With a two-letter word, Australians have struck down the first attempt at constitutional change in 24 years, major media outlets reported, a move experts say will inflict lasting damage on First Nations people and suspend any hopes of modernizing the nation’s founding document.
Early results from the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) suggested that most of the country’s 17.6 million registered voters had written No on their ballots, and CNN affiliates 9 News, Sky News and SBS all projected no path forward for the Yes campaign.
The proposal, to recognize Indigenous people in the constitution and create an Indigenous body to advise government on policies that affect them, needed a majority nationally and in four of six states to pass.
Here in the European press, I read that many Aboriginals also opposed it. They want recognition, land transfers or compensation.
To really reconcile over past wrongs, I get that. There needs to be something substantive and I think something like that will only be possible when most boomers are gone.
We have similar debates over our colonial and enslaving past.
The point is that this would have given them a path toward voicing those sorts of things, directly to the people who can actually do something about it.
It could have been the start to a lot of great change, it was a simple easy thing to do
Sure, I understand the idea and it would have been good if it passed.
But they can still voice their opinions, we have free speech, and change in the future is still possible.
Who is “we” that has free speech, because that isn’t exactly what Australia has.
Australia does not have free speech and you are delusional to believe that.
And… Oh wait never mind.
As others have stated, we explicitly don’t have free speech in Australia.
We also don’t have any laws requiring political campaigns to be truthful. And as we saw, the day after the vote was done. All the leaders of the “No” campaign flat out abandoned indigenous people and explicitly said they wouldn’t be fronting a new referendum for recognition in the constitution without the voice. A promise they made repeatedly.
The leader of the opposition who spearheaded the no campaign has been called a fascist by his peers. And once commented that if elected he would do away with parliament and elections if he could.
Many is a bigger word than I would use. Some definitely did, but no group of people has a homogeneous opinion of what the right next actions on any big issue are, and it’s kind of weird anyone would expect otherwise. Overall I got the impression that ATSI Australians supported the change, but others may not have felt it looked that way based on what they saw.
20 years ago I believed that might be true. Since then i have learnt to never rely on it being about age. Imcreased age can correlate with increased power and the reluctance to change the system to increase competition, but age isn’t the cause of stagnant beliefs. In 50 years time there will still be a generation of old people afraid of social change and a bunch of younger people who are the same or just think change is not in their personal best interest, even though it’s an entirely different set of people.
We’re all going to have to do a lot more than just keep waiting for the elderly to shuffle off the mortal coil if we want something different for the future.
Studies of Millenials show that we are not growing more conservative as we age, and neither did boomers.
It’s more that, what is currently considered progressive becomes conservative and new progressive positions emerge.
Boomers didn’t suddenly become opposed to interracial marriages or premarital sex or divorce or against gay people or minorities as they aged. The generations before them had those issues and now that those generations are gone, those issues are no longer issues.
And now the issues are more things like trans rights, reparations, climate justice, etc.
Maybe not in AU, but they very much are in other places.
Cool, there will just be a huge group of people marginalising different groups of people unnecessarily. I look forward to it between the news stories of other people in the world killing each other over the same millenia-old territorial disputes.
Please forgive my complete lack of excitement for that prospect; I don’t have it in me tonight.
The numbers were about 80+% of First Nations people are for it.
They may/do want recognition, land transfers or compensation, but voting No helped ensure they wouldn’t get anything in the future.
Over 63% of indigenous people voted in favour of the voice.
You are repeating propoganda.
No, the European press stated that it was around that number, so no propaganda.
If this was really such a great thing for them, they would vote 90+% in favor and the battle would have been to get the rest of the country over 50%.
For example, New Caledonia voted 96% to remain part of France. That’s much better as referenda between an ex-colonial power and indigenous populations go.
Seems to me like some better solution must be found that can find a majority support among all Australians and a level of unanimity among indigenous Australians.
80% indigenous support polled prior to the campaigns starting. After a relentless campaign of misinformation courtesy of Murdoch. The actual number that voted yes was 63%.
In regional Aus, there is a popular, free-to-air, 24/7 Murdoch-run news outlet, Sky News Australia, not to be confused with Sky News. It is right of Fox News, closer to OAN.
63% voted for it after one of the strongest, most targeted disinformation campaigns that Australia had ever seen. The right-wing parties have made this issue so incredibly divisive and inflammatory. Anecdotally, some Indigenous people, who did not want to be the target of further abuse from racist Australians, were convinced that the Voice would make the abuse even worse because of the ongoing hate and outrage they have experienced during this entire debate. I can understand why they wouldn’t want that experience to solidify constitutionally.
Sounds to me like you’re being rather racist with your assumptions. You’re characterizing a group of people as having monolithic values based on a shared heritage. They’re individual people with individual beliefs and motivations. You’re also suggesting that they’re easily coerced, or perhaps simple minded. This too is racist and demeaning.
Edit: Fixing an autocorrected word.
It doesn’t matter. 63% support among indigenous folks is still a landslide.
You’re not arguing in good faith though. Accusing someone of racism like that. So you can go fuck yourself for all I care.
Cool. Bigot.
I thought it was more like 80%?