- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
Australians have resoundingly rejected a proposal to recognise Aboriginal people in its constitution and establish a body to advise parliament on Indigenous issues.
Saturday’s voice to parliament referendum failed, with the defeat clear shortly after polls closed.
I’m sorry, I’m stupid and not up-to-date with this.
Taken at face value, Constitutional Recognition for the indigenous population sounds correct.
So what was wrong with it?
Nothing.
The no and yes sides to a referendum prepare an informational pamphlet that everyone receives but there’s absolutely no requirement that any of it be truthful, so the opposition just openly lied until the whole thing died.
Actual information was obscured, fear mongering was rampant, the voice was harmless at worst, but could have been the spark that changed Australia for the better.
Thank you. But I’m still not sure I get it. Could you maybe give an example of what kind of lie or fear mongering would make people want to say:
“No, I don’t want the constitution to recognise that there were an indigenous people here before us.”
That seems like an unarguable fact, isn’t it?
I’m sorry, I don’t mean to put you on the spot but since you were kind enough to take the time to give an overview, it makes me hungry for more detail!
The referendum was (if I understand it correctly) about adding an advisory body of indigenous people to parliament. This wouldn’t have given them any power to make decisions, only to advise parliament on things.
The No Campaign just straight up lied to people saying it would let them write laws, take away your land, etc…
I see, thank you (and to everyone else who responded).
First off to be precise, this was a ”proposal to recognise Aboriginal people in its constitution and establish a body to advise parliament on Indigenous issues".
Some examples of what I think were sadly effective for the no campaign:
“This will allow indigenous peoples to reclaim your land”
“It will only further divide our nation”
“We don’t know how this might be misused”
These all play on peoples fear. On the other hand some indigenous peoples also were campaigning for a no vote, primarily because they thought it wasn’t strong enough.
This gave voters a lot of reasons to hide behind while voting no.
And all this was not helped by a rather poor yes campaign that barely did anything to address misconceptions.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-19/fact-check-yes-no-campaign-pamphlets-aec/102614710
There’s the bare bones of the thing. The yes side had the exact same grasp of messaging that the Democrats in the US do. Which is to say none.
Amazing this was posted 4 days after the in person voting… how is an Aussie meant to make an informed choice when the data comes after the voting day?
The referendum was yesterday. We have early access polling, access to which has increased since the pandemic, but most people still typically vote on the election day, as I did, which was yesterday - so an article from 19 July is plenty of notice for most people.
Not sure what you mean, the linked article was from months ago and the in person vote was yesterday. People had plenty of time to decide to make an informed choice and many decided not to.
by reading literally anything or listening to one of the dozens of speeches on the topic.
Arguments included:
“If you don’t know, say no” Incredibly reductionist, could be used to justify any position, but a very effective soundbite. It’s only when you extrapolate it, that you realise the issues. Imagine if someone told you “If you don’t know whether a girl/boy will say yes to you, never ask them out on a date”. Uncertainty is an inherent part of most of human nature. A lot less humans would be born if no one had the presence of mind to find out more about whether a person liked them, or just took a gamble and asked for a date.
“This will allow aboriginals to claim and take your land” Because Australia was declared “terra nullus” on ‘discovery’, and therefore regarded as uninhabited under English law, colonisers basically took and claimed all the land and dispossesed the Native Australians. And ever since, there’s been a resistance to recognising prior ownership and use by native Australians, because that might threaten current ownership of land. No one wants land and property they own to be arbitrarily taken away from them with no recompense (ironic, yes?), so it’s very easy to create fear in current landowning/propertyowning Australians by saying increased recognition of indigenous Australians in any form could have their land taken from them and given back to indigenous Australians.
“This will be a 3rd chamber of parliament” There are currently two houses of Parliament of government, in which candidates are voted and elected by a majority of their constituents. The houses form the core mechanics of how laws are created, debated and enacted. By portraying the proposed advisory body as a 3rd legislative body on par with the 2 existing houses, and pointing out the body was to be formed from indigenous Australians, the no campaign capitalised on fears of changing our entire political system, and the false impression of giving indigenous Australians incredibly disproportionste and unfair weighting within the political system.
“Enshrining a specific ‘political’ body made up of only indigenous Australians in the constitution makes us unequal, because they don’t do that for other Australians”. This one tries to capitalise on feelings of equality, and therefore fairness. Because I don’t get X, they shouldn’t have X. And neatly creates the assumption that the status quo is equal, so why change it. Ignoring that indigenous Australians are a very small percent of population, and therefore less than 5% or so of the voting population, so unlikely to ever form an effective voting bloc or have their needs and desires reflected in mainstream politics like the average Australian might. Also, the statistics for quality of life are extremely poor when compared to the average Australian, in terms of social and financial mobility, education, health, prison incarceration rates, birth complication rates etc. The average life expectancy of an indigenous Australian is at least 8 years lower than the average Australian. These have been persistent gaps in societal outcomes that haven’t closed despite decades of government focus and money, hence trying something new, like the Voice.
“It won’t do anything, so there’s no point creating it” The argument was that this body has no executive powers, and can only talk ‘at’ the government, and there’s no obligation in the current wording in the referendum, that the government even needs to listen. So it won’t achieve anything at all, it will be useless and ineffective.
“It does too much” The argument was that it was too powerful, and would put too much unequal power in the hands of indigenous Australians, and that it would therefore be unfair and unequal. That it would allow indigenous Australians to create laws, change them, create treaties between them and Australia, recognise indigenous land rights etc.
Lots more out there, but that’s it for now from me
This makes sense, thank you for taking the time to explain.
The problem is you’re trying to rationalise racism, which isn’t rational.
The democratic result was clear. Assuming it was all about racism is so reductive that you’re stultifying your own outlook by simplifying a more complex issue.
Then go look it up, lazy. That other person has no obligation to teach you a customized course on the Australian referendum to recognize indigenous peoples. Use the internet that you’re reading their post with to look it up yourself if you’re so hungry for detail. I’d be willing to bet you can find scanned copies of each pamphlet if you tried. I’d Google it to find out for sure, but then you’d want me to read them to you.
How would someone unfamiliar with Australia, unfamiliar with our laws, unfamiliar with our methods of referenda get the information better from the pamphlets over asking Australians?
The pamphlets have falsehoods. They are released by the election commission. People not from Australia would assume it is verified information if it’s in an election commission pamphlet, for instance.
Rather than being helpful, your comment in unnecessarily combative, while being confidently incorrect.
I dont understand people who complaining about other people asking simple questions. What a waste of time to make such a pointless and angry reply.
Your point is a valid one, so I’ll answer it. Initially I did use Google. I was overloaded with a mash-up of sites from which it would have been difficult to resolve right from wrong. As this doesn’t relate to my country I’d have simply moved on.
Instead, I feel much more informed from all the considered, well-written responses which people were kind enough to write here.
I’d say an excuse for politics to ignore indigenous issues for another decade by placating the white masses for the next few election cycles would be a lil worse.
Also generations of non-ATSI Australian children being taught total dehumanising racist bullshit, and never being corrected largely because the genocide was very successful.
A society can’t just start trying to correct some of the history taught to children over the last few years, and then be surprised by the outcome of a referendum when success relies on the judgement of people who grew up on the old lies. Correcting the record for the next generation is necessary, but it doesn’t fix the existing damage the lies have done and continue to do.
I don’t know what Labor was thinking when they took this path. From the outside it looks like a huge unforced strategic failure.
Shit’s fucked and there are no simple solutions and I hate it.
Our history is shameful but also our efforts to redress past wrongs recurrent and inspiring. Negativity about a well-intentioned referendum helps nobody. I’ll note that this was driven by the Labor Party, not by Indigenous Australians, who don’t trust the good intentions of politicians who carried out policies like the Stolen Generations on behalf of the poor unfortunate blacks of the time. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Leaving the moral arguments aside, there were also massive campaign failures on the Yes side. No had two clear cheerleaders with an absurdly simple catchphrase: “If you don’t know, vote No”. Meanwhile Yes didn’t have a star for the campaign and had made the amendment way too simple/general so there weren’t any included details of the practicalities. So they ended up with 100 people having to re-explain their plans every campaign stop and occasionally tripping over each other’s messages. As a result, the complicated sell from Yes played right into No‘s hands.
So the No side’s campaign was one of deliberately not educating people? To me that just says that people educated on the subject are voting Yes.
While that may be an absurdly simple slogan, it is also absurdly stupid.
The only Territory to vote yes, out of all our States and Territories, was the Australian Capital Territory which is the most educated and most involved with governance.
uni educated people overwhelmingly voted yes. so yep pretty much
I don’t understand why the media is so desperate to frame the result around cost of living. It was clearly about education.
Also, the Yes slogan eventually became “if you don’t know - find out” and “just Google it”.
Just Google it, the advice you always hear when the other person is shutting down any more conversation. What an unfortunate result
“Google it” vs “no”. The point of the slogan was to highlight a) how the other side was shutting down the conversation and b) that their premise of ignorance was stupid, in a short pithy way.
It wasn’t saying “go find out”, so much as “you CAN find out if you care, there is no reason to not know”
That said, without question, the Yes campaign’s official messages were pretty poor. Supporters have been far more eloquent.
On the “just google it” topic, this short video was brilliantly well done: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SAqIypjk-5A
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/watch?v=SAqIypjk-5A
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Which isn’t in any way how it works. You’re making the claim, you sell it. I’m not going digging to make someone’s claim on their behalf.
It is how “it” works, where “it” is “mock reductionist ignorance worshipping”.
You are correct on all counts.
The ‘No’ campaign was largely nonexistent. The ‘Yes’ campaign was enough reason to vote ‘No’. And the ‘No’ voters are just as educated as ‘Yes’ voters. It’s just that some people can’t understand why other people would disagree with them.
Didn’t get a single flyer from the yes campaign, the no campaign, however. Just depends on where you live
Some are educated, some are racist - no reason they can’t be both.
It’s easy to understand ignorance and racism.
(There’s a third option, and that’s for the mining magnates like Clive who want less complaining about digging up sacred sites)
It’s clear that most of the people responding to you are being deceptive and crying ‘racism’ to make themselves feel superior.
This was not a referendum to recognise indigenous people. Whomever titled this article is a liar. It was a referendum to create an advisory body that makes representations to parliament to support a specific race. Contrary to the holier-than-thou crowd around here, many people voted ‘No’ because they do not agree with permanently enshrining this in the Constitution.
It had nothing to do with race, how someone could be against something as simple and inoffensive as an advisory body is beyond me
I never saw any arguments against the Voice that weren’t either simplistic ideology (“it’s racist to have an advisory body for indigenous people!”) or outright lies and conspiracy theories. Claiming that it wouldn’t have gone far enough isn’t a good argument to do nothing instead. Does anyone really think that a treaty is more likely now than if we had voted yes?
Well technically a treaty doesn’t need a referendum but given the strong no result it could be political suicide, a risk I hope the Albanese government is willing to take
race‘cultural group’Still not race, infact it didn’t even require that the members were first nations peoole
removed by mod
The referendum isn’t about recognition of the indigenous population. That was 1967, which overwhelmingly passed.
This referendum was to add into the constitution that a body (a group of people) that represents the voice of indigenous and Torres strait Islander people must exist.
That’s it.
The obfuscation occurred when people expected more from it, which a constitution does not do. That’s a legislative power, which the current government of the time will then determine how the body is made up, how people will be chosen for the Voice etc. Additionally, there was a huge misinformation campaign and we have a media monopoly with an agenda here, so many, many people voted No as a result of the confusion.
The No vote was very, very largely done in good conscience. I firmly believe that these voters want what’s best for Australia and I’m glad for that. I wish it was a Yes, but hopefully this will spur more conversation on what we can do to bridge the gap.
A decade ago our PM said sorry. Twenty years ago we were told the gap in life expectancy would be closed. One of our most famous moments in history is a PM giving old Lingari a handfull of dirt.
The majority of indigenous people I’ve spoken to have said they’re voting no or don’t care. Another empty gesture to placate the white population for another election cycle isn’t what we need. An official voice that can make recommendations to the same governing body that has oppressed them for a century and to this day continue to ignore or obfuscate the most basic voices of reason from academics, human rights experts and elders?.. Yeah nah fuck that for a solution.
I didn’t vote because I think each country should decide how and if they want to be incorporated into the Western system. The polarisation in the media compared to the results on the day make me think I made the right choice. Australians famous laconic apathy is ripe for spin masters to manipulate by only giving extreme minority groups the mic and as usual the actual victims are doubly fucked.
It was never “a solution”, it was “part of solution”. The world isn’t so simple.
Theoretically… Yes.
So what, precisely, do the actual victims want?
More autonomy and self determination is a big one. More so than land rights or any sort of reparations in my experience, but different regions face very different issues. Unless we’re just looking for a token gesture, it’s a bit daft to lump a hundred diverse aboriginal countries together and expect them to all agree.
The only case against it was that at best it would be symbolic, as if there isn’t dozens of symbolic bodies around the world providing suggestions to governments that are nothing more than just that, being another opinion on a matter.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-19/fact-check-yes-no-campaign-pamphlets-aec/102614710
Absolutely nothing. Just racists being racist.
Not racist, merely conservative. I voted yes but it’s important to separate political observations instead of lumping them all together as “just racists being racist”. It’s dumb.
That attitude cost the Yes vote. Idiots couldn’t organise a root in a brothel.
Sunce Lemmy constitutes 99% ‘Yes men’ circlejerks ill try to rationalize the opposition. From what I was told, there is no language in the proposal to suggest the extent of how the Aboriginals power over any matter. It gave them the freedom to be a blockade in matters that dont even affect them. This is what an aus friend has told me.
The amendment if full,
So… No. Your friend is full of shit. It provides no powers whatsoever.
The same parliament ignoring indigenous voices for a century will be the only one free to listen to “the” indigenous voice.
Your friend was wrong. All it required was that a designated group of people be consulted with to discuss an issue - if they wanted to discuss it. There was no veto power attached or any other additional rights or privileges conveyed.
Again, I’m not from the area and i only have what I was told. I was just putting what I was told how I understood it, maybe I misunderstood, maybe its Maybelline.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-19/fact-check-yes-no-campaign-pamphlets-aec/102614710
Try again. Your friend was lied to.
Maybe I misunderstood my friends position… but yeah your post is the only one showing both positions.
Now that two people have shattered the circlejerk you live in are you going to reassess anything? Maybe let your Australian friend know that he was duped too.
Lol i dont know, i was playing telephone… I may have just jumbled it all up. You guys are ridiculous.
The majority of Australians are decendant from the colonists, an they’re against it. They’re never going to leave
Majority of people here descended from people who arrived well after the colonists. About a third of us were born overseas. Around half have a parent born overseas.
https://www.abs.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/2021-census-nearly-half-australians-have-parent-born-overseas
Would the Aboriginals think differently about the colonists who arrived first, second, last?
You’re really righteous for an ignorant bastard.