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Australia Enjoys its Brexit Moment, as Voters Reject Proposal to Enshrine a ‘Voice’ For Indigenous People in its Constitution

by Toby Young
14 October 2023 12:50 PM

Votes are still being counted in the referendum held in Australia today, but the ‘No’ side are the clear winners, with the ‘Yes’ side – including Australia’s Left-wing Prime Minister – having conceded defeat. Australians were asked whether the constitution should be amended to create a ‘voice’ in Parliament for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, although the ‘Yes’ side has done a poor job of explaining how this would work in practice. The Sydney Morning Herald has more.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has called for a “new national purpose” to tackle Indigenous disadvantage after a resounding defeat for the Voice, with 59% of voters rejecting the proposal at Saturday’s referendum.

The campaign for change gained only 41% of the national vote and lost in every state after years of debate over constitutional reform, igniting claims from the Yes camp that its rivals engaged in lies to fool the electorate.

Albanese took responsibility for the result but told voters he was a “conviction politician” who honoured his promise to Indigenous leaders to embrace the Voice and take it to a referendum.

“This moment of disagreement does not define us and it will not divide us,” he said.

“We are not Yes voters or No voters, we are all Australians. And it is as Australians, together, that we must take our country beyond this debate without forgetting why we had it in the first place.” …

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton blamed Albanese for the failure and said voters should be frustrated with the Prime Minister for asking them to vote for the Voice without giving them details about how it would operate.

Dutton committed to an audit of spending on Indigenous programs and a royal commission into child sexual abuse in First Nations communities.

“Australians were always going to reject a proposition which divided us into different categories,” he said.

Worth reading in full.

For an explanation of why ‘Yes’ lost, see this piece by Fraser Nelson in the Spectator.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has just given an extraordinary speech, saying this was a vote against the “gaslighting, bullying and intimidation” that the No supporters have been subjected to. The vote was a rejection of the idea that Australia has an original sin to absolve. “We are absolutely not a racist nation,” she said. “When we kept asking questions. We weren’t receiving any answers whatsoever.” The No side was accused of misinformation, she said, but Yes ran “a campaign of no information”. The gap Australia needs to worry about is not between indigenous and non-indigenous people, she said: the Aboriginal middle classes “are doing very well for themselves”. The gap to focus on, she said, is that between the most marginalised and everyone else.

“My family experienced three funerals yesterday. My family are sitting in communities where they have been exploited for someone else’s agenda – and this campaign is another case of that,” she said, adding that claims that 80% of indigenous Australians supported the Voice were just nonsense. “The Australian people were misled and the Australian people say this for themselves.” It’s time, she said, to stop heeding “academics from the inner cities” to work out what social change is needed.

Worth reading in full.

Stop Press: The right-of-centre National Party has won the New Zealand election, ousting Jacinda Arden’s Labour Party from power. The BBC has more.

Tags: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoplesAustraliaReferendumThe Voice

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20 Comments
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ebygum
ebygum
1 year ago

God, how I despise the MSM….

This is the headline in the Telegraph…

“Australia to reject recognising indigenous people in constitution”
This was never about not recognising indigenous people..they already have full constitutional equality….
….and yet the gutter press can’t seem to help itself..

179
0
TheGreenAcres
TheGreenAcres
1 year ago
Reply to  ebygum

Same message on the radio as well. More gaslighting from the MSM.

54
0
iconoclast
iconoclast
1 year ago
Reply to  ebygum

If only we had a democracy here too and had some say.

We give all the power to a handful of political activists – Con or Lab – who have never done anything useful but jabber about ideology to get elected and get power.

The worst possible outcome of our next big election is a landslide for any party.

16
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago

Brilliant news.

Plan B now for the Globalists. A “terrorist” incident should be in the offing possibly using an aboriginal dupe.

66
-3
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago

Er, don’t they already have the same “voice” everyone else does, as voters?

95
0
Monro
Monro
1 year ago

A strange sobbing sound, tears course down the face, hard to draw breath, the ribs ache……..

Last edited 1 year ago by Monro
25
0
Orlando
Orlando
1 year ago

Voting no today was profoundly satisfying. On the way out of the polling station I passed a fully masked covididian clutching a No pamphlet on her way in to vote. You know the government has lost the people when even the covidians know better.

78
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago
Reply to  Orlando

Nice to hear from down under.👋

39
0
Dr G
Dr G
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

After having very little to celebrate for several years, this has been a joyous occasion.

32
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago
Reply to  Dr G

Good to see you posting again Doctor 👍

13
0
Dr G
Dr G
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Thank you.
Always like to put in my opinion on antipodean matters. I’m a little reluctant to wade in too deeply on issues largely pertaining to the UK, though always follow events in the mother land.

21
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  Orlando

Great to see DS reaches across the world.

28
0
iconoclast
iconoclast
1 year ago
Reply to  Orlando

“You know the government has lost the people when even the covidians know better.“

10
0
Dr G
Dr G
1 year ago

The vote appears to be approximately 60:40 against changinging the constitution.
Initially only contributions to the “Yes” camp were tax deductible.
There has been almost uniform for “Yes” support from the media, big business, the entertainment industry and all sporting codes.
The leaders of the “Yes” campaign have described opponents at racist, uneducated, dinosaurs, misinformation spreaders, and all the usual epithets. It has been David versus Goliath in the funding stakes, yet “No” won resoundingly.
It goes a little way towards restoring my faith in the innate common sense of the populace after the Covid years!

50
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago
Reply to  Dr G

Unfortunately, as we Brexiteers know too well the ‘Yes’ campaign will now seek an alternative route to getting their own way. Not knowing enough about the Australian political system I have no idea what methods your opponents might choose but I very much doubt they will give up.

33
0
Dr G
Dr G
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Absolutely. Brexit is a great template for what may lie ahead.

18
0
iconoclast
iconoclast
1 year ago
Reply to  Dr G

“The leaders of the “Yes” campaign have described opponents [as] racist, uneducated, dinosaurs, misinformation spreaders, and all the usual epithets.”

That sounds very familiar? Sounds like a ‘yes’ campaign I have heard of.

If only we had been told the truth about Brexit:

The EU – A GDP Graveyard – Proved by 40 Years of IMF Statistics

Last edited 1 year ago by iconoclast
10
0
Dr G
Dr G
1 year ago
Reply to  iconoclast

A standard tactic of all big state proponents.

8
0
iconoclast
iconoclast
1 year ago
Reply to  Dr G

“Vote X.

Only X is good [or its the better choice than Y].

Anti-Xers are nutters.”

Its worked for decades over vaccines.

Last edited 1 year ago by iconoclast
11
0
RTSC
RTSC
1 year ago

I wonder when Australians will be made to vote again …. the right way?

It WOULD be good news about NZ if the Nation Party there hadn’t fully supported the Covid Tyranny launched by Adhern. But it did.

9
0

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