Voice referendum Yes campaigner Thomas Mayo breaks his silence to reflect on the loss

Yes campaign leader Thomas Mayo has broken his silence following the sweeping ‘no’ verdict in the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum.

Mayo became a controversial figurehead and face of the official Yes23 campaign that supported the constitutional amendment that would create the new advisory body.

He was one of the original signatories and architects of the Uluru Statement From The Heart in 2017, which ultimately led to the referendum.

But the Yes campaign failed miserably, losing millions of votes in the final few weeks leading up to last Saturday, with more than 60 percent of Australians rejecting the campaign.

The indigenous leadership of the Yes campaign called for a week of silence that ended Saturday.

Mayo has been quiet since the results, but wrote a column for The Saturday Paper on Saturday.

In his piece, Mayo says that as a parent of five children, he was “keenly aware of the way our children take it all in.”

He recalled how his 12-year-old son had gone to bed crying after the loss became official, and had been “hardly consolable.”

“We came to realize that he felt the weight of the referendum on his small shoulders,” he said.

Mayo said he too burst into tears the day after the referendum defeat.

Mayo emphasized the need for quiet contemplation after an “intense” campaign.

He said that anyone who stood up for the yes side was “brutalized.”

“We were branded communists, greedy elites, United Nations puppets and promoters of a racially divided Australia,” he said.

“None of this is true.”

Mayo said the campaign had unleashed racist vitriol “at a level not seen in Australia for decades”.

“Indigenous advocates on The Voice couldn’t speak out about the abuse without some parts of the media, whose audiences we had to convince, falsely claiming that we were calling all ‘no’ voters racist,” he said.

Mayo singled out what he called an “abhorrent” No campaign cartoon printed in The Australian Financial Review as “one of many” examples of racist abuse.

The full-page advert in the AFR depicted Mayo alongside Wesfarmers chairman Michael Chaney and his daughter, federal MP Kate Chaney.

The ad featured an endorsement from Advance, the group behind Fair Australia, the main group campaigning against The Voice.

Member for Curtin Chaney is depicted as a girl in a teal dress, sitting on her father’s lap as he waves a stack of money at Mayo.

Nine, which owns the AFR, later apologized for the newspaper ad.

In his column on Saturday, Mayo said there were aspects of the Yes campaign that could have been better and that he had time to think about during the week’s lull.

“These thoughts hurt, like an aching void in my chest,” he said.

Mayo expressed disappointment at opposition leader Peter Dutton’s behavior during the referendum campaign, calling the Liberal leader ‘two-faced’.

“When the Albanians negotiated the constitutional amendment with the Referendum Working Group, he did so in good faith, while Dutton was duplicitous, two-faced and deceitful.”

He also criticized the opposition leader for going back on his promise to hold a second referendum after the first failed.

“None of this is bitterness on my part, it’s just the truth. Peter Dutton chose politics over results. His career came before honesty. “He strove for victory at all costs,” he said.

Mayo put forward his suggestions for what comes next for Indigenous campaigners across the country.

“We continue to call for our voices to be heard, for reforms and for justice, and we need your continued support,” he said.

“Imagine what we could achieve if the nearly seven million Australians who voted ‘Yes’ continue to have conversations with their neighbors and meet ‘No’ voters, realizing that they may have voted ‘No’ because of the lies that have been fed to them have been told.’

Mayo said he believed in time that “over time we will turn the ‘no’s’ into ‘yes’.”

Mayo urged Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to continue to “push for our common goals” and not feel silenced.

He said that despite the loss of the Yes campaign, he believed Indigenous peoples were right to extend the invitation in the Uluru Declaration from the heart to the Australian people, ending with a call for unity over division.

“Whether you voted ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ I tell you with humility and respect: from now on, open your hearts and your minds,” he said.

“The truth must be unifying, not divisive.”

After the referendum defeat, Mayo said he refused to accept the referendum’s ‘no vote’ verdict on the indigenous voice in parliament.

Despite the scale of the crushing election defeat, Mayo urged his supporters: “We will not take no for an answer.”

Just before the loss was confirmed, Mayo took to the stage at the Yes23 vote counting headquarters at the Wests Ashfield Leagues Club in Sydney to deliver his defiant message to supporters.

“If it’s a No answer, we don’t lie down, we don’t take No for an answer and we move on,” he said.

Mayo then launched a campaign against the No campaign, accusing the activists and opposition leader Peter Dutton of being ‘dishonest’ and ‘lying to the Australian people’.

Comments from his past emerged during the referendum campaign calling for First Nations people to be paid ‘rent’, for the date of Australia Day to be changed and for reparations.

In a series of tweets from 2018, Mayo listed “all the things we think of when we” demand a vote, including “reparations, land back, abolishing harmful colonial institutions.”

In addition, Mr Mayo said his sights were set on ‘getting ALL our children out of prisons and into care…integration of our laws and knowledge, speaking language, wages back’.

He later told Daily Mail Australia his views had changed as the referendum debate progressed.