Indigenous Voice to Parliament: Thomas Mayo urges Australians to do one thing before they vote – as Yes campaign sees last minute surge of support

An Indigenous voice in Parliament looks unlikely to find majority support despite the latest poll showing a surge towards a Yes vote – as campaigner Thomas Mayo urges Australians to do one thing when they go to the polls.

A Newspoll released on Friday shows a three-point swing to the “Yes” camp over the past week, taking support to 37 percent, the highest level since official campaigning began in early September.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia on Friday night, the Uluru Statement from Heart signatory Thomas Mayo pleaded with Australians to speak to a Po23 volunteer before voting on Saturday.

“Speak to one of the ‘Yes’ people at your polling booth and ask any questions you have before you go in,” Mr Mayo said.

“They are friendly people who are well informed, so please, if you don’t know, stop by and ask questions.”

Mayo said he felt confident ahead of the country’s first referendum in more than two decades.

“Really think about the issue and the actual amendment to the Constitution.”

“Cutting through all the noise is really a simple recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.”

“We can improve the lives of Indigenous people going into the future and merge our modern society with our ancient heritage.”

“I’m still optimistic – there are undecided Australians and we have the truth on our side that this is an advisory committee.”

“The No campaign has exhausted their lies and I’m still very hopeful.”

According to the latest Newspoll, 57 percent of voters said they intended to vote No, down one point from an earlier poll on Monday.

Only about 6 percent of voters said they were undecided.

The state with the strongest level of support is Victoria and it looks like the only state to produce a majority of Yes votes.

To succeed the referendum must win a double majority, which is a yes vote from a majority of Australians and also a majority of states.

If every state votes No, it would be a significant embarrassment for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with support for recognizing the Indigenous Constitution in the form of a Voice falling well above 60 percent in January.

Mayo has become one of the leading figures in the Yes campaign.

He was born on Larrakia Country in Darwin and grew up learning to hunt for food with his father and to island dance from the local Torres Strait Islander community of which he was a member.

Speaking at the Victorian Judicial College earlier this year, Mayo said he was a ‘really quiet guy’ who ‘never expected to be doing what I’m doing’.

He said he is motivated by a ‘dislike of injustice’ and learned most of what he knows ‘about solidarity and collective action’ during his nearly two decades on the dock.

“My mother and father were not engaged in politics in any way,” he said. “My dad’s the guy who wants to get on with it and say what they’re all complaining about.”

‘It was one of the older goalkeepers (who inspired me). I learned a lot from those union elders.’

Mayo argues that a Voice for Parliament would improve the nation’s democracy and raise our social standing among the rest of the world.

Despite criticism from the right, Mayo said Indigenous Australians “are not being heard now… they are not a priority because we have no democratic effect”.

He argued that life expectancy gaps and higher incarceration rates further prove his point.

“For me this means justice,” he said. “It means knowing what should have been known from the beginning when Cook arrived.”

He helped create the Uluru Declaration from the Heart, arguing that his people “have always made proposals to have political representation – one voice, basically”.

“We did the hard work. All that consensus building, debates, passionate discussions to compromise between us. The nature of consensus is never to get everything everyone wants.’

Australians are being asked to amend the constitution to recognize “Australia’s First Peoples” by creating an Indigenous Voice in Parliament.

The committee, made up of and elected by Indigenous Australians, would advise Parliament and the government on issues affecting the country’s most disadvantaged ethnic minority.

Indigenous Australians make up only 3.8% of Australia’s population. But they die on average eight years younger than the general population, have a suicide rate twice the national average and suffer from diseases in remote, remote areas that have been eradicated from other rich countries.

Mr Albanese on Friday cited the Israel-Hamas war to underline why Australians should vote ‘yes’ out of compassion for the indigenous population.

“This week of all weeks where we see such trauma in the world, there is nothing – no cost – for Australians to show kindness, to think with their hearts and heads, when they go into the polling booth tomorrow and vote ‘yes’ “. ‘ said Albanian.

‘Kindness costs nothing. Thinking of others costs nothing. This is a time where Australians have that opportunity to show the generosity of spirit that I see in the Australian character where in the worst moments we always see the best of the Australian character,” Albanese added.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton said polls showing declining support for the referendum over the past year were proof that Albanians had failed to convince voters of the benefits of Voice.

“He’s instinctively won their hearts because Australians want better outcomes for Indigenous Australians, but he hasn’t won their minds,” Dutton told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Indigenous campaigner Robbie Thorpe drew attention to the Indigenous divide on the Voice this week by applying for a High Court order to stop the referendum. “The referendum is an attack on Aboriginal sovereignty,” Thorpe said in a statement on Friday.

But the High Court said his writ was rejected on Thursday on the grounds that it appeared to be an abuse of court process, frivolous, vexatious or outside the court’s jurisdiction.

Thorpe is among so-called progressive “no” activists who argue that an indigenous committee with no veto power over legislation is not a radical enough change.

Many progressives argue that the constitution should most importantly recognize that Indigenous Australians never gave their land to British colonizers and a treaty was a higher priority than a Voice.

Conservative ‘no’ campaigners argue that the Voice is too radical and the courts can interpret its powers in unpredictable ways.

Some indigenous people are not confident that the membership of the Voice would represent their various priorities.

Yes campaigner Kyam Maher, an Indigenous man who is South Australia’s state attorney-general, said the question he was asked most often by thousands of voters was what outcome Indigenous Australians wanted.

“I can say absolutely and absolutely Aboriginal people want their fellow Australians to vote yes tomorrow,” Maher said.