Australia’s prime minister took a swipe Monday at “doomsayers” using fear tactics in a referendum to give Indigenous people a voice on laws that affect them.Debate on the so-called Voice has turned increasingly acrimonious, with supporters decrying deliberate disinformation and opponents saying it risks opening a racial divide.
If passed, Indigenous Australians — whose ancestors have lived on the continent for at least 60,000 years — would have a constitutionally enshrined right to be consulted by the government on laws that impact their community.
More than 200 years since British colonisation and the ensuing persecution of Indigenous people, they remain greatly disadvantaged with higher incarceration and jobless rates, and a life expectancy about eight years shorter than that of other Australians.Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has stressed the symbolic but modest nature of the proposed change, which would not confer a right of veto to Indigenous people.”All it’s about is recognising Aboriginal people in our constitution and, secondly, saying that where matters affect them we should listen to them,” the centre-left Labor leader told a radio interviewer.
“And that’s just common courtesy.”
The opposition’s “scare campaigns” underestimated voters, Albanese said in a separate speech.
Australians would not be lured by “ludicrous invitations to jump at our own shadows”, the prime minister said in prepared remarks released in advance to local media.”Australians have a healthy scepticism of doomsayers, a scepticism kept in good health by memories of all the predictions offered by the Chicken Littles of the past,” he said.The “yes” vote is still ahead in a two-way fight, polls show, despite indications of an erosion in support since the conservative opposition decided to campaign for a “no”.
– ‘Orwellian effect’ –
An Essential Research survey published mid-May gave put support for the Voice at 59-41 percent.Australia’s conservative opposition Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton has hardened his rhetoric, though, last week declaring the change would “re-racialise our nation”.”It will have an Orwellian effect where all Australians are equal, but some Australians are more equal than others,” he said.On Monday, Dutton accused Voice supporters of using race to attack the “no” side.”The prime minister out there name-calling people and others suggesting that people are racist because they don’t support the Voice — it’s completely unacceptable,” he said.
Australia’s race discrimination commissioner, Chin Tan, urged politicians to avoid a “racial bun fight”, in an interview published Monday in the Nine media group’s newspapers.The political battle over Indigenous recognition is already leaving a mark on the community.One of Australia’s top television journalists, Stan Grant, quit his current affairs show with national broadcaster ABC this month citing”relentless” racial attacks he faced as an Indigenous person in the spotlight.
In his departure announcement, Grant said Indigenous people had learned to “tough it out”.
But the stakes are now higher, he said, as the country prepared for the referendum.”There is a referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament and I am not alone in feeling judged. This is an Australian judgement on us. Such is politics,” Grant wrote.”But racism is a crime. Racism is violence. And I have had enough.”The ABC’s managing director David Anderson later told parliament he was concerned about First Nations staff and wanted to ensure they were “sufficiently protected” as the referendum approached.
The vote is expected to take place in the last three months of the year.
