The Australian Referendum
What do we make of the results?
The strange silence
There is a strange silence this morning about the results of the referendum on the Aboriginal Voice to Parliament being enshrined in the Australian Constitution.
Throughout the entire campaign, no-one but no-one was telling the truth. It was a similar situation to the covid years with the government running the referendum campaign in the same way it ran Australia during the supposed pandemic. There was only one voice in the country, the voice of complicity between all the levels of government, the media and the corporatocracy to support the YES case. The YES case had the only funding and so the only voice during the campaign, and the NO vote relied on a few brave personalities willing to speak out, via social media. On referendum day itself there were YES banners and YES advocates everywhere. Everything pointed to a YES win - except the opinion polls. The NO case was unfunded and almost invisible, except for the opinion polls.
Feigned shock at the results
And as the results came out, every single TV station was bemoaning the loss. And any individual who tried to explain why the NO vote won so resoundingly was very rudely howled down. The overall implication by ALL the commentators and so called journalists on TV was that only idiots and racists voted NO.
Something strange has happened
But oops, it starts to become unviable to make that claim when the total national NO vote was on average, around 60% and in some states as high as 68.5% (Queensland). And when every state (except ACT which is technically not a state) voted a resounding NO.
So just HOW did the NO vote get such an outstanding win with no funding and no publicity and with EVERY influencer in the nation advocating for the YES vote? And what are the implications?
Something strange has happened and it seems few are prepared to voice what that might be. As the NO voters were silenced before the vote, it seems we are still silenced after the vote. We are afraid to talk about what the real issues are. So here is my start at triggering open conversation about this.
Why did we vote NO?
I can see several possible reasons for why the NO vote won so resoundingly. They can each be taken alone or we can package a few of them together.
We could be horrifically racist and more than a little bit stupid.
We are just dumb and always vote NO to a referendum.
We are firmly anti-racist, in that we do not want racial difference to be enshrined in our constitution. An Australian is an Australian no matter what race, religion or national origin.
We ARE tired of throwing money at “the Aboriginal problem” and seeing that money achieving nothing. And we are tired of being blamed for a situation not of our making. For at least the last 50 years of serious goodwill, we have thrown disproportionate funding at trying to narrow the gap between the indigenous population and “the rest”, including many instances of giving money to Aboriginal groups to spend as they see fit. Nothing has worked. Technically the Aboriginal population is disproportionately land rich and tax payer support rich, and disproportionately education, health and life expectancy poor. So why is all that obvious wealth achieving nothing? Why? The Liberal Party has called for an audit of how Aboriginal funding is spent, and this would be a good start to answering that question. But it will only work if we can all be honest.
Maybe we are just suffering economically too much as a population to want to support one poverty stricken demographic over another. Perhaps it makes sense to help everyone below the poverty line when so many are suffering, not just one race.
And the real reason we voted NO?
Maybe the result has nothing to do with the Aboriginal situation at all. The overall instruction for this entire campaign was “do as you are told and ask no questions, or you are a bad person”. Really?
We might have decided that we are sick of being treated like idiots by the government and the media, and so we voted NO for no better reason (albeit a good reason) than we were being instructed, cajoled, bullied and shamed into voting YES, from every direction, in every forum, blanket non-stop bullying everywhere we looked. We fell for it once, with Covid. Here’s hoping this vote is telling our so-called governments that we will never fall for it again.
Perhaps our governments might try treating ALL indigenous human beings - that’s ALL of us - with respect.
After-word - is this a double play?
Of course, the trick from now on might be reverse psychology. Tell us what to do in the knowledge we will now do the total opposite. Maybe that explains the utter crass stupidity of the government campaign. It could not have been much more stupid if they tried - perhaps they designed it to lose? Now there is another avenue for investigation! Just what did they do while we weren’t looking?
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Can I add a sixth point to this great post? 6. The whole thing is a United Nations, global plan, UNDRIP. Agenda 2030. Gary
Yes I think people voted "No' because there was a lot of info on alternative media plus nobody really knew what it was going to involve so having gone through Covid they weren't prepared to be tricked again. I do think it's likely as the Sun in Capricorn says, that the misinformation Bill will be their next trick.