In a historic national vote in mid-October, Australians decisively rejected a constitutional amendment that would have permanently enshrined race-based rights and privileges. The referendum question asked whether the Constitution should be amended to recognize aboriginals as the “first peoples” of the country and then authorize creation of a permanent indigenous group—the Voice—to advise both Parliament and the executive government (Cabinet).
The referendum question seemed clear enough: “A Proposed Law: To alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. Do you approve this proposed alteration?” But both the referendum question and the constitutional amendment itself failed to limit or define the scope and powers of the proposed Voice.
The Voice was to be a permanent body of selected (not necessarily elected) aboriginals who would advise Parliament, Cabinet and all levels of the bureaucracy on all aspects of policy and lawmaking that affected aboriginals. The wording of what the Voice was to be was broad and, if implemented, would have resulted in the examination of virtually all policies and laws “relating to” aboriginal people.
Australia’s Labor government formed an all-party parliamentary committee to discuss the Voice, but the committee rejected the Opposition’s concerns out of hand. Accordingly, the Liberal and National parties decided to oppose the referendum question. Thus, the referendum lacked bipartisan support, which had been key to every other successful referendum in Australia’s long history of such popular votes—including the 1967 vote in which Australians overwhelmingly voted to remove two race-based clauses discriminating against aboriginals from their Constitution.
Liberal Sen. Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, a mixed-race Aboriginal woman from Alice Springs, was appointed the Opposition’s official spokesperson and became the most effective No campaigner. She objected to a new political body that would divide the country by race.
The Yes campaign’s many friends in the Australian media responded to the No side’s concerns with spite, accusing No voters of narrow-mindedness, misinformation, telling “Trump-like lies,” lack of vision, ill-will and racism. Marcia Langton, a well-known Aboriginal academic from the University of Melbourne, said that every one of the No arguments came down to “base racism … or just sheer stupidity.”
And yet popular support for the Yes side continued to sag. Australians wanted to know just what the Voice’s powers would be and whether it could veto national legislation or policies—and they weren’t getting answers. As voting day drew closer, the Yes campaign took to saying that only in the last week would Australians really turn their attention to the topic. But each time voters did just that, asking questions, support for the Voice dropped. In contrast, the No campaign was getting far better traction by pointing out the proposal’s obvious flaws.
To pass, the referendum needed a national majority of votes plus majorities in four of Australia’s six states. What happened on voting day? Conservative Queensland and West Australia were expected to vote no and did, hammering it with massive No votes. But so did South Australia and Tasmania. Even Victoria and New South Wales, the two big and often more left-leaning states which had been widely assumed to vote Yes, voted No. The sparsely settled Northern Territory voted No. The sole jurisdiction to go Yes was the Australian Capital Territory, Canberra.
The uniform and blatantly expressed bias of the country’s elites was reminiscent of the UK’s Brexit referendum in 2016 and, here in Canada, the aforementioned Charlottetown Accord. As in those seismic votes, Australians endured a deluge of politicians, academics, aboriginal activists, media mouthpieces, celebrities, and corporate leaders telling them to do something based on a combination of platitudes, guilt, insults, and threats.
The people listened politely—and decided the elites were wrong.
