Voice to Parliament Referendum Defeated

On October 14, Australia held its first referendum of the century – a referendum on whether to recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as Australia’s indigenous peoples in the constitution through the establishment of the Voice to Parliament. Compared to a general election vote, this referendum was very simple – people just had to vote yes or no, there was no need for anything else. Now that the dust has settled, six Australian states and the Northern Territory have voted overwhelmingly against the proposal to enshrine the Aboriginal Voice in the constitution. Only the ACT had a majority of votes in favor.

First referendum of this century suffers a landslide

The referendum was an important commitment by the Labor Party at the 2022 federal election, when the party returned to power after years of conservative rule. If the referendum passes, Voice will become an independent representative body for members of Aboriginal peoples, advising the Australian Parliament and government and giving members of Aboriginal peoples a voice in matters that affect them. Support for Voice was consistently high in the first few months of the year, but then began a slow but steady decline. In the week leading up to the vote, support for the referendum hovered around 40 percent nationwide, and in the crucial final days, coverage of the campaign was overshadowed by the outbreak of war in the Middle East.

“The concept of an independent advisory body, Voice to Parliament, was developed and approved by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders in 2017, with the idea that it would include Aboriginal representatives from six Australian states and two territories, voted for by local Aboriginal voters. According to polls, the proposal was supported by a majority of Aboriginal voters. It is surprising that the referendum did not receive more support in the Northern Territory, which has the largest Aboriginal population (more than a quarter of the population of the Northern Territory is Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander).

From the comments of the supporters and opponents, and the decline in public opinion and support, we can see that Australians do not oppose the recognition of Aboriginal people, but cannot believe that the establishment of the Voice is only a consultative mechanism, and will not affect the current governance of the Australian government. Although Prime Minister Albanese has vowed that the motion will not lead to litigation in the future, it is clear that his judgment has failed to convince Australians. All the legal experts say that the amended constitution will not give Aboriginal people a chance to claim their interests, but they are reluctant to dismiss these possibilities altogether. In fact, if only the government had made it clearer in writing that the organization was advisory, rather than just asking for people’s trust, there would have been no problem at all. Therefore, Prime Minister Albanese is fully responsible for this mistrust.

Arguments in favor of the referendum suggested that Aboriginal people had an eight-year gap in life expectancy compared to non-Aboriginal Australians, a suicide rate twice the national average, and relatively poorer health, education and infant mortality outcomes. The organization was established to enable mainstream society to better understand and serve the Aboriginal community. Pointing out these problems does not explain how a constitutional amendment would solve them. To think that the establishment of the Voice can solve these problems is simply unconvincing to the community. The community’s understanding is that such an advisory body can be established through legislation, but the purpose of this referendum is to enshrine its existence in the constitution, so that even if there is a change in the ruling party in the future, the government will not be able to abolish it. It can be said that the referendum is just a way for the government to disallow the future ruling government to change the mechanism, which has aroused even more suspicion.

Referendums are the only way to change Australia’s constitution. Since the establishment of the Commonwealth in 1901, 44 referendums have been held in Australia, and only eight of them have been successful. “The Voice referendum was Australia’s first in 24 years. The last referendum to decide whether to establish a republic was defeated in 1999. The last referendum that passed was in 1977. The last Aboriginal-related referendum was in 1967, when an overwhelming majority agreed to include Aboriginal people in the census. After the referendum failed, Prime Minister Albanese said that although the result was not what he had hoped for, he had absolute respect for the decision of the Australian people and the democratic process to achieve it. Only under the current government, Labor will not attempt to legislate for an Aboriginal Voice in Parliament, but will “continue to do all it can to listen to the voices of Australia’s Aboriginal people”.

The seeds of failure have been sown

Looking at the vote by state and territory, the Maranoa electorate in remote Queensland had the highest proportion of no votes in the country at over 80%, while the Melbourne inner-city electorate had the highest number of yes votes in Australia. Interestingly, both of these electorates are held by party leaders, National Party Leader David Littleproud and Greens Party Leader Adam Bandt. In terms of where voters live, the largest number of people who voted yes were in the inner city areas, while most voters in remote and rural areas voted against. In other words, the farther away from the capital city, the lower the approval rate. Meanwhile, the distribution of votes is largely related to voters’ education, income, age and gender. Look at the only state/territory in Australia with a majority of Yes votes – the ACT – where over 40% of voters have a university degree. Income is also a factor in voting choice, with wealthier voters more likely to vote Yes. Antony Green, a senior referendum analyst for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, said the result was very similar to that of the republican referendum, which also failed. Despite the many differences between the two referendums, there was little change in the areas that resisted and accepted the changes.

In the weeks leading up to the referendum, dozens of falsehoods about Aboriginal Voices were circulating in the Chinese language social media, such as deportation, loss of work rights, and students being denied education. Throughout the referendum period, fact-checkers and experts have been working to verify the overwhelming amount of scaremongering and misinformation. Multicultural community leaders have pointed out that some of the worst and unverified information is being spread on non-English speaking platforms. In addition to harmful stereotypes, “the lack of basic understanding of Aboriginal people in most Chinese communities creates a breeding ground for misinformation about the ‘voice of Aboriginal people’ to take root.

In Melbourne’s two neighbouring electoral districts, Chisholm and Menzies, which have the same percentage of Chinese voters (close to 30%), the results are quite different, showing that the Chinese are not a lopsided Yes or No choice. Chisholm has a high proportion of young Chinese from China, with 49.4% voting Yes, 4.4% higher than the average of 45% in Victoria, while Menzies has a large number of Hong Kong immigrants who have been in Australia for a long time, most of them do not use social media platforms such as WeChat, and the number of those who supported the referendum was only 44.2%, 0.8% lower than the average. It can be said that it is untenable to say that all Chinese migrants supported the referendum or were influenced by social media platforms such as WeChat, and the result of Chisholm shows that the analysis of public opinion on WeChat does not reflect the result of the referendum at all.

In addition to some people’s one-sided understanding of information and being influenced by wrong and inaccurate information and public opinion, there are also some people who mistakenly believe that the referendum will cause social division and give some privileges to certain groups of people; there are also people who believe that this referendum is linked to party politics and party interests, however, this referendum in fact transcends party disputes, and it is only a conspiracy theory about party politics, which also reflects the distrust of the so-called social elites by some people in Australia. It also reflects the distrust of some people in Australia towards the so-called social elites. Besides, although some people support the improvement of the life and welfare of the Aborigines, they oppose the Voice. This is because, unlike other elections, the referendum is about amending the constitution, which is difficult to change once it is amended, and the elected government will only be in power for a certain period of time. Moreover, the question of this referendum is not clear and the consequences are unpredictable.

What is needed now is solidarity

The Aborigines, who make up about 3.8% of Australia’s population, have suffered centuries of neglect and discrimination since being colonized by the British in 1788, and were shocked by the historic defeat in the referendum. Some Aboriginal organizations plan to lower the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags to half-mast this week to mourn the heartbreaking referendum result. Some Aboriginal leaders have called the result a “bitter irony” – it makes no sense that people who have only lived in Australia for 235 years would refuse to recognize those who have lived on the land for 60,000 years or more. No matter what politicians say, the result of this referendum will hinder the cause of reconciliation. Denying the people’s doubts and insisting that they blindly trust the government to conduct a referendum to the detriment of the Aboriginal people in order to fulfill Labor’s campaign promises last year is exactly what the government needs to reflect on and face.

Compared to many other developed countries such as Canada, New Zealand, the European Union and the United States, Australia has been much slower to improve Aboriginal rights. Australia has no treaty with Aboriginal people and is below the national average on most socio-economic indicators. Although Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have lived on the land for more than 65,000 years, they have not been incorporated into the Australian constitution. The failure of the referendum was also a major blow to the Labor government led by Albanese. It may not have a longer term impact on the Labor vote, but people will judge Labor and the Coalition in other ways. The result is not a happy one for the Coalition either. While Coalition voters were instrumental in contributing to the referendum’s defeat, the referendum has reinforced the sense that the contemporary Liberal Party has become disassociated from its blue-ribbon metropolitan center status, and that the seats currently held by independent candidates voted for the referendum.

Of course, although the referendum failed, the very holding of the referendum proved that millions of Australians had united in a historic movement to demand constitutional recognition of Aboriginal Australians. Millions of people recognized Aboriginal Australians and agreed with their aspirations and offers of reconciliation. After all, Aboriginal Australians have been politically marginalized for a long time, and their interests have not been effectively addressed by policy makers: their personal income, education, and health status lag behind the average of society. In an international context characterized by the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war and the rapidly escalating Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is particularly valuable that Australians continue to make important decisions peacefully, equally, and with a vote of equal value. So this moment of disagreement does not define the Australian people, and it is time to come out of this debate together, and to remember why we are having this debate in the first place.

Article/SAMEWAY Editorial Department

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