Indigenous Voice: Australians reject historic Indigenous referendum - BBC News
Indigenous Voice: Australians reject historic Indigenous referendum - BBC News
Australian national broadcaster ABC has projected three states voted No, effectively defeating the referendum.
Australian national broadcaster ABC has projected three states voted No, effectively defeating the referendum.
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Is it just racism? I also don't get it.
No, it is not just racism. There would have been an element of that, but it's certainly far from the main reason. That idea is contradicted by the facts that a very significant portion of Indigenous people and Indigenous activists voted against it.
Linking to this useful post, explaining why various progressive groups were against it.
You've actually explained one of the reasons many Indigenous people rejected this: it is just feedback that could simply be ignored by the Senate. That's powerless, and we've seen from royal commissions into Aboriginal deaths in custody that the feedback does get ignored. Why accept such a bad deal, pretending it's a victory or progress?
The Black Peoples Union interview with ABC explains why they took the 'no' position.
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Black Peoples Union interview with ABC
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There was absolutely no reason to vote no to this.
Of course there was. Enshrining different rights to different people in the constitution based on their race, is fundamentally objectionable.
Australia has some of the most racist people on the planet.
The problem is, since they live in a self-contained 'white-zone', they rarely have to deal with the problems of racial diversity.
So many people think Americans are racist, but that's just because the USA actually has to deal with diversity.
It's easy for nations like Australia or Iceland to appear as they though care about other races until it comes home.
That's because conservative bigots tend to blow things out of proportion and report it as fact
A good example is when they stopped using plastic bags, those same idiots were claiming pensioners would be the worst to suffer. They were the least affected.
Those clowns were pretending like the entire government would be controlled by aboriginals
What isn't suprisingly though is how Qld voted..
Left-leaning voters in this very thread are oversimplifying in the exact way you're accusing conservative bigots of doing. It's the state of politics, not the political positions that are the problem. I try not to look at politics in such a polarised way because it adds to the problem.
Who stole the land, exactly? The last Census detailed that 28% of Australians were born outside Australia and 48% have a parent born overseas, so the population who could be traced back to "stealing land" is a small minority.
From the perspective of some in the older generations, Indigenous Australians were given a voice and representation in 1962 when they were given the option to enrol and vote in federal elections, the same as every other Australian.
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From the perspective of some in the older generations, Indigenous Australians were given a voice and representation in 1962 when they were given the option to enrol and vote in federal elections, the same as every other Australian.
That's just dishonest. The link you posted paints a much more grim picture.
Really, we just have demonstrated to the indigenous community that we don't give a shit about them. It's sickening...
They did not steal from these people, but from their several generations long dead ancestors.
The goal of the prosperous society should be equality between people. This law is differentiating people by their genotype.
Worried about poor people? Just help them regardless color palette of their hair, eyes or skin.
Dispelling Australia's Referendum Misunderstandings
I thought i'd start a discussion on this as there is an international reputation forming that may not be justified due to misinformation. The vote was to change the Australian Constitution to include a section giving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples a voice in parliament, which they already have through inner dialogue between their mobs and local governments. How this constitutional change would look or be enacted was not known and very vague, with the crux being that it would still be government controlled, there was widespread animosity from First Nations people about it being another 'white-man's decision', it would create division by being unequal when indigenous Australians are striving for equality. These are the key reasons behind the nation's 'No' vote. It was never a vote about if you 'like Aboriginal Australians or not' as many of the articles here seem to indicate.
Yes the proposed change to the constitution lacked detail, but that is entirely in keeping with the constitution as a whole, it is a "high-level" document after all. The detail would have come in the legislation that enacted it, with plenty of public consultation and discussion in parliament, no different to any other legislation. In its final form it would have probably looked a lot like previous advisory bodies that we used to have, with the critical difference being that it could not be disbanded just because the government of the day didn't like it.
I'm not familiar with the Australian political terms, can you share what this means:
inner dialogue between their mobs and local governments
To me, that sounds like the Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islanders are free to think about what they want, and then form a potentially violent, roughly organized group of people to confront local officials... But I assume I'm missing something.
From google: 'Mob' is a term identifying a group of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people associated with a particular place or Country. 'Mob' is an important term for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, as it is used to describe who they are and where they are from.
In Australian slang a mob can just mean any grouping of people, not necessarily a criminal group or a group of rioters. It's not uncommon for people to refer to their own ethnic or political grouping as a mob; at least from what I've seen when reading Australian websites.
And by local government I think they are referring to the states and territories governments.
Yeah as someone outside Australia I've been surprised at how biased and simplified the reporting has been. A complex constitutional issue is being painted as a simple "good people, bad people".
When I read about the changes myself (after having to go hunting for some actual detail - the reporting is pretty poor on this) it honestly seems more like virtue signalling rather than useful or meaningful reform.
And unfortunately the vitriol from the 'YES' campaign that is now surfacing has sullied a democratic process. This was never about a like or dislike of First nations people, but that's how it's now being painted. There were no winners or losers in this referendum. It was just the wrong idea and poor lip service to the Uluru Statement of the Heart. It's why over 40% of First Nations Australians voted against the constitutional reform.
How old are you?
Relevant: the Black Peoples Union position on the referendum (interview on ABC).
An aggregation of written statements collected from socialist, anarchist and radical Indigenous groups, showing the diversity of thought on the matter: http://old.reddit.com/r/AustralianSocialism/comments/161r8r1/megathread_of_leftist_statements_on_the_voice/
(PS: don't just take all the 'yes' and 'no' summaries in that list at face value, a couple of them are misinterpretations or oversimplications)
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Black Peoples Union position on the referendum
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Did you write the 'no campaign' booklet by any chance, temp_acct_001?
Lol, no. In fact, before I did any research, I was a firm YES supporter at face value. But I researched, I interviewed, I allowed myself to be neutral and hear all the facts, and I made a very informed decision on voting day. You can guess at my vote, but you may be surprised. My comments here are for the uninformed, global community, who immediately jump to the conclusion that the referendum was about racism.
Australia has been gas-lit by foreign trolls paid by China and Russia.
Welcome to every single vote for the rest of your life. They won't even be human soon.
anything happens in white country
RUSSYA!!!!! CHYNAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not us civilised people, the hordes and barbarians!
Don't give Canada ideas
Like us copying the bill for Tech Giants to pay news organizations
Common Australian Racist L
I mean... what else would you expect from a white supremacist colonial project?
I hate it here
Unlike America, you at least don't have to "love it or leave it"! We still have it pretty good, globally speaking.
Yes, but see, if the indigenous people riot right now that's clearly unprovoked radicalization and the Australian government should begin to indiscriminately shell indigenous land.
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I don't see how. We've already officially said sorry as a nation and have strong native title rights and laws were indigionous people can claim their ancestral lands, own them and live on them as traditional as they would like to.
Indigenous communities are still alive and well in many parts of Australia and can freely make the choice to assimilate with western culture or not. Australia is a huge and sparsely populated place that does not force this on indigionous people at all.
At some point the indigenous community needs to stop considering themselves victims and focus on the future of their people and culture. What is generally amusing is that it tends to be inner city privileged indigenous people who tend to make the most noise about this.
In Kennedy, in an area stretching just south of Cairns, Yarrabah has an Indigenous population of 95 per cent. Its Yes vote was almost 76 per cent while the overall Yes vote in Kennedy was less than 20 per cent.
On Palm Island, in the Queensland electorate of Herbert, had an Indigenous population of 91 per cent at the last census. On Saturday, the Palm Island booth had a Yes vote of 75.1 per cent compared to the overall Herbert vote of just 24 per cent.
In Far North Queensland, the booth of Hope Vale services an Indigenous community to the north of Cooktown in the electorate of Leichhardt. More than three in four people in the area voted Yes, compared to 33 per cent for the entire electorate.
How dare you say indigenous people have any say in their own destiny. How dare you say it's only the inner city that cares about our genocide.