Australians have resoundingly rejected a proposal to recognise Aboriginal people in its constitution and establish a body to advise parliament on Indigenous issues.

Saturday’s voice to parliament referendum failed, with the defeat clear shortly after polls closed.

  • DaBabyAteMaDingo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    American here, what does it mean to recognize a class of indigenous people in Australia?

    Because we have a very different understanding of the word lol

    • Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It was to put them in the constitution as the original inhabitants of Australia and give them the right to a mostly powerless advisory body to the Commonwealth government called “the Voice”.

      It was a pretty conservative idea but unfortunately the conservative opposition leader is the arch-racist piece of shit who will never win a real election, but in his desperation to make a name for himself he campaigned against the referendum, and referendums traditionally only succeed with bipartisan support. So now all that’s really been accomplished is to disenfranchise our indigenous population even more.

      • garbagebagel@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I know it’s a lot more nuanced than this but the idea of history being like “yes these people were unarguably here first” and government going “nah we created this place” is so fucking ridiculous.

        • Ilandar@aussie.zone
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          1 year ago

          It’s not much more nuanced than that. Have you heard of Australia’s history wars? Many of the leaders and major ministers of Australia’s conservative party have been, and still are, subscribers to a completely alternate and incorrect version of Australia’s history which has been pushed for decades by right wing media and political journals like Quadrant. The current party leader, Peter Dutton, literally walked out during the federal government apology for the damage it caused to the Stolen Generations.

          Decades of this shit has really slowed progress on Indigenous affairs and reconciliation, and it’s a big part of the reason why so many Australians have a warped idea of their own country’s history (if they even know anything) and why our attitudes towards our Indigenous peoples seem so laughably archaic to the rest of the world.

        • Welt@lazysoci.al
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          1 year ago

          That’s not far from how it is here - but I’d say it’s more dishonest politicians tokenistically acknowledging Country (such a performative exercise) and capitalising common nouns in that way. Nobody’s really saying “we created this place”, more that we have this culture of falling over ourselves to recognise Traditional Owners while not actually doing much to address Indigenous disadvantage. Referenda are seen as a big deal and usually fail, especially where they’re not led by those who care about the movement, AND are completely transparent about what the result will mean. This referendum was led by the governing party of Australia as an election commitment, and what would result was neither well thought out nor explained adequately. Australia voted not to support the vague word of hand-wringing do-gooders we don’t trust.

      • Wooki@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        That’s a lot of hate you assume was caused by the opposition. Australia voted them out big time a few months ago so that’s a lot of reach.

        It was the yes campaign that did it to themselves. They needed to have CLEAR impact statements about what it will do before they put it to the public. Their campaign created its own vague outcome and stink of virtue signalling. Not good enough. Especially considering what happened in WA weeks before announcement.

    • snippet@aussie.zone
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      1 year ago

      There’s a good breakdown on the whole thing here: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/oct/13/what-is-the-indigenous-voice-to-parliament-australia-when-referendum-2023-explained-yes-no-campaign-wording

      The recognition aspect was basically the creation of an advisory body to the government with members selected from indigenous groups. The idea being that the govt has historically poorly managed indigenous issues so by having them directly advising govt there should be better policy outcomes

      • Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        In retrospect they really should have set it up first and let it run for a bit before they tried to put it in the constitution.

        • LemmysMum@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yeah, but they didn’t have time for that in this election cycle. Fuck I hate it when progressives play the conservative handbook, follow fuck ups become fuck ups.

          Went for a slam dunk but didn’t tie their laces.

      • xad@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Oh dear, thanks for the link. I would have voted no, too. It does not sound like a great institution. (Although I’m German and reading about it for the first time rn, so…)

        From what I read in this article, I’m not even sure it would be properly democratic? Reads like a government advisory body which claims to represent the interests of a specific heritage - pretty strange.

        • Benj1B@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          The context is important here - Australia had a continuous indigenous population for over 60,000 years before white settlement. White Australia never had an agreement with indigenous peoples at large, and through relentless expansion of colonies, spreading diseases like smallpox, introducing alcohol and drugs, forcibly abducting and schooling children, heavy incarceration and a slew of other typical British colonial shit ended up leaving them disenfranchised, alienated, and excluded. Indigenous Australians prior to colonisation had a deep affinity with the land and tended it like custodians, but because they didn’t build towns or farm like Europeans, they were just swept aside without ever really being acknowledged or addressed.

          The Voice was asked for as a product of the Uluru Statement of the Heart - not long, worth a read- https://ulurustatement.org/the-statement/view-the-statement/

          It was really first and foremost about having an acknowledgement that maybe, just maybe, the settlers cocked things up and that it’d better to fix things together. It’s not asking for anything “more” or extra, it’s about correctly telling history and reframing our national dialogue to be coming from a place of partnership, instead of colonialism, so we could fix some of the very real issues modern Australians face as a result of hundreds of years of callous racism. It was a chance for white Australia and government to really listen and maybe find better ways of doing things.

          But now instead we get to try to explain to our kids why 60% of the country don’t think representation or inclusion matters while indigenous Australians will continue to struggle without a government that can listen to them.

          • xad@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            The context is important here - …

            Why would context be important here? Institutionally it is a bad idea, even if an indigenous population ten times as big would’ve been mistreated ten times worse. The hard question would be: How would anything happening in the past improve this specific policy proposal?

            It seems very lacking on a legitimacy level, appears to be functionally questionable and has evidently led to increased polarization prior to even being enacted.

            The Voice was asked for as a product of the Uluru Statement of the Heart - not long, worth a read- https://ulurustatement.org/the-statement/view-the-statement/

            I like that it’s very prosaic and well crafted. I don’t like that they fail to make the case how past and current tragedies relate to the specific proposal. There’s also no evidence, benchmarking or any other kind of reference indicating the expected performance of their proposed setup. I’ve yet to find a paper outlining how the “voice” is actually supposed to work.

            It was really first and foremost about having an acknowledgement that maybe, just maybe, the settlers cocked things up and that it’d better to fix things together. …

            That’s cool. Why didn’t they do two proposals, one with the acknowledgement the other one with the suspicious institution?

            … It’s not asking for anything “more” or extra …

            It’s asking for the creation of a permanent advisory body. Are we on the same page here?

            But now instead we get to try to explain to our kids why 60% of the country don’t think representation or inclusion matters while indigenous Australians will continue to struggle without a government that can listen to them.

            I do think representation and inclusion matter a lot and, as said, I’d strongly oppose this advisory body. Do you think it’s a black and white issue? One needs to like this specific thing or be a bad person?

            I don’t think that is a productive take on this referendum. There are certainly many loving and caring people on all sides of this referendum.

          • canuckkat@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            You are correct except for calling the white colonizers “settlers”.

            Settlers in this context typically means immigrants who came over after Australia became a British colony. Usually non-white but there are plenty of Scottish and Irish families who are settlers because of the whole British enslaving them part.

    • TheControlled@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah I don’t get it either. I know a lot of Natives hate the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but is that what Aus is trying to get too (within the Constitution)?

      • Cypher@aussie.zone
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        1 year ago

        There are essentially two parts to what was proposed, the first is that having mention of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island (ATSI) peoples in the constitution is recognition.

        The second part, which is actually the exact mechanism which was proposed, was a permanent advisory body made up of ATSI representatives with constitutional power to give advice to the Government on issues related to or impacting ATSI people.

        The exact details of the advisory body were up to legislation which we will probably never see.

          • Cypher@aussie.zone
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            1 year ago

            A few of the arguments or concerns voiced by Australian’s included:

            -A Voice with no power is pointless

            -Lack of detail in the proposal

            -Separating Australian’s by race is divisive (note there’s already constitutional race powers, which I disagree with and hope will be scrapped)

            -ATSI people would have more representation than others (they actually have proportionally higher representation in Parliament today than their percentage of population)

            -Leaving the exact details of the Voice to legislation means any future government could gut it without violating the constitutional amendment

            -concerns this is the first push on a path to treaty and reparations as a percentage of GDP (which WAS discussed as a possibility by the people who worked on the Uluru statement)

            I’ve left out the outright lies, though I guarantee someone will take issue with me simply mentioning the talking points to give you context.

          • Cypher@aussie.zone
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            1 year ago

            The exact wording of the Constitutional amendment was released 6-7 months ago.

            The Legislation has not been, and likely won’t be seen.

            If you have seen the legislation somewhere please share a link.

    • Welt@lazysoci.al
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      1 year ago

      That’s basically why the Voice to Parliament failed. It wasn’t clear what that would mean, and our utter garbage media fanned all the flames they could - raising the fear in people’s minds that we’d be ‘giving away’ some part of our democratic process. It’s not what would have happened, but it’s a not unfounded fear that in this age of doublespeak and militantly progressive movements, ‘recognition’ of Indigenous Australians could be manipulated into something we didn’t agree to. The result - keep the status quo.

      • LemmysMum@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The result - keep the status quo.

        I feel like the result was different from my perspective.

        The result - stop planless virtue signalling and prevent the government sweeping the real issue under the rug with a token gesture.