Australia rejects proposal to recognise Aboriginal people in constitution
theguardian.com
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.
As an American, it's nice to know we're not the only pieces of shit out there.
Oh it's not just us.
UK, and Canada have sordid pasts as well.
Where do you think the US learned it from?
Where do you think Australian colonialism comes from?
I LEARNED IT FROM YOU, MOM AND DAD! 😭😭
You can throw the French, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese in there too
You mean... the UK. Given that the USA, Canada and Australia were all British colonies, ergo the same past.
Yeah but this is the present.
Canada is actively shitty to their indigenous people.
I'm from the UK so I can vouch that the government are actively shitty to it's not rich people.
If I want to explain the class system to someone from a former colony, I start with colonialism, but practised at home.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but the point to understand here is that Australia cannot even make it over the very first hurdle. Indigenous peoples are recognised in Canada's constitution, the Canadian government has signed many treaties over hundreds of years and Canada even has a form of Indigenous self-governance in Nunavut. Australia cannot get anywhere even close to these things. Constitutional recognition was just rejected, widespread treaty making is only in its infancy and self-governance is an absolute pipe dream.
Other former colonies may be shitty towards their Indigenous peoples, but at the very least there is generally some form of recognition of their importance as Indigenous. In Australia, we do not even see Indigenous peoples as Indigenous. We don't understand what that word actually means. So much of the commentary from No voters during this referendum was about how Indigenous Australians are just another racial minority group, equating them with Chinese Australians, Indian Australians, etc. People fundamentally do not understand the difference, because they do not understand the history of their own country.
As is the US. Let's have a threesome!
Down 😊
And that is why I am soo embarrassed, and shocked, and dissappointed, and
Quite honestly it was a very confusing referendum. The question seemed simple on the surface but as soon as you ask questions very quickly it was hard to find answers. I think this confusion is the reason the majority voted no, they were scared to choose yes for something they didn't understand. I tried to understand and still couldn't find a straight answer of what this referendum was actually about.
The confusion definitely wasn't helped by the large amounts of deliberate misinformation being put out there about the intention of the Voice, and requests for specificity.
And then the apparently contradictory arguments (often by the very same person, within the same argument) that it was too much, and therefore privileged indigenous Australians over other Australians, and yet also not enough, and would therefore achieve nothing at all. Or that more information needed to be provided, or more often, that specifics needed to be pre-decided and included within the wording (overlooking that those specifics would then be enshrined in the constitution and largely unchangeable ever again)
An argument to paralyse everyone along the decision spectrum who wasn't already in the yes camp or no camps.
To answer your question, the voice was essentially a yes or no to creating a constitutionally recognised body of indigenous Australians, that could lobby Government and Parliament of behalf of indigenous Australians on issues concerning indigenous Australians.
To use an extended analogy:
It would be similar to a board meeting of a large company asking their shareholders to agree to a proposal to create a position within the company of "Disabilities, Diversity, and Equity Officer", and have that position enshrined within the company's charter, to enable a dedicated representative to make representions on behalf of those that fall under those categories, as they all tend to be in minority groups whose needs or ideas don't tend to be (on average) reflected or engaged with by existing company processes or mainstream society. And that the position be held by someone within one of those minority groups.
Sure, an individual employee could take an issue to their supervisor (i.e. the Government/parliament), but that supervisor rightly has a need to observe the needs of the company (its voters) and the majority of employees (the average Australian), and the thought that a policy might not actually be effective for person Y would likely not even occur to the supervisor, as it seems to work for the majority of employees anyway, and they're not raising any issues. The supervisor is unlikely to go proactivelly asking employee Y's opinion on implementing X policy when they feel they already understand what employee a, b, c and d etc. want out of the policy.
Even if employee Y brings up an issue directly with the supervisor, the supervisor is structurally unlikely to take it on board or give it much weight, as it's a single employee vs the multitude of other employees who are fine with the policy as is. And listening involves extra work, let alone actually changing anything as a result.
Having a specific Disability/Diversity/Equity officer not only allows employee Y an alternative chain of communication to feel like they're being seen, and their concerns heard (which has important implications for their sense of self worth, participation, and mutual respect in the company), but the fact that it's a specified company position within the company's charter means the supervisor is much more likely to give that communication from that position much more weight, and consider it more carefully, than if that random, singular enployee Y had just tried to tell the supervisor directly.
The Disability/Diversity/Equity officer doesn't have the power to change rules, or implement anything by fiat. He can only make representations to the company and give suggestions for how things could be better. The supervisor and company still retain complete control of decision making and implementation, but the representations from the DDE officer could help the company and supervisor create or tweak policy and practices that work for an extra 10-15% of employees, and therefore a total of 85% of the company's employees, instead of the previous 70%.
Now, would you expect that the company provide the shareholders with exact details of: what hours the DDE officer will have, how much they'll be paid, what room of what building they'll operate on, how they'll be allowed or expected to communicate with others in the organisation, etc? With the expectation that all this additional information will be entered into the company charter on acceptance, unchangeable except at very rare full General Meetings of all shareholders held every 2 or 3 decades?
No. They just ask the shareholders if they're on board with creating a specific position of Disability/Diversity/Equity officer, and that its existence be noted and enshrined in the company charter so the position can't be cut during an economic downturn, or easily made redundant and dismissed if an ideologically driven CEO just didn't like the idea of having a specific Disability/Equity officer position in the company.
In retrospect Albanese made a big mistake breaking his own rule in being a small target and "taking Australia with you" on big changes. I suspect this will be a bit of a "told you so" moment for the section of the Labor party agitating for bigger social and economic initiatives.
Agreed, there were too many "then what?" when you start to ask questions. On the surface, yep, sounds good to me! But "how does that help?" or "what would they do?" or "who picks them?" lead to some pretty piss poor answers.
I think the biggest red flag for people was that a large portion (possibly not the majority) of the Aboriginals that had a platform of some kind were against it themselves. Why?
Not the majority. Not close. Less than 20%.
We're both born from Western colonialism and converted into capitalism
Western colonialism was capitalism, have a wee read about the East India Company for starters
Finland also has quite a bad history with Sami people. Not quite as savage as US and Indians but still.
English and thr Irish... it's savage all the way down.
We really need to move on from this divisive attitude that people who don't vote the way we do, especially with such a clear democratic majority, are necessarily 'pieces of shit'. Life and politics are more complicated than that and more politically informed left-leaning voters should know better.
Except it is often the case they are pieces of shit.
Sane people don't vote for Clive or Pauline, for example.
:’(
Sadly unsurprising.
I personally didn’t pay close attention to the campaigns, and think it pretty obvious Australia has a fair way to go on indigenous issues, but my impression is also that the Yes campaign was poorly executed and thought through, failing, in part, to recognise how much of an uphill climb it was going to be and how easy the No campaign was going to be. For instance, while reading the ballot, I was taken aback by how vague and confusing the proposal was, despite having read it before.
Otherwise, I’m hoping there’s a silver lining in the result where it will prompt an ongoing conversation about what actually happened and get the country closer to getting better at this.
There was a massive, heavily funded FUD campaign by the "no" proponents. Sadly, it was very effective.
Yeah as soon as I heard the "if you don't know vote no" slogan I knew it was already over.. this one line just forgives people for being racist.
I'm not saying every No vote was racist just that many would have been and this made it so fucking easy for them to feel no guilt.
Yea that’s kinda what I meant. The No campaign here was pretty easy to cook up I think. And for the Liberal party it was a very attractive chance to kick the Labor govt down no matter the cause.
Which means, IMO, if you were going to do this, you had to be ready for all of that and not rely on calls to be “be on the right side of history”. Australia isn’t there and needs convincing, unfortunately.
The mining lobby seems to be behind it too - they stand to lose a lot if Aboriginal rights are given more credence.
The mining lobby in Australia is behind everything.
https://www.mining-technology.com/features/in-numbers-how-mining-came-to-be-australias-most-profitable-sector/
Don't forget agriculture too!
Clive Palmer dropped (at least) $2 mill on the No campaign. That says a lot about what it's worth.
Not to mention that the bar for a referendum to pass is very high. For the non-Australians, you need not only a majority of voters nationally to vote yes, but also a majority of states to vote yes (the so-called "double majority"). Only 8 of the last 44 referendums before now have passed and partisan referendums have never passed, so this one was doomed the minute Dutton decided to play politics with it.
I wish somebody had said that about Brexit.
The yes campaign did it to itself with its vague and questionable impact.
The mining lobby funded some of the yes campaign and then proceeded to put out those vague and questionable messages. They really played both sides very effectively.
I have no doubt they had vested interests because the cultural sites get in their way (that’s reparations of its own!).
The yes vague campaign started day 1, that was on them entirely. They were proposing changing the constitution with very little detail out of the gate. Conducting and listening to a pole would have helped immensely.
The weight of the media was against them from day 1. It doesn't really matter what your messaging is if it doesn't get reported. What did get reported was whatever Murdoch's news media wanted to be reported, and if they reported the "yes" side only in terms of weak points then that's what people think the "yes" side had to say.
ABC ran non stop opinion pieces and articles on the yes vote. None stop from before the referendum was announced. The guardian same game. Early on the no campaign had no idea where or how they were going to oppose the vote. They just knew they were.
So no I kindly disagree the yes campaign can’t cry fowl here the no campaign didn’t find its feet until the last maybe week or two.
I guess it depends which media you use. My mother watches channel 7 mostly and she seemed puzzled as to why anyone would vote yes. "Apparently even the Aboriginals don't want it." And this was a few weeks ago. I think the mainstream media's been pushing "no" pretty hard throughout.
The only garbage I really found that I thought could swing voters was on TikTok, the “if you don’t vote yes; you’re a racist”. Effective.
I agree that Labor very badly misread the room. I'm a bit grumpy about it TBH.
I don't think Australia is really ready for a meaningful conversation about issues relating to first Australians - hell, I'm not if I'm really honest.
They will be ready when there are no indigenous people left.
Tasmania taking point on this.
That's perpetuating the racist myth that Tasmanian Aboriginal people were exterminated entirely. The Black War in Tassie arguably was a genocide but there are some Indigenous descendants today.
But with Tasmania's functional literacy below fifty percent (never mind two-thirds of the island's population being welfare dependent), it's never going to be the centre of intellectual discourse of any kind in this country.
So... you agree then? That Tasmania has done more / come closer to achieving that horrific goal than other states?
I didn't say "exterminated entirely". I said "taking point". As in leading the nation (state-wise).
I can understand the misunderstanding from an implication - but remembering the Black War is a good way to help fight against it happening again.
Iirc it was a very popular idea when it was first proposed, but a bunch of right-wingers spent a shitton of money spreading misinformation which swung it towards being unpopular.
Once again, the right-wing is responsible for being garbage people.
60% of the country voted against it. Your attribution of this to the media alone is juvenile.
Bruh, over the past 6-7 years we've been shown time and time again how incredibly powerful media manipulation is, both when it comes to traditional media and social media. Seriously?
Even 10 years ago the topic of this referendum would have been political suicide. Remember Rudd got crucified for apologising. It's actually pretty positive that this referendum, as poorly executed as it was, actually happened.
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.
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.
You are correct on all counts.
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
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.
It's always so funny when Americans on here, including me, are openly willing to discuss how shitty, racist, and full of bigots the United States is. Around 40% of the population is complete filth and we're happy to openly acknowledge that.
Meanwhile, Canada, the UK, and Australian users, even if they're on the left, try to find excuses to not acknowledge that their general public is also significantly racist and bigoted. And always have been.
Lefty Canuck here - Very willing to admit my country is full of racist pieces of shit. And so is every other country. 30% of the world is made up of trash humans who would fuck over their mother for a dollar, or to get to their destination 10 seconds faster.
You're being very generous there.
Afraid I have to agree on the UK front. It shocks me how so many people refer to the UK as a multicultural, tolerant nation.
London, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, and Birmingham, perhaps? Outside of maybe 5-8 major cities, the amount of sexism, racism, and general hate for anyone poor or not of Anglo origin is unreal.
I remain weirded out that the racist response during Brexit was a bunch of harassment of Polish immigrants.
Why Polish? I assume it has to be some internal thing that the rest of the world doesn't have information about.
The Polish people are like the Mexicans (previously Irish) are to the US. They're foreigners who move to another country to do manual work cheaper than locals are willing to.
In the words of one of my favourite comedians "They're going to come over here and take all of the jobs we didn't want to do!"
I'm Australian and I acknowledge the levels of racism. I think it's the racists who think it's not racist here. One guy told me he wasn't racist, his hatred and disdain for ALL aboriginal people was valid because he had had traumatic experiences, first hand. (makes me so freaking angry even typing this) his traumatic experiences were absolute bullshit. Racists justify thier racism as "a valid explanation" so they don't call themselves racists. So if people are saying it's not racist here you're probably talking to the racists. And Facebook. I also blame Facebook for this.
The Canadian government loves to advertise how open and inclusive they are, while at the same time oppressing indigenous people. For example (although it was a while ago, I don't think a lot has changed), the Oka crisis started over a Golf Course wanting to expand into indigenous territory, which the Canadian Government eventually deployed the military (largest deployment since WWII) to support... the Golf Course.
Even elected representatives have to deal with racist bullshit while serving their country (like Mumilaaq Qaqqaq of Nunavut). It's so intertwined in Canadian society it often isn't recognized, likely because for the most part it isn't overt. A lot of the racism is subtle, reinforced by inequitable laws & policies and almost always acted on if there's plausible deniability (that is, unless they screw up). It's almost like a lot of Canadians are politely racist.
The origin of the horsy police was to control indigenous peoples and take their children away to residential schools. Not much has changed in the meantime. They just pretend to police in the off hours when they aren't ignoring forced sterilizations and disappearances of native women, giving starlight tours, and pointing AR-15s at unarmed protestors in their own homes on behalf of the oil pipeline companies.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Mumilaaq Qaqqaq
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I think the term you're looking for is covert racism.
I think it's a cultural difference honestly.
I've only travelled the US, haven't spent a significant amount of time there, about 6 weeks.
I'm Australian and growing up, I was quite shocked to learn at different points of my life that a few fair people were actually racist, sexist, very right or even religious.
These things just aren't overly openly discussed. Maybe in small groups etc but a lot of the population are quite apathetic (a whole other issue) and I think there apathetic tendencies both mask their own racism or whateverism but also make them not really speak out against others.
On the other hand, America embraces individuality, fame, speaking out and standing up for your rights etc. As a whole, I feel a racist American is far more in your face than a racist Australian.
I'm curious to know if this vote really is a racist result or if a large percentage of the population got caught up with the 'no campaign' which was pushing things like 'separating us in the constitution is going to create a divide, we are ALL Australians' etc.
Interesting none the less and a shit result.
The 1967 amendment already did that. But yes, the campaigns were about the voice, not recognition of first nations people
The difference is our electoral system doesn't let the 30% of racist pieces of shit run the entire country.
Fair enough. I think every democracy needs to have the compulsory voting system that Australia does.
The perceptual downside to the system though is that it definitively and accurately tells you out of the entire population the amount that are bigoted POS'.
There were many ATSI people who voted no because they want treaty, not an advisory committee with no veto powers.
Not everyone who voted no is racist and proclaiming they are is far more reminiscent of US divisive politics than how Australian politics works.
So, the problem is it didn't change the political process enough?
For progressive no voters, that is correct.
There is of course an element of society who want to ignore or bury any discourse on issues impacting ATSI Australians but they’re not the full picture either.
First person who's bothered to try and understand the result rather than denouncing the country. The No campaign was deliberately divisive, like Abbott's 2013 election or Howard's manipulation of the republic referendum in 1999. Not only that, lack of political engagement and awareness - most embarrassingly from our most prominent left party, the Greens, who get so embroiled in internecine disputes that they seem not to really get what a political party does. The LNP may not be doing well at the moment but they're a true coalition and trusted voting bloc.
In short, people just don't want to run headlong into progressive politics without thinking it through. We're tired of government interference following years of lockdowns, don't trust our state and federal governments because of repeated betrayal by the Morrison government and broken promises there and elsewhere, and Indigenous people were divided and made the perfect the enemy of the good.
This is the inherent flaw in democracy in general. If most people are shit, the government will also be shit
That's why access to quality education is tantamount to functioning democracy.
Maybe not but we just saw that it's a fuckin' lot more than just 30 for you guys!
You actually think 55% of Australians are racist?
You understand that the vast majority of No voters voted that way because they didn't understand what it was, and the No campaign very deliberately did everything they could to make it unclear and confusing.
yeah nah cus. we're racist as and generally the progressives are willing to admit it.
Our cities don't have shit like the stark divide I saw over in Atlanta Georga usa where there's like the black side and the white side (was 20 years ago, better now?) but like even in sydney we have the red rooster line. Beyond that the wealthy east likes to assume everyone on the other more non white migrant side is an ignorant moron.
But especially to blackfellas we're horrible. I remember being told not to walk down streets because an "abbo" lived there as a kid. Like what the flying faaaark?
I'm Canadian and yeah.... Even IRL a lot of people refuse to admit it.
I've been forced to educate people about the Chinese Head Tax and the 2 very distinct Chinese Exclusion Acts and how that on top of Yellow Peril still affects Chinese disapora today in government regulations including immigration and social programs, which is super traumatic as a Hong Kong diaspora who is also trans, queer, female-bodied, and neurodivergent.
Let's just stop trying out new referenda, OK?
If the Yes campaign are serious about the Voice to the nation being important to the Indigenous people, then no-one is standing in the way of making it happen. The vote to enshrine it in the Constitution failed, but the body can still be created and can still function primarily the same.
yeah until the Liberals dismantle it. again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3pguf37KTM
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=l3pguf37KTM
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
The whole topic is now radioactive. No politician will touch it for at least the next 10 years.
New to the subject here: why is it a desirable thing to recognise Aboriginal people in the Constitution?
As I read through the article in the Aboriginal camp not everyone wants this. So I'm puzzled.
It's complex. Quite a few in the indigenous "no" camp want treaty instead; a formal legal recognition of aboriginal rights and representation, not just an advisory voice in parliament. Voting no for them was as much a protest as an attempt to send a message saying this should be much more. For them it's all or nothing.
Others didn't see the point, yet others don't see the problem in the first place, comfortable with the status quo.
Ah the classic "I'm going to vote no to something good for me because I wanted something even better" argument 🤦♂️
Their argument is that the Voice isn't even something good. It doesn't give Indigenous people any powers they didn't already have, and the Voice can be ignored just as easily as the advice of the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody recently was. Interview with the Black Peoples Union describes in better detail.
But even if that weren't the case and they did think it wasn't worthless symbolism, successful collective bargaining doesn't just settle for every first offer. So I don't know why you're claiming it's a bad strategy, it's how unions have won important gains for workers. It's a strategy that has been historically shown to work when applied correctly.
Except when it's put to a general vote like that, all the nuance is lost, and the voters remember "well we resoundingly voted no on the last one, why vote this one in?"
But aren't Aboriginal people citizens of Australia and so already part of the Constitution thus having legal rights like everyone else? What are the extra rights and representation needed?
Because they are Indigenous. Do you understand the difference between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in a colonial state?
I'm not sure why you're confused because the first sentence of the article literally says:
Which sums up why they were trying to make this happen, which also sounds like they don't have an official group of Indigenous peoples advising the government on anything that is an Indigenous issue, which is super bad.
Thank you for your reply. It's simple:
if they have Australian citizenship (I think in 67 was a push for this) then they already have all the Constitutional rights and obligations like every other Australian citizen. Why are these extra steps necessary?
if they don't: what is their current legal status? Why not just give them citizenship and thus having the right of representation in the Parliament and so forth?
A sad day for Australia. It was cool to see a lot if Australian celebrities come out in support of a yes vote.
Yeah this fucking sucks. I have to admit I was expecting Yes to win by a landslide, but I guess I give people too much credit.
Australia does not like referendums.
It was a constitutional change. Yes campaign was nothing more than virtual signalling with vague impact. End result a visibly risky change (see WA recent change that went really bad) that will do bugger all maybe maybe not and it’s easy to see where it would end.
Yes vote had been polling poorly from the launch. Can I ask why you thought it would win?
I know a large amount of Yes23 campaigners were shocked, but I chalked that up to them existing in an echochamber and lacking the awareness to factor that in.
I guess I must live in an echo chamber. I've been staying away from larger socmed and news for my own mental health, and my area was a pretty solid yes so that's kinda all I saw.
American here, what does it mean to recognize a class of indigenous people in Australia?
Because we have a very different understanding of the word lol
It was to put them in the constitution as the original inhabitants of Australia and give them the right to a mostly powerless advisory body to the Commonwealth government called "the Voice".
It was a pretty conservative idea but unfortunately the conservative opposition leader is the arch-racist piece of shit who will never win a real election, but in his desperation to make a name for himself he campaigned against the referendum, and referendums traditionally only succeed with bipartisan support. So now all that's really been accomplished is to disenfranchise our indigenous population even more.
I know it's a lot more nuanced than this but the idea of history being like "yes these people were unarguably here first" and government going "nah we created this place" is so fucking ridiculous.
It's not much more nuanced than that. Have you heard of Australia's history wars? Many of the leaders and major ministers of Australia's conservative party have been, and still are, subscribers to a completely alternate and incorrect version of Australia's history which has been pushed for decades by right wing media and political journals like Quadrant. The current party leader, Peter Dutton, literally walked out during the federal government apology for the damage it caused to the Stolen Generations.
Decades of this shit has really slowed progress on Indigenous affairs and reconciliation, and it's a big part of the reason why so many Australians have a warped idea of their own country's history (if they even know anything) and why our attitudes towards our Indigenous peoples seem so laughably archaic to the rest of the world.
That's not far from how it is here - but I'd say it's more dishonest politicians tokenistically acknowledging Country (such a performative exercise) and capitalising common nouns in that way. Nobody's really saying "we created this place", more that we have this culture of falling over ourselves to recognise Traditional Owners while not actually doing much to address Indigenous disadvantage. Referenda are seen as a big deal and usually fail, especially where they're not led by those who care about the movement, AND are completely transparent about what the result will mean. This referendum was led by the governing party of Australia as an election commitment, and what would result was neither well thought out nor explained adequately. Australia voted not to support the vague word of hand-wringing do-gooders we don't trust.
There's a good breakdown on the whole thing here: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/oct/13/what-is-the-indigenous-voice-to-parliament-australia-when-referendum-2023-explained-yes-no-campaign-wording
The recognition aspect was basically the creation of an advisory body to the government with members selected from indigenous groups. The idea being that the govt has historically poorly managed indigenous issues so by having them directly advising govt there should be better policy outcomes
In retrospect they really should have set it up first and let it run for a bit before they tried to put it in the constitution.
Yeah, but they didn't have time for that in this election cycle. Fuck I hate it when progressives play the conservative handbook, follow fuck ups become fuck ups.
Went for a slam dunk but didn't tie their laces.
Oh dear, thanks for the link. I would have voted no, too. It does not sound like a great institution. (Although I'm German and reading about it for the first time rn, so..)
From what I read in this article, I'm not even sure it would be properly democratic? Reads like a government advisory body which claims to represent the interests of a specific heritage - pretty strange.
The context is important here - Australia had a continuous indigenous population for over 60,000 years before white settlement. White Australia never had an agreement with indigenous peoples at large, and through relentless expansion of colonies, spreading diseases like smallpox, introducing alcohol and drugs, forcibly abducting and schooling children, heavy incarceration and a slew of other typical British colonial shit ended up leaving them disenfranchised, alienated, and excluded. Indigenous Australians prior to colonisation had a deep affinity with the land and tended it like custodians, but because they didn't build towns or farm like Europeans, they were just swept aside without ever really being acknowledged or addressed.
The Voice was asked for as a product of the Uluru Statement of the Heart - not long, worth a read- https://ulurustatement.org/the-statement/view-the-statement/
It was really first and foremost about having an acknowledgement that maybe, just maybe, the settlers cocked things up and that it'd better to fix things together. It's not asking for anything "more" or extra, it's about correctly telling history and reframing our national dialogue to be coming from a place of partnership, instead of colonialism, so we could fix some of the very real issues modern Australians face as a result of hundreds of years of callous racism. It was a chance for white Australia and government to really listen and maybe find better ways of doing things.
But now instead we get to try to explain to our kids why 60% of the country don't think representation or inclusion matters while indigenous Australians will continue to struggle without a government that can listen to them.
Why would context be important here? Institutionally it is a bad idea, even if an indigenous population ten times as big would've been mistreated ten times worse. The hard question would be: How would anything happening in the past improve this specific policy proposal?
It seems very lacking on a legitimacy level, appears to be functionally questionable and has evidently led to increased polarization prior to even being enacted.
I like that it's very prosaic and well crafted. I don't like that they fail to make the case how past and current tragedies relate to the specific proposal. There's also no evidence, benchmarking or any other kind of reference indicating the expected performance of their proposed setup. I've yet to find a paper outlining how the "voice" is actually supposed to work.
That's cool. Why didn't they do two proposals, one with the acknowledgement the other one with the suspicious institution?
It's asking for the creation of a permanent advisory body. Are we on the same page here?
I do think representation and inclusion matter a lot and, as said, I'd strongly oppose this advisory body. Do you think it's a black and white issue? One needs to like this specific thing or be a bad person?
I don't think that is a productive take on this referendum. There are certainly many loving and caring people on all sides of this referendum.
Yeah I don't get it either. I know a lot of Natives hate the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but is that what Aus is trying to get too (within the Constitution)?
There are essentially two parts to what was proposed, the first is that having mention of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island (ATSI) peoples in the constitution is recognition.
The second part, which is actually the exact mechanism which was proposed, was a permanent advisory body made up of ATSI representatives with constitutional power to give advice to the Government on issues related to or impacting ATSI people.
The exact details of the advisory body were up to legislation which we will probably never see.
Why would anyone have a problem with that?
A few of the arguments or concerns voiced by Australian’s included:
-A Voice with no power is pointless
-Lack of detail in the proposal
-Separating Australian’s by race is divisive (note there’s already constitutional race powers, which I disagree with and hope will be scrapped)
-ATSI people would have more representation than others (they actually have proportionally higher representation in Parliament today than their percentage of population)
-Leaving the exact details of the Voice to legislation means any future government could gut it without violating the constitutional amendment
-concerns this is the first push on a path to treaty and reparations as a percentage of GDP (which WAS discussed as a possibility by the people who worked on the Uluru statement)
I’ve left out the outright lies, though I guarantee someone will take issue with me simply mentioning the talking points to give you context.
The exact details of the legislation were released on the 23 of March. As in, 6-7 months ago.
How grim.
This is a victory for racists, and bad-faith actors, some some of which have received lots of money from China and Russia to help destabilise another Western country.
Honestly don’t know if that latter bit is true. We manage to be absolutely atrocious to the indigenous population without third parties meddling. I don’t think there’s a single native population that hasn’t been mistreated; had their culture and names taken away, sent for reeducation, eugenics, and so on, so forth.
That's what I as an outside person have read for like a decade. Australia is usually looking good because it's not 'murica, kind of like Canada, but bloody hell don't look too close.
Not just them. The Sami people of Scandinavia were subjects of eugenic experimentation during the early-mid 1900s. The Ainu people of Russia/Japan had their names and culture stripped, and were forced to marry Japanese, and live as Japanese citizens. Many branches of that culture is dead.
There’s the Icelandic people who fairly recently were subjected to forced sterilisation.
Can I believe that third parties fuel this kind of thing to wreak havoc? Absolutely. But I can also believe that we’re fully capable of doing this ourselves. Mankind is hateful.
Third party meddling is most effective when peddled to a receptive audience.
I agree but at the same time in this modern age of ‘social media’ I am certain that the people who said openly that they wanted to take down The West, are doing so.
SudanEthiopia and Thailand, IIRC. There's one African nation, and one SEA nation that never got colonized.Edit: I didn't remember correctly
Ethiopia and Thailand, and they were arguably colonised at least in part by Italy and France respectively.
Yea I wouldn’t go around underestimating Australia’s ability to fuck up its indigenous people without any conspiratorial help like that.
This is shameful. I'm sorry.
Thanks to the media shovelling fear, misinformation and lies into our minds. I blame Facebook, Twitter and Murdoch for this one.
The conspiracy theories around this issue were fucking wild. Ranging from the UN taking control of our government, to abolishing all land ownership and giving them the right to have your home demolished, to some bizarre thing about the pope or some shit.
Don't just dismiss those that disagree with you as conspiracy theory believing nut jobs.
The Yes campaign majorly dropped the ball. They alienated the voters.
Disappointing, to say the least.
The preview image looks like the lady on the right just let loose the most foul stench imaginable and the other two are being forced to deal with it.
Yet again, I'm sorry. And yet again, that's not enough.
I’m not sorry. I did all I could do.
I don’t take responsibility for those fuckers who voted no.
"You can do everything correctly, and still lose. That's not a personal failure. That's just life."
-J. L. Picard
The other commenter isn't taking responsibility for their actions either. They are just disappointed with the results.
Australian Brexit moment. Some "action committees" with questionable financial sources managed to manipulate public opinion.
Not really. This is a tragedy but historically referendums in Australia only pass with bipartisan support.
Also historically, the side that wins the referendum doesn't win the next election, because our referendums are zero-sum yes or no choices akin to FPTP elections which favours American-style extreme politics, whereas our general elections employ preferential voting and compulsory suffrage which requires potential governments to appeal to the political centre. The referendum has shown people who the opposition party really are, and they won't be able to walk that back.
Tragedy's a bit maudlin, but otherwise totally agree with your point about referenda being like a dry run FPTP early election.
I did see something that reminded me of the last two UK referendums.
Ah, where have we seen that pile of bullshit before?
Oh yes, Brexit saying they'd give all the EU money to the NHS, and the NoToAV lot saying that babies needed incubators, not a new voting system.
Of course none of it was actually spent on those things, it was merely a suggestion, leaving it free to be simply embezzled by Tory cunts.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Australians have resoundingly rejected a proposal to recognise Aboriginal people in its constitution and establish a body to advise parliament on Indigenous issues.
The defeat will be seen by Indigenous advocates as a blow to what has been a hard fought struggle to progress reconciliation and recognition in modern Australia, with First Nations people continuing to suffer discrimination, poorer health and economic outcomes.
Nationwide support for the voice was hovering at about 40% in the week before the vote, with coverage of the campaign being overshadowed by the outbreak of war in the Middle East in the crucial final days.
The failure of Australia’s previous referendum in 1999 – to become a republic and acknowledge Indigenous ownership – was seen to have failed because it put forward a specific model to voters.
It weathered accusations that it championed the voice push while failing to deliver tangible improvements for citizens facing cost of living pressures and a housing crisis hurt the yes side.
Opposition also emerged from the far left of progressive politics and a minority of grassroots Indigenous activists, who rejected the voice while calling for more significant reconciliation measures, including a treaty with Aboriginal Australians.
The original article contains 724 words, the summary contains 196 words. Saved 73%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
It would have made more sense to just legislate an advisory body to parliament as envisioned and planned, to show people: see, it's literally just an advisory body with no veto or other legislative power, and then put it to a refenedum to enshrine it in the constitution afterwards.
Would have given the no campaign less space. "If you don't know, vote no" would have had less traction.
The whole thing was a fumble. They picked the wrong time and appealed to the wrong people. They also never sold why it needed to happen.
What does a Chinese, Afghan or Sudanese citizen even understand or care about a group of people when they probably have never even met one.
They appealed to the inner city rich snobs and no one else. The inner city was going to vote yes anyway. Why didn't they go where the no votes were?
I'm not an Aussie and I'm not following this in particular, but from what I've seen that's how bad ideas work: you don't want to start a dialogue where the noes point out all the flaws in your ideas. In the US the extreme of this is legislation passed in a specially coordinated session at midnight with an absolute minimum of debate.
With that said, why the hell does a budgeted program belong in a constitution and not in a regular legislated budget? And why the hell does one specific group need specific recognition defined at the level of a constitution, as opposed to broad rules changed in such a way that their specific exclusion is forbidden with a catch all that also benefits other minorities?
Well, that's going to age like milk.
The title is hugely misrepresenting the referendum.
Not even our conservative party, the liberals, opposed recognition of aboriginal and Torres islander people as the traditional owners of the land.
The neo liberal progressive party, labor, put in a change to political process. This is what people disagreed with.
I think most people didn't understand what was being proposed.
The obfuscation was purposeful. The mining / oil industry were backing the no vote, and there's no onis to be truthful in political advertising. That's what needs to change.
Bhp put their support behind the yes campaign. And Albo voted down the need for truth in advertising
BHP was the one behind the weak messages attributed to the yes campaign. They deliberately played this one to lose.
It wasn't a change to political process. It was to be another advisory body, of which we have many over several decades.
Agreed, my bad
A bit off topic but, American here, the liberals are your conservative party? Interesting.
American politics are all right wing compared to other socially democratic countries.
Our major political parties are the Australian Labor Party (progressive/socialist), Liberal Party of Australia (capitalist/liberal), The Greens (environmental/progressive), National Party of Australia(authoritarian/regressives).
The Liberals and the Nats have a coalition called the Liberal National Party (LNP) because it's the only way they can get enough representation to get majority government.
Greens typically vote along Labor lines.
Further to this, Labor is Centre-Left, Greens are far-left, Liberal and Nationals are both far-right, with liberals being business interest focoused and the nationals being strongly rural community focused.
I see. That's really interesting, thanks for the reply!
It's worth noting that Australian and American interpretations of liberalism differ quite significantly. The modern Liberal party and its predecessors formed in direct opposition to the Labor party, in direct opposition to the labor movement. They formed as a party against radical social change, against socialism, and for free-market policies and laissez faire capitalism, describing themselves as "classical liberals". On the other hand, "liberalism" in the US more refers to social liberalism, but it's actually the exception in that regard.
All that is to say that, when Australians refer to someone as a liberal, we mean a different interpretation of the word closer to classical liberalism.
For an American, that's so counterintuitive lol.
I think the American definition of Liberal is the one that's different from the rest of the world.
No, liberals are liberal. The Liberals (capital L) are fiscally liberal (good at wasting money) and socially conservative.
Yep very misleading. There's recognition, and then there's the advisory board question. The Yes campaign did a shoking job and alienated everyone by calling people racist who asked questions about the Voice.
No. Asking questions is one thing.
Sealioning is another.
Do you mean 'concern trolling' or 'sealioning'?
'Concern trolling' is falsely pretending to agree with an idea but raising concerns, in order to sew discontent. Something like, "I agree with giving them a Voice, but I'm concerned that ... ", an insincere astroturfing attempt.
'Sealioning' is when someone relentlessly stalks a person asking them for evidence or arguments, in order to 'just try and have a debate' when the other person doesn't want to. The term comes from from this comic, which describes it well. It's personal harassment pretending to be civil debate.
Sealioning.
Though JAQing Off would probably be more accurate.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions
I remain hopeful. Even though a vast majority voted no to establish a body, I certainly hope that we have a government that can put something into action and that the Libs stay stuck in the weeds until they find what they stand for again.
Is there currently an Australian equivalent to the BIA? If not, is a Constitutional Amendment required to establish one or can one be established by legislation?
Wow. I just looked at the front page and that's actually amazing.
Short answer - no. Australia does not have such a thing, especially with that much support. We have some indigenous people in government but they represent their seat, not specifically indigenous affairs. There is currently no body that represents indigenous affairs as a whole.
It can be established by the government of the day, which it was back when Kevin Rudd was our PM (Labor Party). However, this body was then abolished by the next government, run by Tony Abbott and others since (Coalition).
Now, we have Labor in power again and this referendum was called to have a voice enshrined in our constitution so that it couldn't be abolished by future governments. Since we nationally voted no, our current Labor government can establish something like the BIA, however there is a high risk that this will be yet again abolished like last time.
Hmm, maybe it's because in our western states Indian tribes are a larger percentage of the population, or maybe it's because our mistreatment of the various tribes has led to countless wars and atrocities; but I couldn't imagine a scenario where one party established this branch and another removes it. But I'm not from Australia.
This is where the US is waves ahead of Australia. The indigenous population is small now (2%) but hasn't always been, and we put them (and still do) through many, many atrocities... If you're at all interested, check out indigenous deaths in custody. There's also the constant destruction of their traditional heritage (birthing trees, rock art etc.). The stereotype here for an Aboriginal is that they're drunkards and drug users. This is not reality but a huge majority think this.
As a country, we have deep seated institutionalised racism that has taken root and flourished over the last few decades. We have this national way of thinking where the indigenous population needs to comply to our laws, our way of life. If an indigenous family wants traditional education, nah - go to one of the 'normal' schools. Want to learn an indigenous language? Nah, learn German or French or Japanese.
We also have severe tall poppy syndrome where we can't let anyone have it better than anyone else. Our Australia Day is also a huge issue since it's on the day of the first colonists landing.
All in all, we don't have an equivalent because we have a rotten attitude to our first nations.
Oh fuck.
Here we go again…
Saw a post about that yesterday. We already knew the results, but it's sad to see it happens anyways.
How the hell are we taking so many steps backwards as a species? "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"
At what point backwards in time was it normative indigenous peoples get representation in government?
Sometimes progress is slow, and many younger people being upset about a 'no' to indigenous representation is exactly the kind of thing that eventually leads to steps forward.
It's just very much the case that many people today are upset with how slow social progress seems to be taking. But in large part, that's because of how quickly social issues are advancing for new generations relative to how slowly older generations set in antiquated ways are disappearing from the equation.
What was the average age of who voted on the measure?
What's the average age of the people looking at the result with disappointment?
The gap will tell you roughly how long it's going to take for that change to start to meaningfully happen.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-15/voice-results-explained-map/102978520
Also, not yet explored - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/datablog/2022/may/13/election-2022-seat-explorer-how-australian-electorates-diverge-on-religion-country-of-birth-and-language
I hope there is a bit of analysis done about new Australians vs how they voted, given they are likely to be even farther removed from the issues