Referendum, when 90 per cent of Australians voted “Yes” to counting Indigenous Australians in our population, and to giving our national Government, for the first time, the power to make laws affecting them. The voting age in 1967 was 21, meaning anyone who voted back then, and is still alive today, would be aged 77, or older, now. They are part of by far the largest “Yes” majority in the history of referendums.
Fun Referendum Facts #13: The voting age was 21 at the time of the1967 Referendum on counting Aboriginal people in our population, and giving the Commonwealth power to make laws for them. Meaning anyone who was in Australia and voting back then, and is still alive today, now would be aged 77, or older. They are part of by far the largest “Yes” majority in the history of referendums (90 per cent).
Fun Referendum Facts #14: Are “oldies” really conservative? At the1999 referendum on Australia becoming a Republic, and in the 2017 plebiscite on marriage equality, the highest “Yes” votes were generally in safe Liberal seats, where the population is somewhat older than in other electorates.
Fun Referendum Facts #15: Sometimes we change our minds! In 1974 the Labor government put up a referendum to allow voters in the ACT and the NT to vote in, well, referendums. It lost. In 1977 the Liberal Government put up the same question; it passed.
Fun Referendum Facts #16: More on changing our minds: In 1944, Labor ran a referendum to give the Commonwealth power to legislate on (among many other things) “people of the Aboriginal race”. It lost. But in 1967, the Liberal government ran a referendum to give the Commonwealth power to make laws for Aboriginal people; it passed, by the biggest majority of any referendum (90 per cent in favour!).
Fun Referendum Facts #17: Three of the 11 “referendum days” between 1944 and 1999 occurred on the same day as federal elections, with nine questions being asked, in total. Only one of them was passed. The other 17 questions were asked on eight referendum days which were held separately from federal elections: four of the 17 questions were approved.
Fun Referendum Facts #18: Even though they needed only four out of the six states (along with a majority of all Australian voters), every one of the five successful referendums in the “modern” era (1944-1999) has won a majority in every state. You need to go back to 1910 to find the only successful referendum which wasn’t supported by every state (NSW held out, voting NO, to no avail).
Fun Referendum Facts #19: There has never been a referendum where a majority of states (four out of six) voted “Yes” but a majority of the national population voted “No”. However there have been five referendums lost despite a majority of Australians voting “Yes” (because a majority of states said “No”).
Fun Referendum Facts #20: The most remarkable defeat for a referendum was in1977, when we were asked to change the Constitution to ensure that Senate elections are held at the same time as House of Representatives elections. Despite more than 62 per cent of us approving, three states (Queensland, WA and Tasmania) said “No”, thus defeating the referendum.
Fun Referendum Facts #21: “One thing at a time”? On five occasions we’ve been asked just one question at a referendum – for two “Yes’s” and three “No’s”: a 40 per cent success rate. This compares to the 15 per cent success rate for Yes (only six out of 39), when more than one question was asked. This year’s referendum asks just one question. Do SportsBet or the TAB know of these odds?
Fun Referendum Facts #22: The bleakest referendum day was 31 May 1913, the same day as a federal election. Six questions put up: all six failed, despite three states (Queensland, WA and SA) saying “Yes” to every question. No question won the four states required and the national “Yes” total was stuck on 49 per cent, to every question. The Labor Government which put up the six questions, was also defeated that day.
Fun Referendum Facts #23: The best day for referendums was 21 May 1977, when Malcolm Fraser’s Coalition Government put up four questions, with three of them being passed – each with more than 70 per cent of the total, and every state voting “Yes”. Even the question which “lost” was supported by 62 per cent of Australians – but three states had a majority “No”. Go figure.
Fun Referendum Facts #24: The eight successful referendums (out of 44) scored national Yes votes of between 54.39% and 90.77%. Seven were supported by all six states; one was 5-1 (NSW said No).
Fun Referendum Facts #25: The second highest “Yes” vote, ever (after the 1967 90 per cent, to recognise Aboriginals), was on 27 April 1977, with 80 per cent in favour of setting a retirement age for judges in the High Court. Seems we were nearly as excited about seeing off seven ageing white people, before they died on the job, as we were about teenage Aboriginal kids dying in police cells.
Fun Referendum Facts #26: Five referendums have failed, despite receiving a national Yes vote of more than 50%: between 50.30% and 62.22%. Three of them had three states against; two of them had four states against.
Fun Referendum Facts #27: The biggest losers! Nine referendums have attracted Yes votes of less than 40%. Seven of them had all states opposed; two of them were 1 Yes – 5 No. Another 22 losing referendums had Yes votes between 40.25% and 49.78%. The majority of them had three states against, some had four against.
Fun Referendum Facts #28: Nine of 44 referendum questions were rejected by more than 60 per cent of voters. Wow! Who drafted those questions? Thirteen of 44 referendums won more than 50 per cent of the national vote, but five of those failed because insufficient states said “Yes”.
Fun Referendum Facts #29: Among the 26 referendum questions asked, from 1944 to 1999, there are nine on which NSW has voted “Yes”, but the referendum was not carried (insufficient other states, or minority of the national population, supporting). Indeed, in our modern era, every state has voted “Yes”, once or more, only to see the referendum defeated: NSW (nine times, as mentioned), Western Australia and Victoria (four each), South Australia (two), Queensland, and Tasmania, once each.
Fun Referendum Facts #30: Here, in millions (round figures), are the latest number of enrolled voters in each state and territory (with their percentage of the total national enrolment, in brackets): NSW: 5.6m (31.3%), Vic: 4.5m (25.1%), Qld: 3.7m (20.7%), WA: 1.9m (10.6%), SA: 1.3m (7.3%), Tas: 0.4m (2.2%), ACT: 0.3m (1.7%), NT: 0.2m (1.1%). Total: 17.9m (100%). Can you figure all the possible combinations which could lead to success (or failure) for a referendum question? Remember, four of the six states, and a majority of the total (meaning nearly nine million people need to vote “Yes”, for a start).
Fun Referendum Facts #31: If just 51% of voters in each of Tasmania, SA, WA and Queensland say NO, the referendum fails, regardless of how it’s supported in NSW and Victoria (or the ACT and NT). It means that around 20 per cent of our total voting population (3.7m out of nearly 18m) can thwart the wishes of 30 per cent (or more). It protects smaller states, which is not necessarily a bad thing. But it’s the reality.
Fun Referendum Facts #32: It wasn’t until 1962 that the Commonwealth Electoral Act granted all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the option to enrol and vote in federal elections. It took until 1965 for the last of our States to remove the barriers which prevented Indigenous Australians from enrolling! After the Commonwealth kindly granted permission for Indigenous Australians to enrol, it took till 1984 for them to be required to do so, like everybody else. It’s less than 40 years since Indigenous Australians were “given” the same legal voting obligations as other Australians.
Fun Referendum Facts #33: Until Australians voted overwhelmingly in the 1967 referendum to amend it, our Constitution gave the Commonwealth the power 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.” Like it or not, our Constitution always referred to “race”.
Fun Referendum Facts #34: Until the 1967 Referendum, only the States could make laws affecting aboriginal people. Bizarrely, the Commonwealth had always had the power to make laws about people of any OTHER race. And they did, for instance, with the White Australia Policy, prohibiting coloured people from anywhere – India, Asia, Africa, the Pacific Islands – from coming here and “stealing our jobs”. The Immigration Restriction Act 1901 lasted until 1966!
Fun Referendum Facts #35: At the 2021 Census, more than 800,000 people said they identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander: 3.2% of our population. Until the 1967 referendum, the Constitution said this: “In reckoning the numbers of people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives shall not be counted.” Some of those 800,000+ from the 2021 Census were around in 1967; their mums and dads, and grandparents certainly were, but weren’t counted in the population, back then.
Fun Referendum Facts #36: Hardly a country on the planet hasn’t been invaded and colonised by people of another race or place, often with the original inhabitants becoming a small minority of the modern-day population. Most countries acknowledge those who were dispossessed. Think Norway, Sweden, Finland, New Zealand, most of South America, Canada. Some have indigenous parliaments; some have allocated seats in parliament for the indigenous minority. The Voice isn’t proposing any of these things – just a permanent method to allow indigenous people to tap the Government on the shoulder and say “Hey, listen to us, on this”.
Fun Referendum Facts #37: Australia hasn’t passed a referendum since 1977, knocking back all eight put up since then. Meaning nobody under the age of 64, today, has ever voted in a referendum which has succeeded.
Fun Referendum Facts #38: In second place behind 31 May 1913, when all six referendums were defeated (it was the most questions ever put up on the one day), 3 September 1988 saw four referendum questions asked, and all of them defeated.
Fun Referendum facts #39: On the League Ladder of “agreeable” states, Western Australia tops the charts, having said “Yes” to 23 out of 44 questions. WA is the only state to have agreed to a majority (slim though it is) of referendums. Next comes Queensland, with a “Yes” count of 21, followed by NSW with 18, SA 16, Victoria 15 and Tasmania 10. However, given it’s 46 years since a referendum passed, these historical stats might be no guide to predicting the future. Don’t tell SportsBet/TAB, though.
This time around, everyone’s predicting WA and Qld to say “No”. Why demonise them like that? And people characterise Victoria as being so progressive they’d say “Yes” to anything. Best to take nothing for granted.
Dates to dwell on
Dates to dwell on #1: 13 May 1787. The 11 ships of the First Fleet leave Portsmouth, England, bound for Botany Bay. In January 1788 they took a brief look at Botany Bay, waved at two French ships which turned up a few days later, then left and sailed a few miles north to Sydney Cove, landing there on 26 January.
Dates to dwell on #2: 10 June 1838. Myall Creek, northern NSW. 28 Aboriginal people – mostly women and children – killed by white settlers. Not the first, nor the last such atrocity but, 50 years after Europeans arrived here, the first to result in the murderers being charged and convicted, with seven of them hanged. The last known massacre of Indigenous people was in the Northern Territory, in 1928 – less than 100 years ago, and 90 years after Myall Creek.
Dates to dwell on #3: 19 August 1944. A referendum asks Australians to alter the Constitution to give the Commonwealth Government power to legislate on 14 specific matters, including the rehabilitation of ex-servicemen, national health, family allowances and ‘the people of the Aboriginal race’. Only 46 per cent of voters (and a majority in only two states – WA and SA) supported it; meaning it failed.
Dates to dwell on #4: 27 May 1967. We agreed in a referendum to count Indigenous people when tallying our population, and to allow the Commonwealth to make laws affecting them. The biggest majority “Yes” vote, ever: 90 per cent, nationally; and every state supported it, overwhelmingly.
Dates to dwell on #5: 26 January 1972. Aboriginal Tent Embassy set up across the road from Old Parliament House (now the Museum of Australian Democracy) in Canberra. It’s still there: the longest continuous protest for Indigenous land rights in the world!
Dates to dwell on #6: 3 June 1992. The “Mabo” decision. The High Court of Australia ruled that a group of Torres Strait Islanders were the owners of Mer (Murray Island). In acknowledging the traditional rights of the Meriam people to their land, the court also held that native title existed for all Indigenous people. This dispatched to legal fiction the idea of “terra nullius” (that nobody owned Australia before Europeans claimed it).
Dates to dwell on #7: 6 November 1999. Australia voted in a referendum on whether we wanted to remain attached to the British Monarchy, or become a Republic, with an Australian as Head of State (regardless of their religious affiliation). We decided to stay legally hitched to Great Britain, where only a Protestant can be King.
Dates to dwell on #8: 6 November 1999. The “Republic” referendum had a second question, about inserting a “preamble” in the constitution, which was intended to say (amongst other things): “We the Australian people commit ourselves to this Constitution… proud that our national unity has been forged by Australians from many ancestries…. honouring Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, the nation’s first people, for their deep kinship with their lands and for their ancient and continuing cultures which enrich the life of our country…” But those words never appeared on the referendum ballot paper. More than 60 percent of Australians said “No” to the “preamble” question.
Dates to dwell on #9: 28 May 2000. Around 250,000 people walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, in “The Bridge Walk for Reconciliation”. This, and similar events around Australia in the weeks following, have been described as the biggest demonstration of public support for a cause that has ever taken place in Australia.
Dates to dwell on #10: 16 March 2005. 15 years after being established by the Hawke Government, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) was abolished. ATSIC was last century’s equivalent of a Voice (flawed as its administration might have been). ATSIC’s fate reminds us that Parliaments can change and tinker with anything they like. But if something is enshrined in the Constitution, the spirit of it is there, probably forever. If something is in the Constitution, any Government of the day can make all sorts of administrative and funding rearrangements, but they can’t obliterate it all together (or they’ll have the High Court to answer to!).
Dates to dwell on #11: 13 September 2007. 114 nations in the United Nations voted to adopt the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). It was a monumental recognition of the rights of indigenous people in the post-colonial world, outlining the obligations of signatory states to protect and implement those rights. Australia was one of only four nations which voted against the Declaration, quibbling with the detail. In 2009 the Rudd Labor Government changed Australia’s position and supported the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
Dates to dwell on #12: 13 February 2008. The Liberal Party’s current leader, Peter Dutton, walks out on Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generations, saying an apology would fix nothing. He’s the only remaining member of parliament to have boycotted the apology. He now claims to regret his stance, saying, in effect, he misread the mood at the time. He’s now leading the argument for a “No” vote on The Voice. Once again, saying a Voice will fix nothing. Has he misread the mood, again?
Dates to dwell on #13: 7 December 2015. PM Malcolm Turnbull and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten jointly appoint a 16-member Referendum Council to advise the government on steps towards a referendum to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Australian Constitution. The Council travelled around the country and met with over 1,200 people, culminating in the First Nations National Constitutional Convention, held over four days in May 2017, near Uluru in Central Australia.
Dates to dwell on #14: 26 May 2017. Delegates to the First Nations National Constitutional Convention issue the Uluru Statement from the Heart. It calls for a constitutionally entrenched First Nations Voice to Parliament. The Turnbull government, with little consideration, rejects the call for a Voice to Parliament!
Dates to dwell on #15: 23 March 2023. Having won the May 2022 election, the Albanese Government honours its commitment and introduces The Voice Referendum Bill to the House of Representatives. It passes the House of Reps on 31 May 2023, 121 votes to 25.
Dates to dwell on #16: 19 June 2023. The Senate passes the Referendum Bill, without amending it, 52-19. A date for Referendum Day will now be set. There’s no turning back!
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #1: “More detail, please!” Our Constitution might look long and complicated, but it never contains the detail being demanded by the opponents of YES. The change to the Constitution simply tells our Parliament, our elected representatives, to design how a permanent Voice will work.
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #2: “I don’t know what I’m voting for.” Referendum questions don’t ever contain much detail. Long as it is, the Constitution doesn’t, either! The Constitution merely spells out the powers we give to the Australian Government. It’s up to Parliament, the people we vote for, to design how it applies the powers given to it in the Constitution.
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #3: “The referendum question lacks detail.” Voting Yes in the Referendum doesn’t ask you to approve a design, nor does it give the Government approval to implement a specific model. It simply says to the Government: “The Constitution now demands that you set up, and keep, a means for Indigenous voices to be heard.”
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #4: “We aren’t being told what we’re voting for.” Yes we are. We’re just being asked to give our Parliament a permanent obligation to design The Voice, figure how views will be sought, processed and accepted, on what issues, and how to monitor the outcomes.
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #5: “The Voice shouldn’t be allowed to make representations to the Executive.” Before laws are debated in parliament they are drawn up by the Executive Government (Ministers in Cabinet, advised by public servants). Being able to make representations to the Executive, like anyone else, is central to The Voice being effective, allowing it to get its views across early in the policy development process.
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #6: “It would make Government unworkable.” The change to the Constitution merely creates The Voice. It doesn’t compel anyone to do what The Voice might ask for. It leaves our elected Parliament to decide what it will do with the advice it receives from The Voice.
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #7: “They might be our first nations people, but they are not one, united nation.” Why should we expect them to be? What does it matter if they have different priorities, different concerns, depending on their circumstances, their experience, their location? What organisation can claim to represent all its stakeholders, with their unanimous support? Why suggest such a standard be applied to The Voice before it can be taken seriously, that it won’t be legitimate unless it can prove it speaks for every Indigenous person or community?
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #8: “The Voice isn’t supported by all Indigenous people.” People of Indigenous descent can be just as radical or just as conservative as anyone else and, like some other Australians, will vote “No” because a Voice is too radical, or too conservative for their taste. It is bizarre to suggest that The Voice should be rejected by the rest of us because it isn’t supported by 100 per cent of Indigenous people.
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #9: “The Voice will divide Australians.” Who among us will it divide? The 97 per cent of us who don’t identify as Indigenous? How? The 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart came from a couple of hundred people, hoping to speak on behalf of a small minority of our population (3.2 per cent – less than a million people, out of our total population of more than 26 million), asking us to symbolically embrace each other. It wasn’t a demand; it was an invitation. Saying “No” would be more divisive than saying “Yes”.
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #10: “Liberal voters are racists and will vote NO.” The most overwhelming “Yes” vote in history was in in 1967, when a Liberal government put up the referendum on counting Indigenous people in our population, and allowing the Commonwealth to make laws for them. That Liberal Government was re-elected at the next election, in 1969.
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #11: “Are Liberals racists?” It was a Liberal Government which, in 1966, started the process of abolishing Australia’s racist immigration regulations: the White Australia Policy. Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, continued Australia’s opposition to apartheid in South Africa, and implemented the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act in 1976.
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #12: “Are Liberals united against The Voice?” In the current parliamentary Liberal Party, a significant number of people have said, outright, that they do not go along with their Leader Peter Dutton’s opposition to The Voice – not least because his position is inconsistent with long-established Liberal values opposing racism and discrimination.
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #13: “It’s racist”. Until Australians voted overwhelmingly in the 1967 referendum to amend it, our Constitution gave the Commonwealth the power 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.” Like it or not, our Constitution always referred to “race”.
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #14: “A “Yes” vote will introduce “race” to the Constitution”. Over the years, our Constitution has included several references to “race”. From the outset, in 1901, the Constitution empowered the Parliament to make laws with respect to the people of any race (well, except “native Australians”, until 1967). That provision is still there and is reflected notably in legislation like the Land Rights Act of 1976 and the Native Title Act of 1993, laws made specifically for Indigenous people.
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #15: “The Voice will be a “Canberra” voice.” The opposite is true. Unlike the armies of high paid lobbyists who currently populate the rarefied air of our national capital (around 2,000 of them!), the people elected to The Voice will be drawn from all regions across Australia, with specific provision for age and gender balance. The organisational details and specific roles for The Voice will be determined by a vote of the Parliament after the Referendum passes.
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #16: “Why favour one disadvantaged minority over others?” First Australians experience the worst outcomes in life expectancy (61 per cent die before they’re 65; compared to 17 per cent of other Australians), incarceration rates (12 times more likely to be jailed), child imprisonment rates (26 times more likely to be jailed!), deaths in custody, domestic violence, child abuse, education levels, unemployment, housing and alcoholism. No other “minority” – by race, gender, region, country of origin, religion – has figures anywhere near so appalling. These problems demand that we do something significant, something extra, something permanent.
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #17: “Problems in Indigenous communities are of their own making, and for them to fix.” Changing the Constitution is no certain fix to those problems, or those which occur, elsewhere in Australian society. But the descendants of our First People aren’t the same as everyone else. Many of them are afflicted, maybe defined, by the extraordinary discrimination which was inflicted on their forebears (and, still, on many of them, now). The Voice obliges our lawmakers to listen, and keep on listening, to ideas from First Nations people, on how to remedy the current consequences of what was done to them in the past.
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #18: “It won’t make any difference to the lives of Indigenous Australians.” It’s proven that the best decisions are made when local stakeholders – those affected by them – are consulted and have an input. The Voice will enable that, creating a permanent channel of dialogue where, right now, none exists (and nothing else we’ve tried seems to have worked very well).
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #19: “We weren’t around when the crimes against Aboriginals were committed.” But we are the beneficiaries of the crimes our forebears committed against their forebears. Our houses, office blocks, schools and universities, factories, workshops, farms, mines, roads, sports grounds, parks, cities and towns are all on land that we took from them, without asking and without compensation. This is nothing to do with guilt or responsibility, but obligation, and healing.
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #20: “Aboriginals live in a better society than they used to.” We’re rightly comfortable with the mostly prosperous economy we’ve created. But it’s on stolen land. All we gave to its original owners was a few trinkets, a lot of smallpox, or a bullet to the head. And, to finish it off, we imprisoned them on “reserves” where they were out of our sight and out of mind. Don’t feel guilty. Just say “Yes” to one thing they’ve asked us for: a seat at the table.
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #21: “Why should we feel guilty?” We shouldn’t, but as the Sydney Morning Herald said on 10 June 2023: “Some may question the need to apologise for history. We acknowledge that today’s generation is not responsible for the sins of earlier ones, yet we can help heal old harms nonetheless. We also respectfully argue that the capacity to recognise a past wrong is a sign of a strong future.”
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #22: “Why are we dredging up the past?” Way back in the 1990s a committee of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians wrote this, about the 1838 Myall Creek massacre: “If we and our descendants are to live in peace in Australia then we have to tell and acknowledge that truth of our history. It is not that all of our history is bad, but the bad must be acknowledged along with the good, if we are to have any integrity.”
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #23: “The Voice is about “race”. Imagine, for a moment, that the people inhabiting our continent for 65,000 years before Europeans took it over, just 235 years ago, were blue-skinned, or orange, or green. Or, why not, “white”? Imagine that! Their version of “civilisation” might have been different to ours, but who’s to say it was inferior? Many Australians are descendant from places overseas which 235 years ago (and more recently) can’t boast a great record in peaceful co-existence, equality, welfare or tolerance of differences.
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #24: “Race, or recognition?” For nearly 200 years after Europeans arrived here, we didn’t even recognise the existence of First Australians. “We” took the place off them, without a word of “sorry”, relying on the fiction of “terra nullius” – that it was nobody’s land. The Voice is mostly about history: a very long overdue way to give the people who were here first the one thing they’ve asked for in today’s society: to be heard on issues that affect them.
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #25: “If The Voice decides it’s not being listened to, it can go to the High Court and have Parliament dissolved.” Hardly worth a response. The Parliament of Australia can only be dissolved when the Prime Minister goes to the Governor General and asks for that to happen – so an election can be held.
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #26: “We should have ‘Truth’ or a ‘Treaty’ before The Voice.” The simple reality is this: right now, we’re having a vote on whether there should be a Voice. Consider the irony of people who want Truth and Treaty before Voice, contributing to the Voice failing and, thus, diminishing the chances of a future Truth and Treaty.
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #27: “‘Truth’ or ‘Treaty’ first”. The prospects for Truth and/or Treaty, in some form, will be enhanced if the Voice is approved. If The Voice referendum doesn’t pass, politicians will be scared to pursue the idea of Truth. As for a Treaty, you can’t make a treaty with people without first acknowledging their existence. The Voice does that.
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #28: “‘Truth’ or ‘Treaty’ first”. A “Yes” to The Voice is no guarantee that we’ll have Truth or a Treaty soon after. Just as a “No” to The Voice, because you want Truth and Treaty first, is no guarantee that, instead, we’ll get Truth or a Treaty.
Myths, malice, misinformation and misconceptions about The Voice #29: “Indigenous people can’t agree on what should come first – Truth, Treaty or Voice”. That’s not actually true. But rather than the 97 per cent of us who aren’t Indigenous arguing about what “we” should “provide” to the other three per cent, let’s at least say “Yes” to a Voice, for a start.
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