As we wake up on Monday morning and the country begins to forget about what happened over the weekend, we can be sure that many people who have worked hard over the past six years, from the Uluru Statement to the Voice design process, will be left feeling emotionally and physically gutted. I am also sure, given the sheer amount of gloating by news organisations such as Sky News and 2GB that the "No" trolls will take great glee hearing this. I don't know what has to go wrong in people's lives where schadenfreude, that is people taking pleasure in your pain or people's happiness at the misfortune of others' but it seems that it is rampant.
I have almost gotten the impression from talkback radio this morning that the kosmos actually needs people who have been knocked around by fate because when people who lack empathy and decency see them, they certainly do not want to be them and that makes them feel great.
Perhaps I have been a little too harsh in painting the "No" case as purely racism. I think that we can now take it that what the results show is actually far less complex than that and most of the "No" voters cast their vote out of simple mean spirited envy. The beast that shouts "I" at the heart of the world acts out of selfishness above anything else, and when people began to start thinking and asking why First Peoples should get a special voice when they don’t have one, then any rational reason immediately got trampled. That was the essence of the "No" case. "No" voters thought incredibly small; whereas "Yes" voters were big enough to look beyond themselves to the justice of the cause.
You can almost track the moment in data, when from roughly a year out a majority of Australians did support the Voice, to the point where 10% of the population swung in the other direction. It isn't a lot but a 10% swing equates to a 20% difference in voting patterns. If I can notice this by looking at simple data, then I am sure that professional Psephologists whose job it is to look at a proper quantitative analysis of elections and balloting (I am sure that the political parties employ people like this because data is beautiful), will have seen this months ago.
The simple facts are that of the 45 referenda that we have had, every referendum that hasn't had bipartisan support has been defeated. That meant that when the Liberal Party under Peter Dutton decided to oppose it, the referendum was sunk.
It is probably true that the only way to defeat the Voice was to lie about it. The thing about truth is that truth needs time and logic to defend it. The thing about a lie is that provided one can flood the public square with lies then those who might defend the truth, then have to waste time. This is the modus operandii of the right in Australia and has been the way that the authoritarian right has done politics for more than a century.
It was clear from the day Mr Dutton decided not to offer bipartisanship, that he was intent on destroying what could have been a historical moment of reconciliation. What we also saw was a layer of personal attack on the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese; which is de rigueur for any Liberal member. In trying to hurt Albanese, Dutton hurt the country. I do not know what side of history Mr. Dutton is on but he most definitely won this battle.
Furthermore, on the radio yesterday morning, Mr Dutton said that when he wins government in 2025, this would not be an issue which would be raised again under a government he leads. With that, if the Liberal Party takes government in 2025 (a normal election is likely to be held in May 2025), then the effects of this referendum will be to quietly kill any and all hopes of reconciliation for quite some time.
As for Jacinta Price spending the run up to the referendum claiming to speak on behalf of Aboriginal people, I think that the results firmly say otherwise. Ms Price repeatedly told us that First Peoples in show remote communities did not want the Voice and that she was speaking on behalf of them (which is a strange paradox).
However, if you drill down into the results for Remote Mobile Teams in the NT electorate of Lingiari, the reality tells a different story. 21 out of 22 remote polling booths in NT First Nations communities resoundingly wrote “Yes”. Actually, the "No" vote only flipped the NT’s final count in the major non-Indigenous centres of Darwin, Katherine, and Alice Springs.
What I found utterly galling were the comments on Saturday night when Jacinta Price basically claimed that the AEC rigged the results in the Northern Territory.
“One thing we do know is the way in which Indigenous people in remote communities are exploited for the purpose of somebody else’s agenda. I think we probably need to look at the way the AEC, the [Northern Territory Electoral Commission], conduct themselves when it comes to remote polling at elections, at referendums. I think we should take away those who come in with their how-to-votes, unions that come in and overpower vulnerable Aboriginal communities.
There is a lot that goes on in remote communities that the rest of Australia doesn’t get to see. If we had cameras in those remote communities, at those polling booths, Australia would see what goes on in within those communities. There’s a lot of manipulation."
- Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, to Liberal Party HQ, 14th Oct 2023
To run a campaign which deliberately denies the First Peoples' Voice to Parliament and then undermine the process which gave you the result that you wanted is pretty low.
It must be said though that as it stands, the injustices which lay at the heart of this country's constitution remain. The fact that the referendum was defeated and that "No" won, means that 14th October 2023 was a sad day for progress, truth telling, and a likely end to any kind of treaty process for the foreseeable future. What we know is that Justice has been turned away, and Decency stands at a distance. Truth has stumbled in the public square, and Honesty is not allowed to enter.
It will take something special to keep on listening to Indigenous Voices from here on. This country which has decided to do nothing still has some reckoning to do.
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