Australian referendum October 2023

Pretty sure I haven't initiated a thread on this part of the site since about 2004 but I feel a place for pithy commentary (and possibly commiseration in the aftermath) might be warranted.

It's the first time Australia has formally considered a constitutional amendment in the 21st century and despite the relatively modest proposal it looks to be struggling at least as much as average. (8 of 44 referenda have passed since federation.)

The proposed amendment would establish a new chapter stating, in part:

In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:

1. There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;
2. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;

Wikipedia's summary seems a decent primer for non-Australians:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Australian_Indigenous_Voice_referendum

Or perhaps MC Hammer's take, if you prefer, lol

I had to get up to speed. I read this article below. I’m with you. 🙏🏾
Australia it’s time. Repair the breach. #Yes2023

Australia has no treaty with its Indigenous people, and has done little in comparison to other British dominions like Canada, New Zealand and the United… https://t.co/TmW1h4Gzcq

— MC HAMMER (@MCHammer) September 21, 2023

The Voice referendum is like a cold blob in the pit of my stomach as I wait for my fellow countrymen to shit on anything which might possibly benefit anything other than the anglo majority.

*anyone, not anything

Yeah, pretty much.

Though what's impressive to me is how quickly the masses can be turned around. That polling summary on Wikipedia reminds us that the general proposition was quite popular as recently as June-ish. I'd *like* to imagine that with a different opposition leader this could still be broadly perceived as a no-brainer, vaguely along the lines of 1967, in at least a bare majority of states.

everything from the proposal itself to the 'yes' campaign has been heavily flawed and now it seems set to fail having accomplished nothing but months of very toxic public debate

still voting 'yes' (the 'progressive no' case has not done anything to convince me that 'no' would lead to any better outcomes) but it feels like everything about this is going to serve as a lesson for what not to do with referendums

presumably every noted pitfall in the 'land acknowledgements' thread has been happily blundered into by the yes campaign

this feels like something that should have just been implemented without a referendum tbh, once you culture war something it's fucked

imago otm

I believe they feared it be could legislated out of existence if not in the constitution, like (the admittedly somewhat troubled) ATSIC, perhaps.

Wikipedia reminds me that the conservative PM at time literally said "the experiment in elected representation for Indigenous people has been a failure" upon abolishing it. Straya is a bit of a mess.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_and_Torres_Strait_Islander_Commission

yeah there isn't any actual reason it needs to be in the constitution. the motivation is that it would protect the voice from being abolished by a future conservative government at the first sign of scandal (this has happened to a few previous indigenous bodies, including ATSIC which was much more powerful than the voice is proposed to be), but somehow the proposed amendment doesn't really do anything to prevent a future conservative government simply doing whatever it wants with the makeup of the voice, which would abolish any notion of it being representative. that's one of the design flaws i was alluding to. i would have thought it would at least make sense to entrench some notion of it being democratically elected by indigenous people but nope.

the voice proposal originated with centre-right indigenous activist noel pearson, who about a decade ago worked with conservative legal figures to try to thread the needle and figure out what sort of pro-indigenous constitutional change would be more than a token statement of recognition while still acceptable to conservatives . pearson had previously been supportive of more ambitious ideas for constitutional change, such as a constitutional amendment against racial discrimination, but had been convinced something like that was never going to get bipartisan support (considered necessary for a referendum to pass due to our history of mostly unsuccessful referendums especially without the support of both major parties) due to conservative opposition. this proposal then gained further traction from a consultation process investigating constitutional recognition of indigenous australians and was backed by the first nations constitutional convention that was the culmination of that process. it was immediately rejected by the conservative pm of the day (even though turnbull is as centrist as they get, though he's since changed his mind lol), and so nothing really happened with the idea until labor formed government.

in hindsight it's easy to say that the proposal should have reconsidered been back when the basic tactical idea behind the proposal failed at the very first hurdle (rejection by conservatives - if turnbull didn't back it as pm there was no way you would ever expect someone like dutton to back it), but oh well.

Cool post!

Not sure it had occurred to me before pasting that Howard quote above that the proposal doesn't actually contain a single word about the "elected representation" everyone is actually talking about lol.

I guess an utterly bare bones amendment was part of the final softening for moderate LNP types. (Dutton, of course, then switching to "Where's the detail? OMG, be afraid" lol)

labor has at least indicated they intend for the voice to be democratic in some form, but haven't given any real detail there. i think that's due to misapplying the lessons from the republic referendum, but this is a very different referendum where the public doesn't really have a good idea of the proposal and by failing to provide detail and hoping to just win on vibes it's allowed the right to successfully fill that void with deranged fearmongering. but that's just one of many campaign flaws

i think that's due to misapplying the lessons from the republic referendum

Yes! I mean, I was relatively unconcerned about an emphasis on gauging support for a more general proposition. The memory of the republic referendum (one of the earliest things I voted on) has surely played a big part in that. But I suspect you're entirely OTM at this point, unfortunately.

donotre✧✧✧@a✧✧.g✧✧.a✧
Subject: PVC Received
Your completed postal vote has been received by the AEC.

Woot.

And early in-person polling is fully underway from today. Exciting. (At the very least because there's only 11 more days of active misinformation campaigns.)

Opinion polling still doesn't look at all good.

Far Enough?
Remember when you wanted to find the best coffee within walking distance of where you’re at and you googled it? You can apply the same tactic to so many other aspects in life! @nashedgerton @jennaown @VZerbst @bluetonguefilms VOTE YEShttps://t.co/Fp7n9kdmal

— Senator Briggs (Biblically Accurate) (@Briggs) October 4, 2023

got my ballot but it requires another elector to sign :(

^ lol, did you find one?

I'm intrigued by the ongoing strength of support in Tasmania, assuming the less frequent polling there is reliable. Numbers haven't dipped below 50% for ages. Is at all related to outright genocide having been particularly unsubtle and undeniable there? Maybe a supportive LNP state government helps demonstrate that this isn't really a Labor thing? Go Tas!

I ain't been polled, but I and my family members are voting YES, so you can add that to the percentage. I thought we were lower than the national average at one point tho?

We can all go back to being embarrassed to be Australian in a week's time

except for those among us who will go back to being disenfranchised and disregarded

That Guardian link above (or HERE ) keeps being updated, including state results. Tas has been something of an outlier in recent polling. Though I haven't spied state figures yet from the Newspoll stuff released overnight?!?!

newspoll doesn't usually release state breakdowns with every poll (because the sample sizes are too low to get anything particularly useful), but they probably will release a state-level average of the last few polls later this week

with tas being the most favourable state to yes, the two main things are: the tasmanian liberal premier is supporting it unlike other state liberal leaders, and the sample sizes for the tasmanian figures are so low that they're not going to be the most reliable

lol, did you find one?

the other Australian at my dayjob (a foundational grunge musician who moved here in time for Seattle to take over from Sydney as the global nexus of the form) had no idea if they were registered and tried to look it up

“if you haven’t voted in 35 years, you’re definitely not still on the roll,” I said, having secured a 1-year extension just in time to vote in the referendum

Multiple times on the news now I've seen people - younger people particularly - saying "well I dunno what this is about really so I'm gonna stay out of it and vote no". As if voting no is "staying out of it" FFS. Just fucking dont vote if thats how you feel you knuckleheads.

It's always the most considerate option to double down on the shitty treatment of the First Australians.

Our level of civic education in a country where voting is compulsory is woefully embarrasing.

Like, the discourse I hear, on the news, on reddit, etc people talk about it like its a football team "Vic will win but QLD will all vote no". It isnt a competition!

Voted Yes on the weekend, but share many of the views expressed upthread by ufo, namely that Labor failing to give the public much idea of who the constituents of the Voice will be, how they are chosen, how the body will function, etc, has created a vacuum that Dutton and his cronies have capitalised upon with ease.

I think Labor made a big mistake by barging on with this referendum when it knew it wouldn't have bipartisan support, and when it clearly wasn't adequately prepared to combat the barrage of racism that has played out in the media and in general since this was announced. And then we have Albanese on the weekend saying that the Voice won't be legislated if No wins, which begs the question...how important is it to the government, really? And will Labor be listening to Indigenous people at all once this is all over?

It also concerns me that companies like Rio Tinto are backing the Voice and at the same time desecrating land in and around sacred sites in the Pilbara. Would the Voice listen to them, or to the Indigenous people of those lands?

Ultimately my Yes vote was based on the fact that while I think the management of this process by Labor and the Yes campaign has been pretty diabolical, a No result will ratify Dutton as a leader, and that sickens me most of all. I'm already envisaging him getting up on Saturday night and saying "Australia has said NO to racial division!", which, yuck.

Some musings on Tasmania's numbers this morning at THE ABC.

I think part of me wants the sampling to be robust so I can at least do a "I'm moving to Canada"-style thing on the weekend.

agreed, monotony

Labor made a big mistake by barging on with this referendum when it knew it wouldn't have bipartisan support

the question of bipartisan support was vaguely left open for months (although obviously there wasn't any reason to expect anything more than the liberals taking a neutral position) but there was seemingly no planning for how to deal with the opposition at all. it would have been difficult regardless but it's pretty baffling how it doesn't seem to have been seriously anticipated at all

from everything i've heard the yes campaign has been very poorly run and deeply inexperienced, and they discouraged labor from being too involved in campaigning to avoid politicising the issue but then of course it was anyway when the libs opposed it and labor still didn't step up until very recently. just a total mess

yep to all that, and a telling part of that lack of experience in my eyes was when that ad was launched with the John Farnham song, as though it was going to be a gamechanger in the campaign; leaving aside the ad's paternalistic, white saviour undertones, I was surprised that no one behind the ad had twigged that after the words "You're the voice" come the words "try and understand it", which meant that the No side were given a slogan for free when running their "it's too confusing and ambiguous, if you don't know vote no" argument.

gp’s mono

Love those advocating writing "self-determination" or whatever instead, as though that doesn't simply ensure one's ballot is placed -- by a low-level hired hand at the polling station -- alongside the cock-n-balls squiggles in the "informal" pile.

Not much looking forward to the (anticipated) national dank vibes tomorroe

Also tomorrow

The final The Age editorial (actually Friday's) does a reasonable job of linking the matter to undertakings at the UN. It suddenly occurs to me that I didn't see much of that from official Yes peeps. (Though I guess those needing to be persuaded not to vote 'no' may well be the least likely to give a toss about the UN.)

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/voting-yes-is-not-only-right-it-s-about-honouring-our-promise-20231008-p5eao1.html

Some musings on Tasmania's numbers this morning at THE ABC🕸.

I think part of me wants the sampling to be robust so I can at least do a "I'm moving to Canada"-style thing on the weekend.

Voted. Not a single 'no' canvasser at the polling booth, I haven't seen a single 'no' poster anywhere where I live (eastern suburbs of Sydney), I guess inner city areas are just living in their own bubble.

I accidentally got back on FB recently and that was incredibly dispiriting. Along with insta. Any time the Voice was raised in any discussion there were a bunch of comments adamantly opposing - and if I ever bothered to click through to the poster’s profile there was odds on to be a bunch of incoherent tin hat “freedom” sentiment - anti-vax, anti-5G, save the children from LED lighting Biden is the illuminati shit.

The gleefulness with which people were espousing their NO position made me think of the expression I see on ILX US politics threads - (doing x) “to own the Libs” - it has become a conveniently vague and uncomplicated way to protest about “wokeness” (ie thoughts that make you uncomfortable if you’ve never examined your privilege as a settler).

I feel a great deal of sympathy with the “progressive no” argument as I understand it, but also feel so sad that lifelong campaigners for indigenous rights will (presumably) see this last opportunity for progress slip away.

Well not “last opportunity” but I guess I see this referendum as a once in a generation thing.

FB is full of old cunts and cookers, is why. Everyone else left.

I was suprised to see a few No shills at my wokey McWoke Brunswick polling both. But no queue, we were in and out in like 5 mins. I guess this is an easier task than wrangling a gigantic snake of paper with a jillion stupid parties on it (I always vote below the line and it takes me foreverrrrr).

Sounds like No representation was extremely patchy at LOTS of polling places. Maybe the Yes army worked some magic in the final metres. (He says, kidding himself.)

Lookin grim

Fuck.

fuck this country, or rather fuck 55% of it

Vic and NSW at least don't seem to be doing markedly worse than polling suggested. (Though postal and early votes can *really* screw with that.) That sporadic Tasmanian polling, however, did indeed turn out to be laughably optimistic. :(

Well, it’s probably what I should have expected

I need to stop looking at Facebook, just depressing

I did have a guilty nihilistic guffaw at the ridiculousness of this comment on a news post:

“The lefty echo-chamber called Facebook is going to erupt tonight!”

LOL

My own electorate looks surprising strongly Yes. Not even *inner* Melbourne by anyone's definition. (Yeah, desperately searching for positives here lol.)

I'm too depressed. What a fucking country.

It’s always Queensland isn’t it?

I say as a Queenslander

It’s everywhere

Yeah as someone ex- country NSW they are just as bad.

Misguidedly looked at the ABC news FB comments - fuckin horrible, what a shitshow

Even random ABC vox-pops have been excruciating. Not least the "I don't get it -- so voted no" types. (The Yes campaign might not have been great but tbh the basic proposition never seemed immensely complex in the first place and feels like it's been discussed forever at this point.)

idk the details of how the voice's members would be determined were never put forward, and the yes campaign seemed to struggle at communicating the basic idea of it being an advisory body, let alone the reason why it should be in the constitution.

not to mention the no campaign filling the air with nonsense that little was done to counter

really sorry to hear this for any australian ilxors. was hoping for a good result but not expecting it tbh.

Posting my ballot today, but I don’t even get to hope it can make a flutter of difference, bcz my electorate voted overwhelmingly Yes.

It can, by telling the folks who feel spurned yet again that a larger fraction of the community support their needs.

Libs played the same game as the republic vote: stabilise the status-quo-no and fuel the thoughtful-not-enough-recognition vote. A+B>C and nobody made any useful move to counter it. Absolute shitshow.

i’m not surprised but still furious, plus the aonz election was a disaster

I live in Barton - Linda Burney’s electorate, adjacent to Albanese - which voted no, as it did with the marriage equality referendum - pretty fkn woeful

truly fucked shit.

it’s so depressing & predictable that nothing unites Australia in its racism more than the suggestion of the existence of race itself.

just the barest request for basic human rights & oh yeah that’s right the country is happy to show its colors as fucking colonialist ogre idiots yep good good

LOL right? I suggested to my mother once that something she said came across as a bit racist and she BURST INTO TEARS.

It feels like the talking heads I've seen today can't even bear to be the first to seriously acknowledge a high baseline level of antipathy.

i knew qld would be a dead loss due to our ignorant recalcitrant cunts problem but i did have higher hopes for other parts of the country

xpost yeah it’s a boiled down version of my mum watching the news & saying “but aren’t we ALL australian” and/or some other extended remix of “yes yes they’re aboriginal but they don’t have to bloody talk about it all the time do they”

~kills self~

This, basically :

I have been struck by the widespread conclusion, based on polling, that Australians were persuaded by the argument that the Voice would divide the country. Voters may well say this was what persuaded them. But it is likely that most were instinctively against the idea; of the reasons they were able to choose between to justify their choice, this one sounded most attractive. Understandably: it enabled people to preserve their good opinion of themselves. They were not voting from racial prejudice, dear me no: it was the opposite! They were voting against Indigenous Australians because they hated racism. We are a country that does not know itself.

Yeah that attack line was so effective - the easiest way for people to avoid having uncomfortable thoughts.

It's not entirely unlike the "fuck off, we're full concerned about your welfare at sea" bullshit, come to think of it.

Otm. You’re either completely oblivious to the material realities (they’re not actually dying at sea!), or you think they deserve it (They shoulda just got a permit!). I don’t see what the the other option is for voting no?

The No version: (they don’t need a voice, they’re not suffering proportionality more than white Australians!) or (yeah, but they deserve it/it’s in their nature). It’s either violent ignorance, or violent racism. Yet somehow the no voters got an out with “no, it’s just violent conspiracy theory you see!”. Terrible

I imagine a lot of the smug middle class whiteys just told themselves "well if Jacinta Price and Warren Mundine say its bad and divisive then that it is, they know what do!"

Then again I saw some right mouthbreathers on the ABC news today saying literal shit like "dur I didnt really know what it was about anyway?"

Inexcusable, it’s really not that hard to understand “recognised in the constitution”.

"To the people of WA, under a government I lead there will be no Makarrata ... There will be no revisiting of truth-telling. The $450 million the government wasted in the Voice was an outrage." - Peter Dutton

(White people *really* liked me giving them permission to pretend colonialism is all sunshine and rainbows. Of *course* I'm going to milk that again, etc, etc...)

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-02/garma-treaty-indigenous-djawa-yunupingu/104174434

Fuck that guy to the end of time and space. Our national shame.

I sometimes wonder whether even Menzies would find recent leaders of his party 'backwards', if exhumed for comment 5 decades on lol

Dutton is such a brutal thuggish shit-for-brains, just the worst kind of dipshit cunt. Interesting nobody ever looks closely at how he went from Qld cop to millionaire before going into politics. Not at all a suspicious trajectory.

^ I should be better informed myself. I guess I'm still absorbing the fact that he's seemingly not, in fact, 100.00000% unelectable!

Meanwhile, like clockwork, Albanese has instantly gone all wishy-washy on the remaining Uluru statement measures himself, presumably anticipating fear campaigns.

Not entirely sure why the ALP post-Keating is so prone to falling back into line with conservative nutjobs whenever they start threatening to actually stand for something worthwhile for a bit. Such an excruciating country.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEWFigyE8R0
May as well be the ALP theme song

labor's cowardice in the failure of the referendum is depressingly expected and understandable but ultimately the voice was a fundamentally flawed proposal that failed to understand the stakes at play and was reflective of the terrible political instincts of those who lead it