With a two-letter word, Australians have struck down the first attempt at constitutional change in 24 years, major media outlets reported, a move experts say will inflict lasting damage on First Nations people and suspend any hopes of modernizing the nation’s founding document.
Early results from the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) suggested that most of the country’s 17.6 million registered voters had written No on their ballots, and CNN affiliates 9 News, Sky News and SBS all projected no path forward for the Yes campaign.
The proposal, to recognize Indigenous people in the constitution and create an Indigenous body to advise government on policies that affect them, needed a majority nationally and in four of six states to pass.
This is a very sad day in Australia’s history. Many of us thought we were a more progressive nation than we are.
As a POC, I am not surprised, but I was still optimistic because there was no way to vote “no” without looking like a racist cunt. Well turns out Australia has no problem with looking like a bunch of racist cunts.
Try and tell them they’re a bunch of racist cunts tho… Then you’ll see hypocrisy too!
We are more progressive. The trouble is the amendment was too vague and if anyone asked questions or suggested that they might vote no, they got called a racist and told to educate themselves.
The Yes campaign ended up mostly using the argument that you should vote yes because conservative are telling you to say no.
It’s a toothless advisory body that could make (ignorable) representations to parliament about matters relating to the indigenous community. What else do you need to know?
There were 2 main issues for me.
The yes campaign just said trust us it will do nothing so you don’t need to worry. What was the point then?
https://voice.gov.au/about-voice/voice-principles
The Voice will be chosen by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people based on the wishes of local communities
I think it would be bad to specify that the members be indigenous - it needlessly restricts options, which seems unproductive if the indigenous community are doing the selection. If they choose the likes of Tony Abbott (not likely), that’s their perogative.
The Voice establishes a constitutionally enshrined body, so beyond recognition, it facilities better input from the community into affairs relevant to them, and makes it optically bad for the government if they choose to ignore that input while forcing nothing. The point is to close the gap in outcomes between the indigenous and broader communities.
This is about ensuring it can’t be abused. They could have specified how the members would be selected in the wording of the referendum.
They wanted to leave the door open for them to abuse it down the track.
How would it be abused, exactly?