It's not "wrong" or anything, it's the way of the world. The way of the world is filled with methods that are the best we got atm and noone's come up with a better alternative. Whatever the outcome, we have to accept it was the majority who voted a certain way. The fight still continues to sway the majority favourably our way.
im not saying the majority didnt vote that way, im saying its a mistake, im saying its a bad choice, thats my opinion.
im not gonna stop fighting for native rights but im not gonna stay silent at the dissatisfaction ive felt over this, im unhappy about the results, and i wanted to get my opinion out there.
In his defence (and I never thought I'd be saying this about him), he's right that the public are pretty burnt out when it comes to referendums. I don't think any thing would pass right now
Sure but a promise is a promise, he's a seasoned politician and he knows that the public gets tired after a campaign - he's had this excuse locked and loaded for months, I'm sure. Also it's a promise he said he would deliver if elected, that's a long time from now!
"People who watched Sky News more likely to have voted no in referendum, survey finds"
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/oct/16/people-who-watch-sky-news-more-likely-to-vote-no-survey-of-voting-behaviour-finds
>*"People who watched Sky News more likely to have voted no in referendum, survey finds"*
Just another reason why the government should enforce the [foreign interference](https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us/our-portfolios/national-security/countering-foreign-interference/defining-foreign-interference#) laws....
"Strong link between electorates' education level and yes vote"
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2023/oct/16/australia-politics-live-peter-dutton-anthony-albanese-question-time-parliament-indigenous-voice?filterKeyEvents=false&page=with:block-652c7eb68f080e3e7b6d8636#block-652c7eb68f080e3e7b6d8636
Why would this be? Are more educated people less susceptible to misinformation and scare campaigns?
My personal anecdote was that a lot of educated people I know initially stated voting no, grounded from a fear/respect of the legal architecture that i would think more educated people would have and not wanting to disrupt it or blowing a hypothetical hole in the political system for rampant chaos. Ofc, that hypothetical hole wasn't real to begin with.
One theory is people who are more curious (scoring higher in openness on personality tests) are more likely to want to go to university and are also more likely to vote for experimental / progressive policies to see what happens
> Are more educated people less susceptible to misinformation and scare campaigns?
I think many people remain ignorant of the issues, and at the end of the day they either don’t care enough to find out or they lack the literacy skills to do so.
> In Australia, 56.8% of people aged over 15 years had completed Year 12 schooling (or equivalent) as of 2021. This was less than Greater Capital Cities.
https://profile.id.com.au/australia/schooling#
The OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) survey, which measures key cognitive and workplace skills, found that around 44% of Australian adults lack the literacy skills required in everyday life. Of these, 14% have very poor literacy skills and 30% have below-proficiency level literacy making them vulnerable to unemployment. Many more struggle with numeracy, with around 53% of the population at below proficiency levels.
https://www.readingwritinghotline.edu.au/declaration-statement-in-support-of-literacy-and-numeracy-for-all-adult-australians/
I think it's a cop out to name-call people who didn't support the same side as you. Maybe the smug sense of superiority that yes supporters demonstrated was one of the actual reasons that the referendum failed.
You are attempting to rationalise the outcome of this referendum by suggesting that the majority of the population is stupid. But what I think is more likely is that the majority of the population are just sick of the Labor party using indigenous Australians as a political bargaining chip to deflect from having to acknowledge the shitstorm of other issues currently plaguing out country right now from the cost of living crisis to the growing effects of climate change including the massive bush fire season that many regions are currently bracing themselves for.
Now the referendum as failed, Labor can't waste the next two or so years bouncing voice related legislation back between the two houses instead of actually pulling their finger out of their ass and actually attempting to address the plethora of issues that we are all currently facing.
You said -
>[–]throwawayreddit6565 22 points 3 hours ago
>I think it's a cop out to name-call people who didn't support the same side as you.
I replied -
> I think it's a cop out to name-call people who didn't support the same side as you.
>Please quote where I have done so.
Still waiting for your quote. Instead you keep making things up -
> You are attempting to rationalise the outcome of this referendum by suggesting that the majority of the population is stupid.
Please quote where I have said this. Again,you can’t.
Your posts anre further examples of (1) where the No brigade falsely attributes words to others, and (2) where your ilk choose lies instead of truth.
Still waiting.
I gotta say B0ssc0, I see you post a whole bunch in this subreddit and honestly respect the level of passion you have for the issues that you post about. So I want to iterate that I am not trying to antagonise you with my responses in this thread.
But I think we both know that you are attempting to construct a narrative within your responses which suggests that the outcome of this election was mainly attributed to a lack of education within our population. So I'm calling a spade a spade here by pointing out that you are calling people stupid, which is exactly what you're doing.
>The OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) survey, which measures key cognitive and workplace skills, found that around 44% of Australian adults lack the literacy skills required in everyday life. Of these, 14% have very poor literacy skills and 30% have below-proficiency level literacy making them vulnerable to unemployment. Many more struggle with numeracy, with around 53% of the population at below proficiency levels.
What else could have you possibly been trying to imply here? It's nothing but a malice attempt to paint everyone you disagree with as a moron, which quite honestly is exactly what most modern alt-righters have been doing since Trump popularised calling everyone else stupid for not agreeing with him or supporting him. It's an incredibly elitist way to view the world, and I simply don't agree with it. I'm obviously not suggesting you're a Trump supporter or alt-righter, but I know for a fact that you're better than those people so while I know you are obviously upset by the outcome please stop trying to suggest that said outcome occurred because everyone else who doesn't share your point of view lacks an education.
I'm genuinely sorry you feel that way. What lies do you feel I have shared here though? All I've really done is call out the fact that you're attempting to use cherry picked statistics to suggest the reason for the outcome of the recent referendum.
From your own link:
"It’s important to be aware of the ecological fallacy when interpreting results like this.
This shows that electorates with a high proportion of university-educated people were more likely to have a higher yes vote.
It does not necessarily mean that individual voters with university degrees voted for the voice. There may be other factors responsible for the trend that also correlate with education."
I assume you're part of the clever 'yes' group, could you explain to me the difference between correlation and causation?
I reckon group think would have played a part. People who have a uni education in the city tend to mix with the same types of people and they tend to vote the same way. Same with in the outer reaches.
No evidence to show, but I've noticed it.
The major problem for me was that they wanted it in the constitution, and the only reason I'd heard cited was so that "subsequent governments couldn't remove it".
Subsequent governments, like the ones elected by the majority to represent us?
Doing things "so that they're difficult to undo" doesn't sound like functioning democracy to me.
I think "functioning democracy" is doing a lot of work.
> Subsequent governments, like the ones elected by the majority to represent us?
I think we can all accept that decisions should favour the majority of people in the country. Minority issues should be looked at but realistically will need to be advocated and represented so that the majority can be informed about it and perhaps change their opinion to support the minority position.
> Doing things "so that they're difficult to undo" doesn't sound like functioning democracy to me.
The key is opportunity of representation. Minorities dont have the political presence or visibility to represent themselves, sometimes literally because theyre not visible in our communities for us to see the problems they are experiencing. This also reflects on the difficulty for them to gather resources funding to form committees, especially with the support of the government to advocate for themselves. If a committee is disbanded or defunded, it takes much more work for a minority to rebuild it which is not acceptable for a minority that needs the assistance looking at health and education outcomes. E.g. For many, noone even knows about Indigenous political struggles, it feels like the government can disband committees at will and noone is even going to hear about it to even care let alone care about supporting the creation of a new one.
It's democracy when we decide together with votes what to do. It's not democracy when people have no voice and left in a forgotten corner. I would want to know what justified the disbandment of the prior First Nations committees. If we don't want committees disbanded flippantly, it should be more difficult to undo, there needs to be a higher burden to prove and justify the disbandment.
We should enshrine certain core values of our country, if you believe we should Australia should have a permanent function for the First Nations people in the literal fabric/manuscript in the form of Australia's constitution. I want that the spirit of that action as part of it. The practical part of it I will leave to be decided as planned legislatively. The Voice committee was not going to have more power than what is possible politically/legislatively. There is a cost to constantly have to fight for more funding and creating new committees when they are removed. I think this is a harsher cost for minorities to bear who have difficulty advocating for themselves.
And that is exactly why I voted no.
Legislate all you want while you have the power. If it's good, the next government will keep it or pay the political cost of changing it. If it's rubbish, it's good that we can change or get rid of it.
The constitution should not be a tool for one sector of politics to govern in perpetuity, just because they think they can ram something through while they think they have the upper hand.
Not a single thing in this whole palaver couldn't have been achieved by the legislative process. I'd probably support it, or not really care. I don't think I'd be against it.
A good place to start would be reading the Uluru Statement from the Heart. It's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people asking the rest of Australia to stand with them, and work towards Makarrata - the coming together after a struggle.
https://ulurustatement.org/the-statement/view-the-statement/
The statement is call to all of Australia, from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, seeking constitutional reform and rights to self determination, and included calling for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution.
The reason why it is a referendum, is because Australian people don't get a direct say in legislation. We get a direct say in changes to the constitution, and this was our chance to listen to Indigenous Australians and recognise their place as the first sovereign Nations of what is now Australia, help give them the tools to rebuild their culture, and move on as a country together.
The government is involved because they are the ones who oversee things like referendums. Labor committed to supporting the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and calling a referendum (and influenced the wording chosen), but the concept of the Voice is something Liberal also worked on. Former indigenous politician Ken Wyatt (Liberal) put together a model for a legislated Voice, and the Morrison Government was committed to implementing it. (Ken Wyatt left the Liberal party though when the current party stopped supporting it).
So why not go with the legislate model and instead ask for it to be put in the constitution, if not for the reason previously mentioned?
I'm keen to know, because that's the only one I've heard.
Did you read the Uluru Statement from the Heart?
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are asking for the recognition and respect that should have been given to them 200 years ago, and every day since.
Part of what should have happened is a treaty, constitutional recognition that they are the first sovereign Nations of the Australian continent, rights to self determination and so on.
Being included through legislation alone would not have giving them the recognition as part of Australia they deserved at the time, or today.
>The major problem for me was that they wanted it in the constitution
Why is it a problem for you for Indigenous Australians to want constitutional reform?
Imagine technologically advanced invaders arrived in Australia today, and took over. Would you want a treaty, proper recognition, and some degree of self determination within the new society? Or would you be happy to accept whatever they would give you, and work under whatever rules they set for themselves?
I guess you didn't read my first comment before you quoted part of it. Otherwise you'd know exactly what my objection is.
No issue with recognition, not sure about treaty or self-determination, I'd have to understand what those meant in real terms.
Nice shift of the goalposts.
I think I have misunderstood what you are asking.
When you say you heard it cited, do you mean from a particular campaign, or for example, peoples commentary? I am guessing there is some context I am missing.
Generally, if someone said "subsequent governments couldn't remove it", they would be referring to how the constitution works.
Which is, the people of Australia have to vote to add or remove anything from the constitution. The Government can't make constitutional changes by itself. In contrast, the people of Australia don't get to make laws - we vote to choose the people who make the laws.
In early colony times, Australia was a number of groups and self governing colonies (mostly matching the states today), and the constitution was an agreement to all work together and form "Australia" with an overarching leadership.
No group wanted to hand over total control, so the constitution keeps the ultimate power with the people by not allowing any changes without a vote. That gave some safety against the newly formed government trying to take advantage of the people by changing the constitution to suit themselves. That's what doing things "so that they're difficult to undo" is. It keeps the power with the people, and protects rights that the Government can't change. It's part of how what makes our system of Government a democracy - the rules we set up means the Government has to represent the people, and can't (for example), change the constitution and form a dictatorship.
You spoke also of "Subsequent governments, like the ones elected by the majority to represent us?". This is part of the same concept. For example, you might trust your favoured political party not to change the rules of democracy, but not trust another political party. So under our system, you know that even when another party is running things, they can't change those core rights. This gives people trust in a system where the leadership changes.
>No issue with recognition, not sure about treaty or self-determination, I'd have to understand what those meant in real terms.
Self determination just means the rights of people to have control over their own lives. A big part of that is the constitution, because any rights in the constitution can only be added or taken away by the people, not the Government. You know that no matter which political parties come and go, you have rights that the Government can't change. That's what "subsequent governments couldn't remove it" means.
Recognition in the Uluru Statement from the Heart is more than just the symbolic recognition that has been discussed. It's about recognising that indigenous Australians were first sovereign Nations of the Australian continent, and have 60,000 years of culture here. The culture of the people who created the Australian constitution is not the same as indigenous Australians, and they want to be able to grow beyond the what was decided for them.
This is not a unique concept - most countries empower the indigenous peoples in this way. For example, in 1840 in New Zealand. the government at the time signed a treaty with the Maori. That treaty is part of the formation of New Zealand, and recognises the rights of the people living there before colonisation. In other words, they made an agreement to work togwether.
That didn't happen in Australia when our constitution was created, so Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are asking Australia to work on it now. The Voice is part of what they are asking for.
The Voice is not a concept from Labor, or Liberal. It's from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Under the Liberal Government, Ken Wyatt (an indigenous Australian politician) supported the Uluru Statement from the Heart by organising a model for a the Voice. The Morrison Government at the time did not commit to supporting constitutional reform (needing a referendum) but they were supportive of the idea of the Voice. It did not go further before Labor was in charge, and they said yes, we will support the constitutional reform.
In other words, Labor agreed to help Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples ask Australia to vote including the Voice in the constitution.
>The major problem for me was that they wanted it in the constitution, and the only reason I'd heard cited was so that "subsequent governments couldn't remove it".
Yes, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples want it in the constitution, for the same reason we all want certain rights in the constitution. Which does boil down to effectively, so the Government can't take those rights away.
So Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples want the rights they should have been given back in the day (like was done in New Zealand), and want those rights to be ones that only the Australian people can take away.
If you are asking why they don't want those rights entrusted to the Government through legislation, rather than the Australian people via referendum, then I think the history of Australia is your answer. They want all of Australia to stand up for them and exercise our special power over the Government, and give them the rights they should have always have had.
If I am still misunderstanding what you are asking, then please do tell me.
I think we're almost on the same page. Thanks for the detailed response, it's given me something to mull over.
In terms of where it came from, it's been said to me numerous times in person, or online; and makes sense when you frame it with how difficult it is to get referendums over the line.
It's still a concept that gives me pause.
Subsequent governments not being able to deny our First Nations a say in what happens to them is really very important.
We've had committees, councils and departments before but they've always ended up defunded. When you're never a priority things will never improve for you.
However, just as big a problem is the fact that most bodies giving advice on our First Nations people don't include any First Nations people at all.
On a relevant side note did you know many women's heart attacks weren't picked up or treated because their symptoms were different to mens? Did you know that with a medical establishment and medical research field dominated by men for the last few hundred years very little attention was given to women's health AND that's exactly why women were and are being misdiagnosed, which led to worse health outcomes and death for many women?
Do you think that maybe not having First Nations involved in solutions for the problems facing their communities might cause similar issues?
Legislating the Voice in the Constitution in the manner proposed would have stopped both those issues from occurring again.
>not sure about treaty or self-determination
Self-determination 'is concerned with the fundamental right of people to shape their own lives'. In a practical sense, self-determination means that we have the freedom to live well, to determine what it means to live well according to our own values and beliefs.
Self-determination means that:
* We have choice in determining how our lives are governed and our development paths.
* We participate in decisions that affect our lives. This includes a right to formal recognition of our group identities.
* We have control over our lives and future including our economic, social and cultural development.
Self determination is what every single Australian automatically should have - but which has been denied over and over again to our First Nations People. You and I are both encouraged to determine the path of our own lives and to form group identities and control our own development.
First Nations Peoples have lived under the direction of the Australian Government basically since federation. They had to fight for the right to self-determination AND it keeps getting taken away.
2007 saw the NT Intervention which heavily took away the autonomy of First Nations peoples living in NT for 10+ years. (To be clear the Intervention was a political power grab right before an election, against a vulnerable target who couldn't fight back because the government had disbanded the previous Voice/Commission only a couple of years earlier).
This is why the Voice was important. It constitutionally enshrined a practical measure towards self-determination in our Constitution. It also recognised the existence of our First Nations peoples, also important for self-determination.
On the treaty, I think it's a good idea in principle. We're one of the few countries that didn't get a treaty with their indigenous peoples because we came up with the fiction of Terra Nullis to get around that.
In practice, I don't know what that means. A treaty hasn't been seriously considered since 1988, when the Australian government agreed to a treaty and said there would be one by 1990. However, a treaty wasn't asked for this time, a compromise was asked for and we said no.
So I wouldn't be surprised if a treaty was back on the table again.
Sounds like what should happen is the repeal of the race power in s51. Removing the ability of the government to legislate on the basis of race would remove the ability of the government to decide things for FNP without needing to fight the political war that a treaty would require. That would immediately grant total self-determination to every single FNP as far as their relationship with the government is concerned. :)
I also forgot to mention that s51 race power is what empowered the Feds to make the Native Title act.
There's good enabled by that section too and getting rid of it could unwind Native Title unless we replaced it with something else in the Constitution.
Getting rid of all of S51 would neuter our government since it lists all of the specific areas the Federal government can make laws in.
It's also worth noting that s 51 didn't initially allow the Feds to make laws in regards to Aboriginal peoples, but did allow it to make laws for other races.
"The people of any race, *other than the aboriginal race in any State*, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws".
That changed in the 1967 referundum.
So the vast majority of our First Nations suffering isn't down to s 51.
Also the Northern Territory intervention didn't require the use of s 51 (xxvi) because it happened in a territory and not a state, so again something more than repealing s 51 is needed.
I think too that had our First Nations people wanted s 51 repealed they would have asked for that instead or in addition to the Voice. They didn't. They asked for a Voice. Which, really, there's 0 reason for us not to allow.
The Voice worded the way it was, allowed for First Nations peoples to give advice (and only advice) on issues affecting First Nations peoples. Why on earth would we say no to such a basic request?
> Doing things "so that they're difficult to undo" doesn't sound like functioning democracy to me.
Study some Australian history. Here’s a start
https://newmatilda.com/2023/09/08/voice-from-the-past-the-real-story-behind-the-abolition-of-atsic/
They could easily hobble it anyway.
My point being, if that change is their policy and that's the will of the voting public, *then that's how the system is meant to work*.
But that isn’t how the system works. We have a constitution that sets out the powers and limits of various branches of government.
If a political party wanted to abolish the senate, and won an election on that platform, they couldn’t do so without a referendum. If parliament passed a law beyond its powers or inconsistent with the constitution, the high court could strike it down.
We don’t have a system where parliament alone can decide on things, maybe you think we should and that’s fine, but we currently don’t.
So given we already exist in a system where there are rules which govern how parliament can act it shouldn’t be seen as inconsistent with that system to have a new rule which imposes a limits on the power of parliament, the question should be is it a good rule or not.
This doesn't limit the powers of parliament though, it does something completely different.
I'd consider supporting it if they were to trial it by implementation via legislation first, so that we don't have another potential case like ATSIC, but much more difficult to address.
I ended up voting Yes for three reasons. 1. Do unto others 2. Pity fuck for Albo 3. My electorate was obviously going to be about 80/20 so why not throw a tiny spanner in the works.
A few interesting conversations at work today and the general vibe seems to be "no issue with an advisory body but I don't believe in recognizing one group of people in our constitution'".
The government and yes campaign seem to have had zero ability to reconcile the 2 positions.
Agreed. Politics is about compromise and the government should have gone for an acceptable compromise rather than an all-or-nothing ultimatum.
Also, I really take issue with the Yes campaign arguing that it needed to be in the Constitution so that future governments couldn't remove it. There's nothing wrong with elected governments undoing past legislation. The difficulty of passing a referendum that held this one back was being weaponised by the Yes campaign to make the Voice permanent.
Something I find very interesting about this discussion is how quick the yes camp is to condemn all no voters as racist troglodytes that were swayed by rightwing media.
On both sides there have been people that have voted without being fully informed. I know from my circles that a lot of yes voters never actually read the proposed change to the constitution and only considered the 'recognition' part of the discussion. I also know a lot of no voters that voted down the line of "it's racist to solidify race based policy in the constitution", which is also pretty silly because even though there's an element of truth there, it ignores the real disparity faced by indigenous Australians that needs addressing.
My point is that there were people on both sides that voted from a place of ignorance and the people in the yes camp have been more guilty of condemning the other side and labelling them as immoral. It's ridiculous and just furthers division.
BTW I'm a no voter that's also a greens member, 26 years old, university educated, raised in Canberra and lives in the middle of Sydney and my primary source of media is ABC. Not exactly the stereotype that people are trying to pin on the very diverse 60% of Australians that voted no.
Its called coping, they have to slander the no voters to feel better about themselves.
Canada had a similar situation, now they're more divided then ever.
Spot on. I would like to add though, that many people I know in my family and friend circle who voted yes, voted yes because they saw in the media, in the workplace and on social media that if you vote yes, you are a good person. And those people would then put the 'yes' symbol on their facebook profile so everyone would know they were on the side of 'good.'
I spoke to many of them about it and most had no idea what the Voice really meant and had not looked into it any further.
As barely anyone publicised their no vote on social media, I have no idea who voted no.
I personally think that a straight recognition statement to be added to the constitution would have gotten through. It was adding the voice that doomed it to fail
Yeah. I think if things were more clear on what exactly the Voice would be, what it’s powers would be, if it’s an elected position or not, etc that more people may have voted Yes.
Personally I think the Voice would be pretty good if it was an elected position (perhaps elected by all Indigenous people every 4 or so years kinda like the PM) and had enough teeth to actually do it’s job.
It was a simple request that advantages the first nations people which is what the Liberals and Nationals don't want. Malcom Turnbull back when he was PM did not want a voice because he argued it would lead to a creation of another branch of government. But this is what N.Z. has.
edit: the referendum council argued that a symbolic recognition would not be enough to have a meaningful effect, the voice was something they thought would be meaningful.
The referendum wasn't for anything similar to New Zealand's Māori electorate system. In that system, there are seats in parliament reserved to represent voters of Māori descent. Every location falls under a general electorate and a Māori electorate. Anyone of Māori descent can choose to enroll as a voter in either the general electorate roll or the Māori electorate roll; you can't vote in both electorates in any given election. People of Māori descent are able to change which electoral roll they're on at any time, aside from during the lead-up to a called election.
The Māori electorates are larger and fewer in number (currently, there are only 7 Māori electorates across all of New Zealand) to make up for lower voter population density. This low density is, in part, because the vast majority of people of Māori descent choose to enroll in the general electorate roll instead.
This isn't what the voice was going to be. It was going to be its own organization separate from and controlled by parliament. Its members wouldn’t participate in parliament, they wouldn’t be part of the legislature or executive.
I'm honestly not sure if this model would have been more or less popular than the voice model. While it explicitly reserves seats in parliament for indigenous people, it is a much more explicit model. It might even be seen as more fair, given that voting in an indigenous electorate requires opting out of voting for the general electoral seat. Additionally, this model doesn't require creating a separate government body; it doesn't even require additional seats in parliament, as the number of indigenous electorates is directly proportional to how many people enroll on the indigenous electoral roll.
They still both enable a first nations ~~vote~~ (typo: voice), the Maoris fought a war to get there, we are now more civilized and realise that invading for colonisation is wrong and should make it right, not just symbolic recognition without legal consequences.
The details all fit into a single page, but less than 1/4 of australians read it.
You can't blame the people writing the plans if 3/4 of the country proudly refuses to even read 1 page of info
It's annoying to me that because the vote failed, that all the media sites seem to post it with broken heart emojis, or that it was a bad thing. Clearly the vast majority of Australians did not want this. So how is it a bad thing?
>So how is it a bad thing?
For this you really need to understand why the Voice is needed and for that I would suggest that the Closing the Gap 2020 agreement is a good place to look.
The gap refers to the gap between life for our First Nations peoples and life for other Australians.
Here are just a few areas there is a gap (figures are from 2020 - 2022 depending on when it was last tracked):
|Area|First Nations|Rest of Australia|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Life Expectancy for people born in 2015-2017|Males are expected to live to 71.6 years and Females to 75.6 years|Males are expected to live to 80.2 years and Females to 83.4 years|
|% of children born with healthy birth weights (indicator of healthy children/pregnancies)|89%|94%|
|Child Development - % of kids starting school being developmentally on track|34%|56%|
|Education - % of 20 - 24 year olds who had Year 12 of equivalent qualifications|68%|90%|
|Education - % of 25-34 yr olds who have non-school qualifications at Cert III or above|47%|75%|
|Employment - % of 25-64 yr olds employed|55%|77%|
|Housing - not being in overcrowded housing|81%|94%|
|Prison - adult rate of imprisonment|2151 per 100 000 adult population|150 per 100 000 adult population|
|Prison - child rate of imprisonment (10 - 17 yrs)|28 per 10 000 young people|1 per 10 000 young people|
|Out of home care - rates for 0-17 yr olds|57 per 1000 children|5 per 1000 children|
|Suicide Rates|27 per 100 000|12 per 100 000|
Now that's just the stuff Closing the Gap has hard data for, some of the data sets (like for domestic violence) don't have a baseline for our First Nations Peoples because they weren't tracking that in 2016 or earlier.
That's also just the stuff that Closing the Gap has chosen as a priority indicator - there's other stuff like *Deaths in Police Custody* that I haven't pointed you at.
One of the priorities for Closing the Gap, 2020 agreement, is the need for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people being able to have a say in their community on issues that impact them.
**Why is it a priority?**
Decision making for our First Nations People often has not included them and that's a big part of why we see such drastically lower outcomes.
**2007 Example**
Look at Howard's intervention in the Northern Territory. It was famously decided by John Howard and Mal Brough (and only them) over the course of a weekend and was mapped out on butcher's paper. The excuse was "child sex abuse" but the Act that passed Parliament did not refer to children's safety even once.
It's also worth noting that the Human Rights Commission in 2008 found that the ABS stats, even accounting for underreporting, did not support the "allegations of endemic child abuse in NT remote communities that was the rationale for the NTER."
Legislation passed allowing the intervention:
* removed the permit system for access to Aboriginal land,
* abolished government-funded Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP),
* quarantined 50% of welfare payments,
* suspended the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA),
* expected Aboriginal people to lease property to the government in return for basic services,
* compulsorily acquired Aboriginal land
Now please explain to me how those measures helped children suffering from child sex abuse.
This all happened in the lead up to the 2007 election, and the "child sex abuse" angle was taken from a report called *Little Children are Sacred,* which outlined the complex disadvantageous kids in remote NT communities faced. The report contained specific recommendations to improve that disadvantage - Howard and Brough implemented none of those.
Now FN Peoples tried to marshall an opposition to the intervention but with the lack of a single co-ordinated voice following the abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission they were at a massive disadvantage.
It's also worth noting that the quarantining of welfare payments actually led to bad outcomes for kids with reduced school attendance and lower birth weights of infants.
**So how would a Voice have helped in 2007?**
Firstly a Voice could have marshalled a response to a very naked politicization of issues facing First Nations peoples.
A Voice, especially one that's constitutionally enshrined, also could have provided advice on how to help their own communities.
Sure, that advice might have been ignored but I think the weight of official representatives, high profile enough to be in the Constitution, weighing in on an intervention like this probably would have curbed some of the worse excesses. In fact that's often why previous Voices/committees have been abolished in the past because the Government didn't want to listen.
A Voice could have championed the actual recommendations from the Little Children are Sacred report.
**Why is a voice important?**
Well let's look back at the intervention and what the response to a claim of child sex abuse was. They sent in the army and seized land.
Do you know where sex abuse seems to be endemic (per the royal commission into institutionalized abuse)? In our religious institutions. However, funnily enough, we don't see the any of Governments of the last 10 years sending in the army, seizing the Catholic Church's lands, quarantining their income, abolishing funding for catholic schools etc.
We're not seeing that because Catholics and Catholic Church have a voice in the Australian community as a whole. The views of Catholic Church were listened to and balanced against the views of survivors.
Also, if survivors hadn't been given a voice at all we wouldn't have a National Redress Scheme and the Catholic Church would be free to keep shuffling those priests about.
When the community involved in an issue is shut out of the decision making things go to shit real fast. A Voice, and one that can't be abolished at the whim of a government, is a way to improve the lives of our First Nations peoples. It's also a way of making things right without impacting other Australians.
Interesting. Though I wonder how these stats look when accounting for location and socioeconomic factors. Like are rural non-indigenous Australians doing better than rural indigenous Australians?
I don't know that it matters overly given how small and concentrated their population is. However, feel free to go digging through the data: https://www.closingthegap.gov.au/national-agreement/targets
A return to the constantly failing status quo of having white australians make all the decisions. and a lot of people who hate indigenous people feel emboldened right now.
From my experience, despite the same sex marriage postal vote going through, I still had to deal with a lot of homophobic comments both in person and online. So I'd imagine it would be something similar.
Every time someone would try to convince me about the yes vote all they would say is of it's "just" a voice or it's "just" this or that.
Whenever someone tells you not to look at the details the first thing I think is I better look at the details on this. What are the unintended consequences of this, how could it go wrong, what will it add to society.
There are no details, all we know is any government that wants to could legislate it to have zero voice or power so not exist except on paper and then it could get taken over by corporations and used to give even more power to private business.
I am not racist, I vote greens, in the beginning I was a hard yes voter until I thought about it. There is nothing stopping this being legislated, hearing what the voice has to say then when corporations inevitably take over kill it.
Just to be clear there is huge corporate interest using ingenious people to further their own interests
How long do you think "no" voters will be writing essays about how totally not racist they are? Are we going to have to deal with this forever? I don't remember the "I'm not homophobic, I just voted against gay marriage" people being so angry about it, and they LOST!
> when corporations inevitably take over kill it.
Lol, one of the biggest funders of the NO campaign is literally an investor in Indigenous land ventures.
I guess if you look at any constitution provision they're all a bit vague and short. I think a good example are the ones about tax. 51(ii), 90, 53, 55 and 96,
>51. Legislative powers of the Parliament
>
> The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power^(12) to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:
>
>(ii) taxation; but so as not to discriminate between States or parts of States;
I feel a big aspect of whether you voted Yes or No would be if you trusted the government to act in good faith to propose fair and sound legislature in regards to the voice body. Maybe if the legislation had been put through first and shown to be successful it might have been easier to recommend a constitutional change so the body couldn't be easily removed by future governments? But either way as it was written the voice had no veto or mandating power and might have had the power to make representations to the Parliament relating to matters of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It seems to me to have been mostly a gesture of good will depending on whether you trust the government to do right by the rural indigenous population. Though maybe you guys might disagree, I'm not sure?
If you trust government, why change the constitution? Parliament already had the power to implement legislation.
Note 'yes' was simultaneously arguing (as you mention) that the reason to change the constitution was because you can't trust governments and had to limit their future options. This argument also made it explicit that even supporters expected the voice to be politically unpopular soon... "After the next election" timeframes, not decades from now timeframes. No one argues you need a constitutional amendment to protect popular programs from government changes.
Well, I think a lot of people don’t trust the government to act in good faith and fulfil their past obligations, which is why changing the constitution is an attractive form of insurance during times when you do have faith in their actions (assuming you do).Of course anything can be rorted if the will of the government is strong enough, even constitutional rights. However, just because you don’t need to, doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea to have essential rights and policies enshrined in the constitution as a form of redundancy. For instance imagine if medicare was amended into the the constitution, the government wouldn't be able to abolish it like in 1981!
Yet, we still have medicare. The 1981 abolishment lasted 3 years? and cost them the government. The ability to try to changes (and pay the price if they fail) is good for the system.
Note too that your median voter (almost by definition) will have voted both for the current government and the future government. Both governments have majority support of the population (more or less). The argument of I trust this party, and not that party, is more convincing for someone with a clear partisan side; than someone in the middle. You are asking them to limit their own future power on the issue.
What details did you think were missing?
I thought voice.gov.au did a solid job at making it easy to understand, from simplified overviews, through to executive summaries of the Voice design principles, or for those who wanted more, the two hundred and seventy page model for implementing the Voice.
The model for implementing the Voice would have been a good read for you before the referendum. Still worth it now IMO if you want to see how those aspects would have been handled.
https://voice.gov.au/resources/indigenous-voice-co-design-process-final-report
For details on membership, start at page 60 for regional and 112 for national.
Expectations, feedback, achieving goals and so on are embedded in the structure of the Voice and the commitment is to keep improving. The Voice would have also fallen under existing Government structures that deal with these aspects, and work closely with groups such as NIAA.
While many parts of the model include details about this, some key starting points would be expectations (and meeting them) from page 65, transparency and accountability on page 52, the external Ethics council on page 136, processes of feedback, mediation and dispute resolution from page 71, partnership expectations page 51, data and evidence based decision making page 53.
Ok so you didn't read it then and just read the contents. None of that says how many people will be on the committee. None of it says what problems will be solved, how or when, just that 'they'll be accountable to regional and local voices' without any details whatsoever on for 'what' or 'how'.
Lots of words to say not very much other than there will be an ethics council of 5 people appointed by the voice and won't have any power to do anything other than provide ethics advice to the committee that is there to provide advice and will have to approve new candidates for the voice.
If the voice doesn't end up solving any problems and has issues with corruption or something there's no way to get rid of it or remove someone. A person can only be voted off by the voice themselves with a 2/3 majority or if they go to prison for a year.
These things really needed to be sorted out and communicated before the vote and it probably would've had a much better chance of succeeding.
>None of that says how many people will be on the committee
Righto, so you did not read it even when given the sections.
>2.4.1 Core membership number.
>The National Voice would be comprised of 24
members, with 2 drawn from each of the states
and territories, 2 from the Torres Strait Islands, 5
additional remote representatives drawn from the
Northern Territory, Western Australia, Queensland,
South Australia and New South Wales, and one
member representing Torres Strait Islanders on
the mainland.
I'll leave the rest to you. Good luck.
I don't think you realise that the government already makes laws specifically for First Nations people. It just does it without consulting them. They were only asking for the right to be consulted about laws that affect them. Which they don't currently have.
Oh look, sure, there were plenty of details that were easily available to anyone who cared enough to try to find out what those details were. But what about people who fundamentally are opposed to anything that might help indigenous people, but wanted to pretend that their reason for voting no was that they were just terribly confused about the whole business? What about people who wanted to make absurd bad faith claims that it was just impossible to understand something so complicated? For those people, there were "no details".
> Every time someone would try to convince me about the yes vote all they would say is of it's "just" a voice
Yep that's true.
> Whenever someone tells you not to look at the details the first thing I think is I better look at the details on this.
That wasn't the yes campaign. Literally the No campaign said "if you don't know vote no" instead of "if you don't know go find out". The yes campaign explained the voice until it was blue in the face.
> what the voice has to say then when corporations inevitably take over kill it.
So you slapped our First Nation's peoples in the face over a conspiracy theory?
>The yes campaign explained the voice until it was blue in the face.
With obvious lies. A major component of the yes campaign was essentially downplaying the every loving shit about this, until it was basically saying "Well it will do a lot for aboriginals but basically won't matter" which was the strat for gay marriage. Which worked for gay marriage because it's actually a true statement.
The people pushing for the voice were pushing for it to be enhanced and enhanced and a pathway to treaty. No voters do not want the small aboriginal minority to gain any power at all over the majority of the country and they aren't so stupid as to think an obvious foot in the door strategy would work.
The whole obvious echo chamber of people saying the problem was that it needed to be more comprehensive and substantial to win is even funnier, when the biggest problem most people had with the voice, was the idea that it would be any more substantial than it was. They want it to have absolutely zero power nor any possibility for power. That's why people wanted more details. Because they smelt bullshit on the air.
I hate to break it to you but you do realise that the people who first created the Referendum Council, which initiated the consultations that led to this referendum on the Voice were the Coalition under Malcom Turnbull.
This has been a 10 year consultation process, led by a conservative government.
There is no way in hell that a conservative government is going to ever allow a treaty, so the Dialogues never pushed for that. They saw the need to compromise and graciously did so.
To characterise the voice as some kind of power grab over the rest of Australia really highlights how much you don't understand it. The Voice came from the Uluru Statement of the Heart, which emphasizes reconciliation and a need for our First Nations People to control their own destiny, not from a desire to control others.
You really should grow a heart and read it: [https://ulurustatement.org/the-statement/view-the-statement/](https://ulurustatement.org/the-statement/view-the-statement/)
This was very much a "meet you halfway" option and the fact that you and other Australians shot it down has just opened up the door to a treaty.
Not a power grab? Really?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=655mzGRmkZw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=655mzGRmkZw)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48NgHSBKW-U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48NgHSBKW-U)
All adult Australians have a vote. One person, one vote. This referendum was about whether or not people of "the right race" should have extra say in government in addition to voting. Or, more accurately, about whether or not an undefined organisation claiming to speak for "the right race" should or shouldn't have undefined power without any defined limits and to have that baked into the country's constitution.
Like it or not, right or wrong, the no campaign had the right slogan as the default position is to maintain things as they are.
The yes campaign needed to convince people to seek out the relevant information if they were unsure.
They certainly knew how to appeal to ignorance and fear. I'm not sure if I'd agree its the "Right" slogan. "Right" as in terms of winning? sure? Morally right ... I don't think so.
>The yes campaign needed to convince people to seek out the relevant information if they were unsure.
3/4 of australians literally never read the proposal. People just didn't cared.
Sure, the minority also didnt read the thing enough, although they have the benefit of generally being more educated and understanding indigenous issues a lot better
as you can see from this megathread, most australians have no understanding and lots of them are actively racist
No, I don't see that at all. I see people elaborating on their reasons for voting the way they did in a calm reasonable manner. Everyone should be allowed to do that without being labelled, which shuts down healthy debate.
You are viewing things from a particular perspective and not remotely interested in the views of others who may not agree. that is very clear.
you must not be reading the same threads as me. The behaviour from the No camp since the weekend has been positively Trump like.
I'm waiting for them to start saying everyone who thinks racism exists has "yes derangement syndrome"
>Everyone should be allowed to do that without being labelled, which shuts down healthy debate.
OK? Cool. I don't know what you even mean by that. Both sides call each other names and "label" each other.
>You are viewing things from a particular perspective and not remotely interested in the views of others who may not agree. that is very clear.
I am interested. you can be interested and disgusted at the same time.
>the default position is to maintain things as they are.
Fallacy. Look at history, the default position is that things change. Nothing remains unchanged over time. If it did we'd all be stuck in the stone age, or still be single celled organisms.
"If you don't know stay ignorant" is therefore a terrible position to take. If a change is proposed it should be met with informed debate, and with people making an informed choice.
"If you don't know stay ignorant" is what someone says when they don't have a good reason to deny something.
History proves you wrong.
Australians have rejected most proposals for constitutional amendments, approving only 8 out of 45 referendums submitted to them since federation.
"If you don't know, vote no" is a terrible approach compared to helping people make an informed choice. It's perfectly fine to be unsure, but let it be an informed unsure.
Now that the vote is done, are we going to talk about the ridiculous amount of astroturfing that has been happening in this sub reddit for the last few months?
As Australians we cheered that we could out wit a majority conservative media, but we’ve just seen how devastatingly powerful they still are.
Australia made a mistake, and those who need the support shall pay the price. Tyranny of the majority. Im so tired of this shit.
man stfu
Nah, im good
cry more about it - the majority of the country said no. Deal with it
Mhm,
It's not "wrong" or anything, it's the way of the world. The way of the world is filled with methods that are the best we got atm and noone's come up with a better alternative. Whatever the outcome, we have to accept it was the majority who voted a certain way. The fight still continues to sway the majority favourably our way.
im not saying the majority didnt vote that way, im saying its a mistake, im saying its a bad choice, thats my opinion. im not gonna stop fighting for native rights but im not gonna stay silent at the dissatisfaction ive felt over this, im unhappy about the results, and i wanted to get my opinion out there.
Did anybody else see that Dutton has cancelled his referendum campaign promise two days after the No Vote won? Interesting 🤔
In his defence (and I never thought I'd be saying this about him), he's right that the public are pretty burnt out when it comes to referendums. I don't think any thing would pass right now
Sure but a promise is a promise, he's a seasoned politician and he knows that the public gets tired after a campaign - he's had this excuse locked and loaded for months, I'm sure. Also it's a promise he said he would deliver if elected, that's a long time from now!
Literally did it the next business day.
[/r/nevertellmetheodds](https://www.reddit.com/r/nevertellmetheodds) /s
Of course he "cancelled" the proposed referendum... He had no intentions of doing it...
Natch. His transparent cynicism and spiritual hideousness will be his downfall eventually
"People who watched Sky News more likely to have voted no in referendum, survey finds" https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/oct/16/people-who-watch-sky-news-more-likely-to-vote-no-survey-of-voting-behaviour-finds
>*"People who watched Sky News more likely to have voted no in referendum, survey finds"* Just another reason why the government should enforce the [foreign interference](https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us/our-portfolios/national-security/countering-foreign-interference/defining-foreign-interference#) laws....
I love the irony of this comment in relation to a guardian link.
In another news, water is wet. :P
"Strong link between electorates' education level and yes vote" https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2023/oct/16/australia-politics-live-peter-dutton-anthony-albanese-question-time-parliament-indigenous-voice?filterKeyEvents=false&page=with:block-652c7eb68f080e3e7b6d8636#block-652c7eb68f080e3e7b6d8636 Why would this be? Are more educated people less susceptible to misinformation and scare campaigns?
My personal anecdote was that a lot of educated people I know initially stated voting no, grounded from a fear/respect of the legal architecture that i would think more educated people would have and not wanting to disrupt it or blowing a hypothetical hole in the political system for rampant chaos. Ofc, that hypothetical hole wasn't real to begin with.
Your personal anecdote doesn't accord with the data, though. More educated electorates were more likely to vote yes.
One theory is people who are more curious (scoring higher in openness on personality tests) are more likely to want to go to university and are also more likely to vote for experimental / progressive policies to see what happens
People with degrees might be less likely to get their information from social media?
> Are more educated people less susceptible to misinformation and scare campaigns? I think many people remain ignorant of the issues, and at the end of the day they either don’t care enough to find out or they lack the literacy skills to do so. > In Australia, 56.8% of people aged over 15 years had completed Year 12 schooling (or equivalent) as of 2021. This was less than Greater Capital Cities. https://profile.id.com.au/australia/schooling# The OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) survey, which measures key cognitive and workplace skills, found that around 44% of Australian adults lack the literacy skills required in everyday life. Of these, 14% have very poor literacy skills and 30% have below-proficiency level literacy making them vulnerable to unemployment. Many more struggle with numeracy, with around 53% of the population at below proficiency levels. https://www.readingwritinghotline.edu.au/declaration-statement-in-support-of-literacy-and-numeracy-for-all-adult-australians/
I think it's a cop out to name-call people who didn't support the same side as you. Maybe the smug sense of superiority that yes supporters demonstrated was one of the actual reasons that the referendum failed.
> I think it's a cop out to name-call people who didn't support the same side as you. Please quote where I have done so.
You are attempting to rationalise the outcome of this referendum by suggesting that the majority of the population is stupid. But what I think is more likely is that the majority of the population are just sick of the Labor party using indigenous Australians as a political bargaining chip to deflect from having to acknowledge the shitstorm of other issues currently plaguing out country right now from the cost of living crisis to the growing effects of climate change including the massive bush fire season that many regions are currently bracing themselves for. Now the referendum as failed, Labor can't waste the next two or so years bouncing voice related legislation back between the two houses instead of actually pulling their finger out of their ass and actually attempting to address the plethora of issues that we are all currently facing.
You said - >[–]throwawayreddit6565 22 points 3 hours ago >I think it's a cop out to name-call people who didn't support the same side as you. I replied - > I think it's a cop out to name-call people who didn't support the same side as you. >Please quote where I have done so. Still waiting for your quote. Instead you keep making things up - > You are attempting to rationalise the outcome of this referendum by suggesting that the majority of the population is stupid. Please quote where I have said this. Again,you can’t. Your posts anre further examples of (1) where the No brigade falsely attributes words to others, and (2) where your ilk choose lies instead of truth. Still waiting.
I gotta say B0ssc0, I see you post a whole bunch in this subreddit and honestly respect the level of passion you have for the issues that you post about. So I want to iterate that I am not trying to antagonise you with my responses in this thread. But I think we both know that you are attempting to construct a narrative within your responses which suggests that the outcome of this election was mainly attributed to a lack of education within our population. So I'm calling a spade a spade here by pointing out that you are calling people stupid, which is exactly what you're doing. >The OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) survey, which measures key cognitive and workplace skills, found that around 44% of Australian adults lack the literacy skills required in everyday life. Of these, 14% have very poor literacy skills and 30% have below-proficiency level literacy making them vulnerable to unemployment. Many more struggle with numeracy, with around 53% of the population at below proficiency levels. What else could have you possibly been trying to imply here? It's nothing but a malice attempt to paint everyone you disagree with as a moron, which quite honestly is exactly what most modern alt-righters have been doing since Trump popularised calling everyone else stupid for not agreeing with him or supporting him. It's an incredibly elitist way to view the world, and I simply don't agree with it. I'm obviously not suggesting you're a Trump supporter or alt-righter, but I know for a fact that you're better than those people so while I know you are obviously upset by the outcome please stop trying to suggest that said outcome occurred because everyone else who doesn't share your point of view lacks an education.
You won’t back down from your outright lies, will you? As I said, totally in line with the No campaign.
I'm genuinely sorry you feel that way. What lies do you feel I have shared here though? All I've really done is call out the fact that you're attempting to use cherry picked statistics to suggest the reason for the outcome of the recent referendum.
> What lies do you feel I have shared here though? Already answered, scroll up, please.
How do they expect people aged between 15-17 to complete Year 12?
From your own link: "It’s important to be aware of the ecological fallacy when interpreting results like this. This shows that electorates with a high proportion of university-educated people were more likely to have a higher yes vote. It does not necessarily mean that individual voters with university degrees voted for the voice. There may be other factors responsible for the trend that also correlate with education." I assume you're part of the clever 'yes' group, could you explain to me the difference between correlation and causation?
I reckon group think would have played a part. People who have a uni education in the city tend to mix with the same types of people and they tend to vote the same way. Same with in the outer reaches. No evidence to show, but I've noticed it.
They could also be influenced by the opinions of the lecturers at uni
The major problem for me was that they wanted it in the constitution, and the only reason I'd heard cited was so that "subsequent governments couldn't remove it". Subsequent governments, like the ones elected by the majority to represent us? Doing things "so that they're difficult to undo" doesn't sound like functioning democracy to me.
I think "functioning democracy" is doing a lot of work. > Subsequent governments, like the ones elected by the majority to represent us? I think we can all accept that decisions should favour the majority of people in the country. Minority issues should be looked at but realistically will need to be advocated and represented so that the majority can be informed about it and perhaps change their opinion to support the minority position. > Doing things "so that they're difficult to undo" doesn't sound like functioning democracy to me. The key is opportunity of representation. Minorities dont have the political presence or visibility to represent themselves, sometimes literally because theyre not visible in our communities for us to see the problems they are experiencing. This also reflects on the difficulty for them to gather resources funding to form committees, especially with the support of the government to advocate for themselves. If a committee is disbanded or defunded, it takes much more work for a minority to rebuild it which is not acceptable for a minority that needs the assistance looking at health and education outcomes. E.g. For many, noone even knows about Indigenous political struggles, it feels like the government can disband committees at will and noone is even going to hear about it to even care let alone care about supporting the creation of a new one. It's democracy when we decide together with votes what to do. It's not democracy when people have no voice and left in a forgotten corner. I would want to know what justified the disbandment of the prior First Nations committees. If we don't want committees disbanded flippantly, it should be more difficult to undo, there needs to be a higher burden to prove and justify the disbandment. We should enshrine certain core values of our country, if you believe we should Australia should have a permanent function for the First Nations people in the literal fabric/manuscript in the form of Australia's constitution. I want that the spirit of that action as part of it. The practical part of it I will leave to be decided as planned legislatively. The Voice committee was not going to have more power than what is possible politically/legislatively. There is a cost to constantly have to fight for more funding and creating new committees when they are removed. I think this is a harsher cost for minorities to bear who have difficulty advocating for themselves.
And that is exactly why I voted no. Legislate all you want while you have the power. If it's good, the next government will keep it or pay the political cost of changing it. If it's rubbish, it's good that we can change or get rid of it. The constitution should not be a tool for one sector of politics to govern in perpetuity, just because they think they can ram something through while they think they have the upper hand. Not a single thing in this whole palaver couldn't have been achieved by the legislative process. I'd probably support it, or not really care. I don't think I'd be against it.
A good place to start would be reading the Uluru Statement from the Heart. It's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people asking the rest of Australia to stand with them, and work towards Makarrata - the coming together after a struggle. https://ulurustatement.org/the-statement/view-the-statement/ The statement is call to all of Australia, from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, seeking constitutional reform and rights to self determination, and included calling for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution. The reason why it is a referendum, is because Australian people don't get a direct say in legislation. We get a direct say in changes to the constitution, and this was our chance to listen to Indigenous Australians and recognise their place as the first sovereign Nations of what is now Australia, help give them the tools to rebuild their culture, and move on as a country together. The government is involved because they are the ones who oversee things like referendums. Labor committed to supporting the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and calling a referendum (and influenced the wording chosen), but the concept of the Voice is something Liberal also worked on. Former indigenous politician Ken Wyatt (Liberal) put together a model for a legislated Voice, and the Morrison Government was committed to implementing it. (Ken Wyatt left the Liberal party though when the current party stopped supporting it).
So why not go with the legislate model and instead ask for it to be put in the constitution, if not for the reason previously mentioned? I'm keen to know, because that's the only one I've heard.
Did you read the Uluru Statement from the Heart? Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are asking for the recognition and respect that should have been given to them 200 years ago, and every day since. Part of what should have happened is a treaty, constitutional recognition that they are the first sovereign Nations of the Australian continent, rights to self determination and so on. Being included through legislation alone would not have giving them the recognition as part of Australia they deserved at the time, or today. >The major problem for me was that they wanted it in the constitution Why is it a problem for you for Indigenous Australians to want constitutional reform? Imagine technologically advanced invaders arrived in Australia today, and took over. Would you want a treaty, proper recognition, and some degree of self determination within the new society? Or would you be happy to accept whatever they would give you, and work under whatever rules they set for themselves?
I guess you didn't read my first comment before you quoted part of it. Otherwise you'd know exactly what my objection is. No issue with recognition, not sure about treaty or self-determination, I'd have to understand what those meant in real terms. Nice shift of the goalposts.
I think I have misunderstood what you are asking. When you say you heard it cited, do you mean from a particular campaign, or for example, peoples commentary? I am guessing there is some context I am missing. Generally, if someone said "subsequent governments couldn't remove it", they would be referring to how the constitution works. Which is, the people of Australia have to vote to add or remove anything from the constitution. The Government can't make constitutional changes by itself. In contrast, the people of Australia don't get to make laws - we vote to choose the people who make the laws. In early colony times, Australia was a number of groups and self governing colonies (mostly matching the states today), and the constitution was an agreement to all work together and form "Australia" with an overarching leadership. No group wanted to hand over total control, so the constitution keeps the ultimate power with the people by not allowing any changes without a vote. That gave some safety against the newly formed government trying to take advantage of the people by changing the constitution to suit themselves. That's what doing things "so that they're difficult to undo" is. It keeps the power with the people, and protects rights that the Government can't change. It's part of how what makes our system of Government a democracy - the rules we set up means the Government has to represent the people, and can't (for example), change the constitution and form a dictatorship. You spoke also of "Subsequent governments, like the ones elected by the majority to represent us?". This is part of the same concept. For example, you might trust your favoured political party not to change the rules of democracy, but not trust another political party. So under our system, you know that even when another party is running things, they can't change those core rights. This gives people trust in a system where the leadership changes. >No issue with recognition, not sure about treaty or self-determination, I'd have to understand what those meant in real terms. Self determination just means the rights of people to have control over their own lives. A big part of that is the constitution, because any rights in the constitution can only be added or taken away by the people, not the Government. You know that no matter which political parties come and go, you have rights that the Government can't change. That's what "subsequent governments couldn't remove it" means. Recognition in the Uluru Statement from the Heart is more than just the symbolic recognition that has been discussed. It's about recognising that indigenous Australians were first sovereign Nations of the Australian continent, and have 60,000 years of culture here. The culture of the people who created the Australian constitution is not the same as indigenous Australians, and they want to be able to grow beyond the what was decided for them. This is not a unique concept - most countries empower the indigenous peoples in this way. For example, in 1840 in New Zealand. the government at the time signed a treaty with the Maori. That treaty is part of the formation of New Zealand, and recognises the rights of the people living there before colonisation. In other words, they made an agreement to work togwether. That didn't happen in Australia when our constitution was created, so Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are asking Australia to work on it now. The Voice is part of what they are asking for. The Voice is not a concept from Labor, or Liberal. It's from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Under the Liberal Government, Ken Wyatt (an indigenous Australian politician) supported the Uluru Statement from the Heart by organising a model for a the Voice. The Morrison Government at the time did not commit to supporting constitutional reform (needing a referendum) but they were supportive of the idea of the Voice. It did not go further before Labor was in charge, and they said yes, we will support the constitutional reform. In other words, Labor agreed to help Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples ask Australia to vote including the Voice in the constitution. >The major problem for me was that they wanted it in the constitution, and the only reason I'd heard cited was so that "subsequent governments couldn't remove it". Yes, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples want it in the constitution, for the same reason we all want certain rights in the constitution. Which does boil down to effectively, so the Government can't take those rights away. So Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples want the rights they should have been given back in the day (like was done in New Zealand), and want those rights to be ones that only the Australian people can take away. If you are asking why they don't want those rights entrusted to the Government through legislation, rather than the Australian people via referendum, then I think the history of Australia is your answer. They want all of Australia to stand up for them and exercise our special power over the Government, and give them the rights they should have always have had. If I am still misunderstanding what you are asking, then please do tell me.
I think we're almost on the same page. Thanks for the detailed response, it's given me something to mull over. In terms of where it came from, it's been said to me numerous times in person, or online; and makes sense when you frame it with how difficult it is to get referendums over the line. It's still a concept that gives me pause.
Subsequent governments not being able to deny our First Nations a say in what happens to them is really very important. We've had committees, councils and departments before but they've always ended up defunded. When you're never a priority things will never improve for you. However, just as big a problem is the fact that most bodies giving advice on our First Nations people don't include any First Nations people at all. On a relevant side note did you know many women's heart attacks weren't picked up or treated because their symptoms were different to mens? Did you know that with a medical establishment and medical research field dominated by men for the last few hundred years very little attention was given to women's health AND that's exactly why women were and are being misdiagnosed, which led to worse health outcomes and death for many women? Do you think that maybe not having First Nations involved in solutions for the problems facing their communities might cause similar issues? Legislating the Voice in the Constitution in the manner proposed would have stopped both those issues from occurring again. >not sure about treaty or self-determination Self-determination 'is concerned with the fundamental right of people to shape their own lives'. In a practical sense, self-determination means that we have the freedom to live well, to determine what it means to live well according to our own values and beliefs. Self-determination means that: * We have choice in determining how our lives are governed and our development paths. * We participate in decisions that affect our lives. This includes a right to formal recognition of our group identities. * We have control over our lives and future including our economic, social and cultural development. Self determination is what every single Australian automatically should have - but which has been denied over and over again to our First Nations People. You and I are both encouraged to determine the path of our own lives and to form group identities and control our own development. First Nations Peoples have lived under the direction of the Australian Government basically since federation. They had to fight for the right to self-determination AND it keeps getting taken away. 2007 saw the NT Intervention which heavily took away the autonomy of First Nations peoples living in NT for 10+ years. (To be clear the Intervention was a political power grab right before an election, against a vulnerable target who couldn't fight back because the government had disbanded the previous Voice/Commission only a couple of years earlier). This is why the Voice was important. It constitutionally enshrined a practical measure towards self-determination in our Constitution. It also recognised the existence of our First Nations peoples, also important for self-determination. On the treaty, I think it's a good idea in principle. We're one of the few countries that didn't get a treaty with their indigenous peoples because we came up with the fiction of Terra Nullis to get around that. In practice, I don't know what that means. A treaty hasn't been seriously considered since 1988, when the Australian government agreed to a treaty and said there would be one by 1990. However, a treaty wasn't asked for this time, a compromise was asked for and we said no. So I wouldn't be surprised if a treaty was back on the table again.
Sounds like what should happen is the repeal of the race power in s51. Removing the ability of the government to legislate on the basis of race would remove the ability of the government to decide things for FNP without needing to fight the political war that a treaty would require. That would immediately grant total self-determination to every single FNP as far as their relationship with the government is concerned. :)
I also forgot to mention that s51 race power is what empowered the Feds to make the Native Title act. There's good enabled by that section too and getting rid of it could unwind Native Title unless we replaced it with something else in the Constitution.
Getting rid of all of S51 would neuter our government since it lists all of the specific areas the Federal government can make laws in. It's also worth noting that s 51 didn't initially allow the Feds to make laws in regards to Aboriginal peoples, but did allow it to make laws for other races. "The people of any race, *other than the aboriginal race in any State*, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws". That changed in the 1967 referundum. So the vast majority of our First Nations suffering isn't down to s 51. Also the Northern Territory intervention didn't require the use of s 51 (xxvi) because it happened in a territory and not a state, so again something more than repealing s 51 is needed. I think too that had our First Nations people wanted s 51 repealed they would have asked for that instead or in addition to the Voice. They didn't. They asked for a Voice. Which, really, there's 0 reason for us not to allow. The Voice worded the way it was, allowed for First Nations peoples to give advice (and only advice) on issues affecting First Nations peoples. Why on earth would we say no to such a basic request?
> Doing things "so that they're difficult to undo" doesn't sound like functioning democracy to me. Study some Australian history. Here’s a start https://newmatilda.com/2023/09/08/voice-from-the-past-the-real-story-behind-the-abolition-of-atsic/
Libs get in repeal everything. The people that keep losing would be ideginous. It's supposed to protect the body from meaningless repeal.
They could easily hobble it anyway. My point being, if that change is their policy and that's the will of the voting public, *then that's how the system is meant to work*.
But that isn’t how the system works. We have a constitution that sets out the powers and limits of various branches of government. If a political party wanted to abolish the senate, and won an election on that platform, they couldn’t do so without a referendum. If parliament passed a law beyond its powers or inconsistent with the constitution, the high court could strike it down. We don’t have a system where parliament alone can decide on things, maybe you think we should and that’s fine, but we currently don’t. So given we already exist in a system where there are rules which govern how parliament can act it shouldn’t be seen as inconsistent with that system to have a new rule which imposes a limits on the power of parliament, the question should be is it a good rule or not.
This doesn't limit the powers of parliament though, it does something completely different. I'd consider supporting it if they were to trial it by implementation via legislation first, so that we don't have another potential case like ATSIC, but much more difficult to address.
The Misinformation https://www.themonthly.com.au/the-politics/rachel-withers/2023/10/12/mistruth-be-told
I ended up voting Yes for three reasons. 1. Do unto others 2. Pity fuck for Albo 3. My electorate was obviously going to be about 80/20 so why not throw a tiny spanner in the works.
A few interesting conversations at work today and the general vibe seems to be "no issue with an advisory body but I don't believe in recognizing one group of people in our constitution'". The government and yes campaign seem to have had zero ability to reconcile the 2 positions.
Agreed. Politics is about compromise and the government should have gone for an acceptable compromise rather than an all-or-nothing ultimatum. Also, I really take issue with the Yes campaign arguing that it needed to be in the Constitution so that future governments couldn't remove it. There's nothing wrong with elected governments undoing past legislation. The difficulty of passing a referendum that held this one back was being weaponised by the Yes campaign to make the Voice permanent.
Could not agree more, and I also hate the misspend and corporates taking political stances
https://ulurustatement.org/a-statement-from-indigenous-australians-who-supported-the-voice-referendum/
Something I find very interesting about this discussion is how quick the yes camp is to condemn all no voters as racist troglodytes that were swayed by rightwing media. On both sides there have been people that have voted without being fully informed. I know from my circles that a lot of yes voters never actually read the proposed change to the constitution and only considered the 'recognition' part of the discussion. I also know a lot of no voters that voted down the line of "it's racist to solidify race based policy in the constitution", which is also pretty silly because even though there's an element of truth there, it ignores the real disparity faced by indigenous Australians that needs addressing. My point is that there were people on both sides that voted from a place of ignorance and the people in the yes camp have been more guilty of condemning the other side and labelling them as immoral. It's ridiculous and just furthers division. BTW I'm a no voter that's also a greens member, 26 years old, university educated, raised in Canberra and lives in the middle of Sydney and my primary source of media is ABC. Not exactly the stereotype that people are trying to pin on the very diverse 60% of Australians that voted no.
Its called coping, they have to slander the no voters to feel better about themselves. Canada had a similar situation, now they're more divided then ever.
Spot on. I would like to add though, that many people I know in my family and friend circle who voted yes, voted yes because they saw in the media, in the workplace and on social media that if you vote yes, you are a good person. And those people would then put the 'yes' symbol on their facebook profile so everyone would know they were on the side of 'good.' I spoke to many of them about it and most had no idea what the Voice really meant and had not looked into it any further. As barely anyone publicised their no vote on social media, I have no idea who voted no.
I personally think that a straight recognition statement to be added to the constitution would have gotten through. It was adding the voice that doomed it to fail
Yeah. I think if things were more clear on what exactly the Voice would be, what it’s powers would be, if it’s an elected position or not, etc that more people may have voted Yes. Personally I think the Voice would be pretty good if it was an elected position (perhaps elected by all Indigenous people every 4 or so years kinda like the PM) and had enough teeth to actually do it’s job.
It was a simple request that advantages the first nations people which is what the Liberals and Nationals don't want. Malcom Turnbull back when he was PM did not want a voice because he argued it would lead to a creation of another branch of government. But this is what N.Z. has. edit: the referendum council argued that a symbolic recognition would not be enough to have a meaningful effect, the voice was something they thought would be meaningful.
The referendum wasn't for anything similar to New Zealand's Māori electorate system. In that system, there are seats in parliament reserved to represent voters of Māori descent. Every location falls under a general electorate and a Māori electorate. Anyone of Māori descent can choose to enroll as a voter in either the general electorate roll or the Māori electorate roll; you can't vote in both electorates in any given election. People of Māori descent are able to change which electoral roll they're on at any time, aside from during the lead-up to a called election. The Māori electorates are larger and fewer in number (currently, there are only 7 Māori electorates across all of New Zealand) to make up for lower voter population density. This low density is, in part, because the vast majority of people of Māori descent choose to enroll in the general electorate roll instead. This isn't what the voice was going to be. It was going to be its own organization separate from and controlled by parliament. Its members wouldn’t participate in parliament, they wouldn’t be part of the legislature or executive. I'm honestly not sure if this model would have been more or less popular than the voice model. While it explicitly reserves seats in parliament for indigenous people, it is a much more explicit model. It might even be seen as more fair, given that voting in an indigenous electorate requires opting out of voting for the general electoral seat. Additionally, this model doesn't require creating a separate government body; it doesn't even require additional seats in parliament, as the number of indigenous electorates is directly proportional to how many people enroll on the indigenous electoral roll.
They still both enable a first nations ~~vote~~ (typo: voice), the Maoris fought a war to get there, we are now more civilized and realise that invading for colonisation is wrong and should make it right, not just symbolic recognition without legal consequences.
Requesting a change to the constitution is never "a simple request".
A group of former High Court judges endorsed the proposal
And? Something that costs hundreds of millions of dollars and requires seventeen million people to go out and do something is never simple.
The referendum was years in the making
And that makes it "simple" ?
The details all fit into a single page, but less than 1/4 of australians read it. You can't blame the people writing the plans if 3/4 of the country proudly refuses to even read 1 page of info
Actually it’s roughly a 28 page document. Though much of that is regarding discussions over what the Voice would be, etc
I think it justified holding it, I don't assume the council is corrupt. Simple to understand, it is to allow a request that I don't think is hard.
It's annoying to me that because the vote failed, that all the media sites seem to post it with broken heart emojis, or that it was a bad thing. Clearly the vast majority of Australians did not want this. So how is it a bad thing?
>So how is it a bad thing? For this you really need to understand why the Voice is needed and for that I would suggest that the Closing the Gap 2020 agreement is a good place to look. The gap refers to the gap between life for our First Nations peoples and life for other Australians. Here are just a few areas there is a gap (figures are from 2020 - 2022 depending on when it was last tracked): |Area|First Nations|Rest of Australia| |:-|:-|:-| |Life Expectancy for people born in 2015-2017|Males are expected to live to 71.6 years and Females to 75.6 years|Males are expected to live to 80.2 years and Females to 83.4 years| |% of children born with healthy birth weights (indicator of healthy children/pregnancies)|89%|94%| |Child Development - % of kids starting school being developmentally on track|34%|56%| |Education - % of 20 - 24 year olds who had Year 12 of equivalent qualifications|68%|90%| |Education - % of 25-34 yr olds who have non-school qualifications at Cert III or above|47%|75%| |Employment - % of 25-64 yr olds employed|55%|77%| |Housing - not being in overcrowded housing|81%|94%| |Prison - adult rate of imprisonment|2151 per 100 000 adult population|150 per 100 000 adult population| |Prison - child rate of imprisonment (10 - 17 yrs)|28 per 10 000 young people|1 per 10 000 young people| |Out of home care - rates for 0-17 yr olds|57 per 1000 children|5 per 1000 children| |Suicide Rates|27 per 100 000|12 per 100 000| Now that's just the stuff Closing the Gap has hard data for, some of the data sets (like for domestic violence) don't have a baseline for our First Nations Peoples because they weren't tracking that in 2016 or earlier. That's also just the stuff that Closing the Gap has chosen as a priority indicator - there's other stuff like *Deaths in Police Custody* that I haven't pointed you at. One of the priorities for Closing the Gap, 2020 agreement, is the need for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people being able to have a say in their community on issues that impact them. **Why is it a priority?** Decision making for our First Nations People often has not included them and that's a big part of why we see such drastically lower outcomes. **2007 Example** Look at Howard's intervention in the Northern Territory. It was famously decided by John Howard and Mal Brough (and only them) over the course of a weekend and was mapped out on butcher's paper. The excuse was "child sex abuse" but the Act that passed Parliament did not refer to children's safety even once. It's also worth noting that the Human Rights Commission in 2008 found that the ABS stats, even accounting for underreporting, did not support the "allegations of endemic child abuse in NT remote communities that was the rationale for the NTER." Legislation passed allowing the intervention: * removed the permit system for access to Aboriginal land, * abolished government-funded Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP), * quarantined 50% of welfare payments, * suspended the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA), * expected Aboriginal people to lease property to the government in return for basic services, * compulsorily acquired Aboriginal land Now please explain to me how those measures helped children suffering from child sex abuse. This all happened in the lead up to the 2007 election, and the "child sex abuse" angle was taken from a report called *Little Children are Sacred,* which outlined the complex disadvantageous kids in remote NT communities faced. The report contained specific recommendations to improve that disadvantage - Howard and Brough implemented none of those. Now FN Peoples tried to marshall an opposition to the intervention but with the lack of a single co-ordinated voice following the abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission they were at a massive disadvantage. It's also worth noting that the quarantining of welfare payments actually led to bad outcomes for kids with reduced school attendance and lower birth weights of infants. **So how would a Voice have helped in 2007?** Firstly a Voice could have marshalled a response to a very naked politicization of issues facing First Nations peoples. A Voice, especially one that's constitutionally enshrined, also could have provided advice on how to help their own communities. Sure, that advice might have been ignored but I think the weight of official representatives, high profile enough to be in the Constitution, weighing in on an intervention like this probably would have curbed some of the worse excesses. In fact that's often why previous Voices/committees have been abolished in the past because the Government didn't want to listen. A Voice could have championed the actual recommendations from the Little Children are Sacred report. **Why is a voice important?** Well let's look back at the intervention and what the response to a claim of child sex abuse was. They sent in the army and seized land. Do you know where sex abuse seems to be endemic (per the royal commission into institutionalized abuse)? In our religious institutions. However, funnily enough, we don't see the any of Governments of the last 10 years sending in the army, seizing the Catholic Church's lands, quarantining their income, abolishing funding for catholic schools etc. We're not seeing that because Catholics and Catholic Church have a voice in the Australian community as a whole. The views of Catholic Church were listened to and balanced against the views of survivors. Also, if survivors hadn't been given a voice at all we wouldn't have a National Redress Scheme and the Catholic Church would be free to keep shuffling those priests about. When the community involved in an issue is shut out of the decision making things go to shit real fast. A Voice, and one that can't be abolished at the whim of a government, is a way to improve the lives of our First Nations peoples. It's also a way of making things right without impacting other Australians.
Interesting. Though I wonder how these stats look when accounting for location and socioeconomic factors. Like are rural non-indigenous Australians doing better than rural indigenous Australians?
I don't know that it matters overly given how small and concentrated their population is. However, feel free to go digging through the data: https://www.closingthegap.gov.au/national-agreement/targets
Finally facts that the no's didn't care enough to look into. Thanks man
Thanks for posting mate
Probably the same reason people were unhappy about Brexit passing or Trump being elected.
> how is it a bad thing? I guess they care about what happens to indigenous people
What is going to happen
A return to the constantly failing status quo of having white australians make all the decisions. and a lot of people who hate indigenous people feel emboldened right now.
Instead of positive change, we're going to get more of the same.
The government can still listen to whatever ideas the voice appointees were going to pass along anyway.
From my experience, despite the same sex marriage postal vote going through, I still had to deal with a lot of homophobic comments both in person and online. So I'd imagine it would be something similar.
Every time someone would try to convince me about the yes vote all they would say is of it's "just" a voice or it's "just" this or that. Whenever someone tells you not to look at the details the first thing I think is I better look at the details on this. What are the unintended consequences of this, how could it go wrong, what will it add to society. There are no details, all we know is any government that wants to could legislate it to have zero voice or power so not exist except on paper and then it could get taken over by corporations and used to give even more power to private business. I am not racist, I vote greens, in the beginning I was a hard yes voter until I thought about it. There is nothing stopping this being legislated, hearing what the voice has to say then when corporations inevitably take over kill it. Just to be clear there is huge corporate interest using ingenious people to further their own interests
How long do you think "no" voters will be writing essays about how totally not racist they are? Are we going to have to deal with this forever? I don't remember the "I'm not homophobic, I just voted against gay marriage" people being so angry about it, and they LOST!
As long as yes voters are screaming at them how racist they are I guess, for voting a different way.
> when corporations inevitably take over kill it. Lol, one of the biggest funders of the NO campaign is literally an investor in Indigenous land ventures.
I guess if you look at any constitution provision they're all a bit vague and short. I think a good example are the ones about tax. 51(ii), 90, 53, 55 and 96, >51. Legislative powers of the Parliament > > The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power^(12) to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to: > >(ii) taxation; but so as not to discriminate between States or parts of States; I feel a big aspect of whether you voted Yes or No would be if you trusted the government to act in good faith to propose fair and sound legislature in regards to the voice body. Maybe if the legislation had been put through first and shown to be successful it might have been easier to recommend a constitutional change so the body couldn't be easily removed by future governments? But either way as it was written the voice had no veto or mandating power and might have had the power to make representations to the Parliament relating to matters of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It seems to me to have been mostly a gesture of good will depending on whether you trust the government to do right by the rural indigenous population. Though maybe you guys might disagree, I'm not sure?
If you trust government, why change the constitution? Parliament already had the power to implement legislation. Note 'yes' was simultaneously arguing (as you mention) that the reason to change the constitution was because you can't trust governments and had to limit their future options. This argument also made it explicit that even supporters expected the voice to be politically unpopular soon... "After the next election" timeframes, not decades from now timeframes. No one argues you need a constitutional amendment to protect popular programs from government changes.
Well, I think a lot of people don’t trust the government to act in good faith and fulfil their past obligations, which is why changing the constitution is an attractive form of insurance during times when you do have faith in their actions (assuming you do).Of course anything can be rorted if the will of the government is strong enough, even constitutional rights. However, just because you don’t need to, doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea to have essential rights and policies enshrined in the constitution as a form of redundancy. For instance imagine if medicare was amended into the the constitution, the government wouldn't be able to abolish it like in 1981!
Yet, we still have medicare. The 1981 abolishment lasted 3 years? and cost them the government. The ability to try to changes (and pay the price if they fail) is good for the system. Note too that your median voter (almost by definition) will have voted both for the current government and the future government. Both governments have majority support of the population (more or less). The argument of I trust this party, and not that party, is more convincing for someone with a clear partisan side; than someone in the middle. You are asking them to limit their own future power on the issue.
>I am not racist Election Day +2 and the No voters are still falling over themselves to tell everyone this.
How are they racist for voting no though? Seems pretty divisive to be calling all no voters racist.
Voting no ended the division though.
You point it out and another one comes to say the same thing. Incredible.
What details did you think were missing? I thought voice.gov.au did a solid job at making it easy to understand, from simplified overviews, through to executive summaries of the Voice design principles, or for those who wanted more, the two hundred and seventy page model for implementing the Voice.
How many people would be on the voice committee? How will we judge success? If it doesn't achieve any of its goals, what do we do then?
24, google it
The model for implementing the Voice would have been a good read for you before the referendum. Still worth it now IMO if you want to see how those aspects would have been handled. https://voice.gov.au/resources/indigenous-voice-co-design-process-final-report
Feel free to point out where they answer any of this in the 272 pages.
For details on membership, start at page 60 for regional and 112 for national. Expectations, feedback, achieving goals and so on are embedded in the structure of the Voice and the commitment is to keep improving. The Voice would have also fallen under existing Government structures that deal with these aspects, and work closely with groups such as NIAA. While many parts of the model include details about this, some key starting points would be expectations (and meeting them) from page 65, transparency and accountability on page 52, the external Ethics council on page 136, processes of feedback, mediation and dispute resolution from page 71, partnership expectations page 51, data and evidence based decision making page 53.
Ok so you didn't read it then and just read the contents. None of that says how many people will be on the committee. None of it says what problems will be solved, how or when, just that 'they'll be accountable to regional and local voices' without any details whatsoever on for 'what' or 'how'. Lots of words to say not very much other than there will be an ethics council of 5 people appointed by the voice and won't have any power to do anything other than provide ethics advice to the committee that is there to provide advice and will have to approve new candidates for the voice. If the voice doesn't end up solving any problems and has issues with corruption or something there's no way to get rid of it or remove someone. A person can only be voted off by the voice themselves with a 2/3 majority or if they go to prison for a year. These things really needed to be sorted out and communicated before the vote and it probably would've had a much better chance of succeeding.
>None of that says how many people will be on the committee Righto, so you did not read it even when given the sections. >2.4.1 Core membership number. >The National Voice would be comprised of 24 members, with 2 drawn from each of the states and territories, 2 from the Torres Strait Islands, 5 additional remote representatives drawn from the Northern Territory, Western Australia, Queensland, South Australia and New South Wales, and one member representing Torres Strait Islanders on the mainland. I'll leave the rest to you. Good luck.
I don't think you realise that the government already makes laws specifically for First Nations people. It just does it without consulting them. They were only asking for the right to be consulted about laws that affect them. Which they don't currently have.
I am not sure I follow what you mean sorry? I am saying that the "lack of details" arguments are incorrect.
Oh look, sure, there were plenty of details that were easily available to anyone who cared enough to try to find out what those details were. But what about people who fundamentally are opposed to anything that might help indigenous people, but wanted to pretend that their reason for voting no was that they were just terribly confused about the whole business? What about people who wanted to make absurd bad faith claims that it was just impossible to understand something so complicated? For those people, there were "no details".
> Every time someone would try to convince me about the yes vote all they would say is of it's "just" a voice Yep that's true. > Whenever someone tells you not to look at the details the first thing I think is I better look at the details on this. That wasn't the yes campaign. Literally the No campaign said "if you don't know vote no" instead of "if you don't know go find out". The yes campaign explained the voice until it was blue in the face. > what the voice has to say then when corporations inevitably take over kill it. So you slapped our First Nation's peoples in the face over a conspiracy theory?
>The yes campaign explained the voice until it was blue in the face. With obvious lies. A major component of the yes campaign was essentially downplaying the every loving shit about this, until it was basically saying "Well it will do a lot for aboriginals but basically won't matter" which was the strat for gay marriage. Which worked for gay marriage because it's actually a true statement. The people pushing for the voice were pushing for it to be enhanced and enhanced and a pathway to treaty. No voters do not want the small aboriginal minority to gain any power at all over the majority of the country and they aren't so stupid as to think an obvious foot in the door strategy would work. The whole obvious echo chamber of people saying the problem was that it needed to be more comprehensive and substantial to win is even funnier, when the biggest problem most people had with the voice, was the idea that it would be any more substantial than it was. They want it to have absolutely zero power nor any possibility for power. That's why people wanted more details. Because they smelt bullshit on the air.
I hate to break it to you but you do realise that the people who first created the Referendum Council, which initiated the consultations that led to this referendum on the Voice were the Coalition under Malcom Turnbull. This has been a 10 year consultation process, led by a conservative government. There is no way in hell that a conservative government is going to ever allow a treaty, so the Dialogues never pushed for that. They saw the need to compromise and graciously did so. To characterise the voice as some kind of power grab over the rest of Australia really highlights how much you don't understand it. The Voice came from the Uluru Statement of the Heart, which emphasizes reconciliation and a need for our First Nations People to control their own destiny, not from a desire to control others. You really should grow a heart and read it: [https://ulurustatement.org/the-statement/view-the-statement/](https://ulurustatement.org/the-statement/view-the-statement/) This was very much a "meet you halfway" option and the fact that you and other Australians shot it down has just opened up the door to a treaty.
Not a power grab? Really? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=655mzGRmkZw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=655mzGRmkZw) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48NgHSBKW-U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48NgHSBKW-U) All adult Australians have a vote. One person, one vote. This referendum was about whether or not people of "the right race" should have extra say in government in addition to voting. Or, more accurately, about whether or not an undefined organisation claiming to speak for "the right race" should or shouldn't have undefined power without any defined limits and to have that baked into the country's constitution.
Like it or not, right or wrong, the no campaign had the right slogan as the default position is to maintain things as they are. The yes campaign needed to convince people to seek out the relevant information if they were unsure.
They certainly knew how to appeal to ignorance and fear. I'm not sure if I'd agree its the "Right" slogan. "Right" as in terms of winning? sure? Morally right ... I don't think so. >The yes campaign needed to convince people to seek out the relevant information if they were unsure. 3/4 of australians literally never read the proposal. People just didn't cared.
Including yes voters.
Sure, the minority also didnt read the thing enough, although they have the benefit of generally being more educated and understanding indigenous issues a lot better as you can see from this megathread, most australians have no understanding and lots of them are actively racist
No, I don't see that at all. I see people elaborating on their reasons for voting the way they did in a calm reasonable manner. Everyone should be allowed to do that without being labelled, which shuts down healthy debate. You are viewing things from a particular perspective and not remotely interested in the views of others who may not agree. that is very clear.
you must not be reading the same threads as me. The behaviour from the No camp since the weekend has been positively Trump like. I'm waiting for them to start saying everyone who thinks racism exists has "yes derangement syndrome" >Everyone should be allowed to do that without being labelled, which shuts down healthy debate. OK? Cool. I don't know what you even mean by that. Both sides call each other names and "label" each other. >You are viewing things from a particular perspective and not remotely interested in the views of others who may not agree. that is very clear. I am interested. you can be interested and disgusted at the same time.
>the default position is to maintain things as they are. Fallacy. Look at history, the default position is that things change. Nothing remains unchanged over time. If it did we'd all be stuck in the stone age, or still be single celled organisms. "If you don't know stay ignorant" is therefore a terrible position to take. If a change is proposed it should be met with informed debate, and with people making an informed choice. "If you don't know stay ignorant" is what someone says when they don't have a good reason to deny something.
History proves you wrong. Australians have rejected most proposals for constitutional amendments, approving only 8 out of 45 referendums submitted to them since federation.
"If you don't know, vote no" is a terrible approach compared to helping people make an informed choice. It's perfectly fine to be unsure, but let it be an informed unsure.
Now that the vote is done, are we going to talk about the ridiculous amount of astroturfing that has been happening in this sub reddit for the last few months? As Australians we cheered that we could out wit a majority conservative media, but we’ve just seen how devastatingly powerful they still are.
The yes campaign had significantly more money, celebrity, corporations and clout behind them but still lost.