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.

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.