Nothing tells me more that Labor are losing confidence in their “Indigenous Voice” referendum than the fact that they’re trying to change the rules ahead of the vote.
Australia’s founding fathers wisely set a very high bar for referendums. Because Constitutional change should never be taken lightly. Australians for their part, have wisely rejected 36 out of the 44 referendums put to them since Federation. It’s looking more and more likely that “Indigenous Voice” will join the rest on the scrapheap.
So, Labor is trying to change the rules.
Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney has foreshadowed the government will overhaul outdated laws governing how to hold referendums before the national vote on whether to enshrine a Voice to parliament in the Constitution.
They’re not going to try and put on something so obvious as lowering the high bar for passing a vote (a majority national vote, as well as separate majorities in a majority of states). Instead, they’re going to try and keep the rest of the nation as uninformed as a Labor voter.
Under the act, voters are to be sent a pamphlet in the post outlining the proposed change to the Constitution, comprising 2000 words each on the Yes and No case, authorised by the parliament.
Wait, what? An equal platform for both cases? How dare they! Voters actually have to read words on paper?
It’s obvious why Labor want to abolish the requirement for printed information: people read words on paper, in a way that they do not words on a screen. Study after study has confirmed that readers simply do not absorb complex information on screen in the same depth they do on paper.
“The act does not contemplate the broad digital communications so common in contemporary Australia – currently it relies on voters being sent information in print form.”
There’s a good reason for that, as applicable in 2022 as 1901. At Federation, the founders didn’t want to rely on voters being solely swayed by honey-tongued stump speeches. Today, the Labor government wants them to be swayed by tweets and infantile TV ads.
The History is Calling advertisement, which will run across television and social media, represents the first nationwide pitch by the architects of the Uluru Statement from the Heart for a Yes vote and builds on their earlier campaigns to raise awareness about the proposal.
Narrated by Pitjantjatjara and Nyungar man Trevor Jamieson, the ad channels the cultural custom of Indigenous story-telling, foretelling how “the First People got a voice”.
Throwing forward to a post-referendum future, it depicts everyday Australians driving the momentum for change by talking with friends, family and colleagues, with Jamieson saying: “And that’s how we changed this country for the better.”
Sydney Morning Herald
It’s truly excruciating stuff. A twee “just so” story in blackface that tries to bullshit voters with 60 seconds of saccharine guff. It literally treats voters as if they’re wide-eyed, gullible children. It says literally nothing about what this fairytale “voice” will actually do. It also literally contradicts itself, claiming that Aboriginal Australians have been “speaking for 60,000” years but “don’t have a voice”. How, exactly, does one speak without a voice?
Yet, this sort of syrupy crap is clearly what Labor want to pass off as an “informed voice”.
