There has been much talk by politicians about the Indigenous voice in parliament as campaigns for and against the referendum gain momentum.
With information about the proposal coming in thick and fast, it’s only natural that many Australian voters have questions.
Bridget Cama, co-chair of the Uluru Youth Dialogue, has provided insight into the three questions that keep popping up after an information campaign.
Do First Nations people support the Voice?
As with any issue, not everyone will have the same opinion. However, Ms Cama pointed to YouGov survey of First Nations people conducted in April that indicated strong support.
“There is a misconception in the community that the First Nations community is divided on this issue… we see that at least 83 percent of First Nations people across the country support the Voice,” said the Fiji wife of Wiradjuri and Pasifika.
Activists are pictured during the Invasion Day protest in Brisbane on January 26, 2022
“It seems that in the media, I think it’s presented that half of the First Nations agree and the other half don’t.”
Ms Cama said this misconception had fueled a perception that the Voice lacked the support of the First Nations community.
For many Australians, their first exposure to the concept of the Uluru Declaration came from the heart, or voice, during Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s victory speech on election night last May.
Ms. Cama emphasized that part of the teaching sessions to “make clear the mandate” of the Voice came from the work that preceded Mr. Albanese’s speech.
“The Voice is actually a call from the people,” she said.
“We want Australians to read the other statement and read the invitation sent to them as Australians and make a decision based on what suits them best as individuals. “We don’t want this to become a politicized issue,” she said.
What’s up with the pamphlets?
This week, the Australian Electoral Commission posted the official pamphlets of the yes and no camps online. The 2,000-word essays were written by politicians and will soon be sent to all Australian households.
The AEC said it would publish and distribute the pamphlets, even if they were riddled with typos and misinformation. Its role, the commission said, was simply to send them out.
But Ms Cama said she had already seen the shock waves of this through the community. At a recent event she attended in Lithgow, NSW, she said the frustration was overflowing.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has yet to confirm a date for the referendum
“There were quite a few people who were very passionate about it and stood up and asked, ‘Why isn’t this process being fact-checked?’ I had to go back and tell them, ‘Unfortunately, it’s just the way the law dictates how a referendum is held, and there’s no requirement to be fact-checked,'” she said.
Ms Cama said the feedback she received was ‘quite disappointing’ that the AEC would send something that wasn’t necessarily factually correct.
“You know, it’s another piece of material that will be available that Australians will have to read and be critical of and basically find out what they see as fact and what they don’t see as fact,” she said.
It will cost $10 million to print the pamphlets and send them to all Australian households. Labor had tried to dump the referendum process essays, but hit back to get the legislation through parliament.
As Australia’s last referendum was in 1999, Ms Cama also said many of the sessions she had conducted also involved educating attendees about how the process worked.
With many Aussies questioning the yes and no campaigns for the referendum, Uluru Youth Dialogue co-chair Bridget Cama (left) has provided insight into the three questions
What happens if Australia votes no?
Australia has a history of voting no in referenda. The last successful referendum took place more than four decades ago. Ms. Cama hopes that won’t be the case this time.
But when asked what would happen if voters rejected the Voice and constitutional recognition, Ms Cama said that at best the status quo would remain.
“The worst-case scenario is that we as a country actually take a step back,” she said.
“We know from the most recent Closing the Gap Report that only four of the 19 targets are on track, and we’ve actually gone back in four of them.
“I think that’s pretty telling that the way our governments are handling First Nations issues right now isn’t working, so we need to try something different.”
But if Australia were to break the referendum trend, Ms Cama said the focus would be on the next steps outlined in the Uluru dialogue: Makarrata, which would facilitate treaty-telling and truth-telling.
The referendum will be voted on between October and December.