The Greens stronghold that voted No to the Voice – and now the mayor is flying the Aboriginal flag at half-mast as a ‘sign of solidarity’ with grieving elders

A left-wing electorate that was once a Greens stronghold has voted resoundingly ‘no’ to the vote – and now the mayor is flying the Aboriginal flag at half-mast.

Fremantle, which covers both sides of Perth’s Swan River, rejected the Voice proposal; 53.5 percent of voters were against changing the constitution, according to figures from the Australian Electoral Commission.

In the voting booth in Coogee on the beach, 60.2 percent of voters wrote ‘No’.

This was despite the fact that the local Fremantle City Council had spent $35,000 of taxpayers’ money on the failed Yes campaign.

Fremantle Mayor Hannah Fitzhardinge, a former Labor staffer, announced on Monday that her council would fly the Aboriginal flag at half-mast in the coming week “if an expression of support for local elderly people following the result of the Voice referendum’.

“We are deeply aware of the disappointment and sadness currently being experienced by Fremantle’s Aboriginal elders and would like to express our support and empathy,” she said on Instagram.

“They told me they would appreciate this simple sign of solidarity.”

Independent Fremantle councilor Marija Vujcic said taking down the Aboriginal flag was disrespectful to voters who supported the No side.

“She has no authority to lower that flag,” she told Daily Mail Australia.

‘That flag is only lowered when a king or queen dies, a person of some importance in the community.

“She has once again taken it upon herself to effectively destroy the 53 percent of her population that constitutes the majority.”

Councilor Vujcic said the money spent on the Yes campaign was part of an “ideologically driven, divisive agenda” – from a council that could not afford to maintain a bus service.

“How will the mayor now respond to her taxpayers who voted no?”

The City of Fremantle’s Instagram post divided taxpayers with one woman voting Yes, explaining why the No vote prevailed.

“I voted yes, but I have a good friend who voted no,” she said.

‘After I got over the shock, I listened to his reasoning, and unfortunately it was legitimate.

“If it had been Yes, how would it have been administered in realistic terms?”

Daily Mail Australia sought comment from Fremantle Council on their support of the Voice campaign.

This gentrified electorate of Fremantle is the only capital in Australia to have rejected the Voice and previously had a Greens MP.

The no vote prevailed, despite Fremantle’s largest stand backing the Voice with a 60.7 percent yes vote.

Fremantle also previously had a Greens mayor, with Brad Pettitt elected in 2009, 2013 and 2017.

The port city has long been considered Western Australia’s most left-wing city, with federal Greens leader Adam Bandt, who grew up in Perth and a supporter of the Fremantle Dockers.

Labour’s federal seat of Fremantle overlaps with the state seat of the same name where Adele Carles was a member of the Greens following a 2009 by-election where she received 44 percent of the primary vote.

At the time, this was the highest ever preference vote for a minor party in a state lower house seat, but she left the Greens the following year after beginning a relationship with Liberal treasurer Troy Buswell.

Fremantle had the strongest Greens vote in Western Australia in the 2021 state election, with Premier Mark McGowan’s Labor Party winning 53 of the 59 seats in the lower house.

Here the Greens’ vote was 18.6 percent, making them the most left-wing electorate in the state.

At the last federal election, the Greens still had 18.2 percent of the vote in Fremantle, which was held by Labor member Josh Wilson.

Perth, an inner-city Labor seat, was the only one in Western Australia to back the Voice with a 55.9 percent yes vote.

The rest of the mining-rich state voted ‘no’, with 63.8 percent rejecting the proposed constitutional change, after Labor Prime Minister Roger Cook was forced to abandon his predecessor’s disastrous Aboriginal heritage laws.

The Voice has also failed in inner-city areas with Labor MPs, including Adelaide and Boothby, Chisholm and Hotham in Melbourne, and Lilley in Brisbane.

Bandt’s Melbourne seat had the highest ‘yes’ vote of 77.3 per cent.

The Voice was also endorsed in his party’s other lower house seats in Queensland.

Brisbane voted yes with 55.8 percent support.

In Griffith, support stood at 55.7 percent, while in Ryan, a former Liberal Party stronghold, it stood at 52 percent. overlaps with the state vegetable seat Maiwar.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s gentrified electorate of Grayndler in the inner west had a yes vote of 74.3 percent.

It overlaps with the Greens state seats of Balmain and Newtown.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s Sydney seat had a yes vote of 70.8 per cent, with this state-level electorate overlapping with part of Newtown.

The Wollongong-based Labor seat of Cunningham narrowly backed the Voice with 51.4 per cent support, in an electorate the Greens held from 2002 to 2004 after a by-election.

Labor seats in Melbourne’s inner city, where the Greens vote heavily, backed the Voice with 63 per cent support in Macnamara for St Kilda, and 64 per cent in Wills, for Brunswick.

In Melbourne’s inner north, the yes vote in Cooper was 65 per cent, overlapping with the state seat of Northcote held by Senator Lidia Thorpe for the Greens in 2017 and 2018.

The Australian Capital Territory’s three federal Labor seats of Canberra, Bean and Fenner voted yes, while the local territory assembly had Greens MPs governing in a minority Labor government.

But the Labor-held seat of Richmond, in northern NSW, returned a 56.8 per cent no vote.

It overlaps with the Greens-held seat of Ballina containing the Byron Bay stand, which backed Yes with 64.9 per cent support.

Only 32 lower seats out of 151 voted Yes to the Vote, while the national No vote was 60.7 percent.

The Yes seats included seven seats from a ‘blue-green’ independent party, four Greens voters, one Liberal seat and nineteen seats with a Labor member.