The main street of Derby, Western Australia, is bathed in red dust and a faint breeze is stirring the gum trees that dot the edge of this Outback town. Outside the small supermarket, locals gather to shop and exchange gossip in the predominantly Indigenous community of 3000 people. Dogs and small children play on the cracked pavement.
The weekend’s races are dissected, as is the Gibb River Road’s recovery after January’s flood. Crime is talked about – always – plus where the fish are biting. But there is one big topic that’s not on the agenda.
“Have you heard of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament?” I ask locals. “Have you heard of the Voice?” In a crowd of a dozen, only a handful know what I am talking about. When I try to explain it – a referendum to create a federal representative advisory body of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders – people’s eyes glaze over.
“That’s not for us, that’s white fulla business,” says one older man.
In most parts of Australia, certainly the wealthy and city-dominant east coast, the Voice has been the single biggest news story this year. Every day, television and radio broadcasts and newspapers feature multiple angles, and social media is flooded with advertisements from the Yes and No campaigns, as well as an avalanche of fearmongering, conspiracy theories, hate speech and fake news.
But in the bush, and in the remote communities of Indigenous Australia, it is as if the Voice doesn’t exist.
“I am not a supporter. To me, there are too many issues, too many questions left unanswered,” says James, an older Aboriginal man who doesn’t want his full name used because the issue has become so divisive. “It hasn’t been properly drawn up and mapped out and shown to us. If it gets through, we don’t know what it will look like.”
In Canberra, on the other side of the country, Indigenous leader, academic and Voice advocate Professor Marcia Langton says the journey to bring the Voice to a referendum has left her in tears many times.
Flanked by Indigenous leaders and Aboriginal ministers from Parliament, Langton held a crumpled tissue in one hand as she urged Australians to vote “yes” in the referendum, slated – but not yet called – for October.
Often described as a “warrior” and “intimidating”, Langton was showing a side few had ever seen.
“We’re here to draw a line in the sand and say things have to change, people’s lives have to improve,” she said. “We know from the evidence that what improves people’s lives is when they get a say, and this is what this is about.”
According to the Australian Human Rights Commission, Indigenous Australians “suffer grossly disproportionate rates of disadvantage against all measures of socio-economic status” and “remain the most disadvantaged of all Australians”.
Aboriginal men and women die nearly 20 years younger than their white peers, and represent 32% of the prison population, despite accounting for only 3.2% of the general population.
It is this entrenched level of disadvantage and intergenerational poverty that supporters of the Voice are hoping to change.
The last referendum held in Australia was 24 years ago (on whether to become a republic), and referenda have a history of failing in the country where politics is so often a blood sport. So it was no small thing for Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to call one so early in his first term.
Announcing the wording of the referendum question the Australian people would vote on, and flanked by some of the country’s most senior Indigenous leaders and elders, the Prime Minister was also brought to tears.
“This is a modest request,” said Albanese. “I say to Australia, don’t miss it, don’t miss it.”
Protect from harm
The wording of the referendum question is this: A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. Do you approve this proposed alteration?”
Dry as the ballot paper sounds, this question is tearing Australia apart.
The Voice will be a representative advisory body made up of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders, who will advise how government proposals and legislation will affect the lives of their people. The Voice will be enshrined in the constitution, meaning changes to government cannot abolish it on a whim.
The goal of the Voice is to protect Indigenous people from harmful legislation such as the White Australia Policy that led to the Stolen Generations, and former prime minister John Howard’s Intervention in the Northern Territory, which quashed many pillars of autonomy and independence for Aboriginal people.
The idea is that a consultative body may be able to stop harmful legislation before it passes into law.
“Enshrining a Voice in the Constitution gives the principles of respect and consultation strengthened status,” said Albanese.
Despite much reporting to the contrary, the Voice’s advice to Parliament is not binding, and the body would have no power to stop, veto or overrule proposed legislation – only give advice if it is in the best interests or otherwise of Aboriginal people.
Those in the Yes camp, such as Northern Territory advocate and Indigenous leader Thomas Mayo, say current advisory bodies featuring Aboriginal representatives, of which there are many around the country in areas such as mining, health and criminal justice, don’t go far enough.
“If a voice is merely legislated, we’re setting ourselves up for failure, maybe not in this generation but the next,” Mayo said at a recent Yes rally.
“The constitutional enshrinement of this is absolutely vital to getting change and seeing that consistency of listening to us.”
Lack of detail
One of the most contested points of the furore has been the purported “lack of detail” surrounding the powers of the Voice. This has become the catchline of the No campaign, but has also allowed for scaremongering: that the Voice will see land taken off farmers, that Aboriginal rights will be given precedence over anyone else’s and that the country will be constitutionally divided.
The lack of detail has become one of the central arguments of the No campaign, which is being spearheaded by prominent Indigenous leaders such as Warren Mundine and the National Party’s Indigenous spokesperson SenatorJacinta Nampijinpa Price. Most of the opposition Liberal party, including leader Peter Dutton, are also intending to vote no.
In a slick, nine-minute No campaign video, Price, who is of mixed race and is married to a Scottish Australian man, says she doesn’t want to see her family – or country – divided on race grounds.
“Later this year, they want to establish a so-called Voice to Parliament. This is a really big deal,” Price says in the ad. “The constitution is the rulebook for governing the country, and they want the rules to change. This will divide us.
“I don’t want to see my family divided along the lines of race, because we are a family of human beings, and that’s the bottom line.”
Her husband, Colin Lillie, puts it in plainer terms: “I love my family. And a line going through my family, I won’t stand for that.”
On the argument over lack of detail, the Yes campaign cites two reports published in the past few years, spelling out in detail the make-up and structure of the Voice. This includes how many members it will feature, the two co-chairs (of different gender), the state and territory representation and the scope of its powers, which are, in many ways, quite limited.
Corporates, sports teams and cultural institutions have also entered the fray, swearing allegiance to either Yes or No camp. So far, Rio Tinto, BHP, the National Australia Bank, retail chain BIG W and others have publicly stated their support for Yes, as have the AFL, the NRL, Rugby Australia, Football Australia, Tennis Australia and the Australian Olympic Committee.
Prominent individuals within those organisations, rather than whole bodies, are voting no or expressing reservations.
But alongside the many loud and strident Yes and No campaigners are a huge swathe of Australians who remain undecided and are already fatigued by the highly strung tenor of the debate, as Arrernte woman Celeste Liddle wrote in the Guardian recently.
The No campaign has capitalised on this sentiment in official promotional documents, declaring, “If you don’t know, vote no.”
“I remain an undecided vote, and I feel stuck,” wrote Liddle.
“Voting yes means putting my faith in people and systems who have never earned that trust and are unlikely to ever do so. Simultaneously, voting no feels like giving in to rabid racists, so the clock gets set back generations as unfortunately, few in society appear to be listening to the very real and doable pathways forward that the sovereignty activists are promising.”
So, what do the polls suggest?
A recent Guardian Australia analysis of polling country-wide shows a decline in support for the Voice, as do other major pollsters.
However, this hasn’t led to significant growth for the No campaign. Rather, more and more Australians are feeling undecided (it is thought about 30-40%), and put off by the acrimony of the debate.
But as voting is compulsory, these Australians will have to make up their minds soon or face a not-insignificant fine.
Tide of racism
As the campaigns have worn on – and remember, the official date for the referendum has yet to be announced – a rising tide of racism has been seen and felt across the country, particularly online.
Three months ago, esteemed ABC broadcaster and Indigenous man Stan Grant took indefinite leave of absence citing “grotesque racist abuse” towards him in his public role, especially from social media. Many other Indigenous public figures have said racism towards them has increased since the Voice referendum was announced.
“To those who have abused me and my family, I would just say if your aim was to hurt me, well, you’ve succeeded, and I’m sorry,” Grant said.
Some No campaigners, such as Senator Pauline Hanson, have taken their opposition to extreme and dangerous lengths, by claiming the Voice will create an “apartheid” situation in Australia.
In an open letter, Andrea Durbach, an emeritus professor and former director of the Australian Human Rights Centre, roundly rejected that claim, calling it inflammatory.
“The fatuous attempts to depict a simple, straightforward Voice to Parliament as analogous to apartheid is divisive scaremongering at best, or a clear rejection – yet again – of the presence and participation of First Nations Peoples in our society, at worst,” she wrote in the letter, published on the University of New South Wales’ Australian Human Rights Institute’s site.
“And a rejection of recognition of the original inhabitants of this land from its primary founding document is a vote for their continued exclusion based on race. And that, Senator Hanson, is apartheid.”
So, this is how the land lies: divided, antagonistic and full of hate speech, racism and misinformation.
But there are still small moments of joy on the campaign trail, which seem to connect with the intended spirit of the Voice, and push back against the animosity and confusion.
At last month’s Logies, Australia’s annual television awards, audience members rose from their seats to applaud as Indigenous documentary director Rachel Perkins took the stage to accept an award.
“In October, hopefully, we will have the opportunity to embrace our history and bring the country together with one simple word,” Perkins said.
“What is that word?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” the audience shouted back.
Eleanor de Jong is a journalist who lives in Derby, Western Australia.