Australia’s ‘no’ vote a slap in the face for its indigenous people

Referendum result shows a country still unreconciled with its brutal colonial history and the legacies of the First Peoples’ disadvantage and prejudice

Stephen Minas

Published: 8:30am, 19 Oct 2023

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Offered an opportunity to do something for Australia’s indigenous people, most Australians have responded with a resounding “no”. The failure of the October 14 referendum to change the constitution to recognise indigenous people and create a representative body speaks volumes about a country that cannot get to grips with its violent settler history.

With most votes counted, at least 60 per cent have rejected the change. The result is a slap in the face for indigenous Australians. Indigenous leaders have called for a week of silence “to mourn and deeply consider the consequence of this outcome”.

The referendum and its outcome cannot be seen in isolation from Australia’s fraught history with its First Peoples. In neighbouring New Zealand, for example, seats are reserved in parliament for indigenous Māori and an independent tribunal makes recommendations to the government on breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, the 1840 agreement between the British Crown and the Māori.

But in Australia, there was no treaty with the indigenous people. British settlers took the continent by force, asserting that Australia was terra nullius, “nobody’s land” – negating an indigenous presence estimated to stretch back 65,000 years.

The 1901 federation of Australian colonies into one state was on the basis of a white Australia. Former prime minister Alfred Deakin, one of the federation’s architects, saw Aborigines as “the last remnant of a dying race which in a few years will have passed from the continent we have colonised”.

Australia’s constitution reflected these sentiments. Until 1967, it banned laws on indigenous people and excluded them from the census.

A rally against giving indigenous Australians the “Voice” in parliament in Melbourne on September 23. Photo: AAP/dpa

In recent decades, Australia has been groping towards a more just settlement with its First Peoples, who comprise almost 4 per cent of the population. A 1992 landmark court judgment held that indigenous land rights had survived British colonisation. In response, the government introduced legislation to recognise and protect “native titles” to land.

By 2020, 17 per cent of Australian land had been recognised as indigenous-owned. In 2008, the parliament issued an apology to the “stolen generations”: indigenous children forcibly removed from their families.

But these have not overcome the entrenched indigenous disadvantage. Among other disparities, the life expectancy of indigenous Australians is more than eight years lower than for the non-indigenous. Young indigenous men are more likely to go to prison than to university.

The referendum was to have been the next step in overcoming this troubling status quo. The proposal fused symbolic and practical responses to the legacy of indigenous dispossession. It would have amended the constitution to recognise “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia” and to create a body, the “Voice”, to make representations to the parliament and government on indigenous matters.

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Australians vote ‘no’ in historic referendum that would have widened indigenous political rights

While the Voice was purely advisory, it was hoped that better indigenous policy outcomes would be achieved by listening to a permanent, democratically elected body representing indigenous views. This model emerged after years of dialogue and deliberation, which culminated in the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart: indigenous Australia’s offer to non-indigenous Australia. It did not survive contact with the ferociously negative “no” campaign.

Comparisons with the Brexit referendum have been unavoidable. Here too, expert opinion and major institutions have been overwhelmingly on one side, with populist rabble-rousing and “alternative” facts on the other.

The “yes” campaign’s broad message of national catharsis and closing the gap of indigenous inequality was buried by fear and apathy. A “no” campaign slogan, “if you don’t know, vote no”, was aptly described by a former chief justice as inviting Australians “to a resentful, uninquiring passivity”. But it worked.

“No” campaigners trafficked in risible claims that judges would shut down the government until the Voice had had its say on policy. Some simply denied that colonisation had any negative impact on indigenous people.

Indigenous performers at a rally to oppose the proposed landmark reform in Sydney on September 23. Not all indigenous Australians agree with the referendum. Photo: AFP

Conspiracy theories ran rampant on social media: if “yes” won, indigenous people would repossess suburban backyards and force white Australians to “pay the rent”; the Voice would raise taxes and enforce racial apartheid. Prominent indigenous citizens received vile abuse, even death threats.

The opposition had proposed a new referendum on recognising Australia’s First Peoples in the constitution. But this was straight out of the “no” playbook from Australia’s 1999 referendum, when voters rejected a proposal to replace its British monarch with a republic.

In that earlier campaign, republicans were split between those who supported the proposal for a president appointed by parliament and those holding out for a directly elected president. Royalists encouraged the latter group to vote “no” on the promise of another referendum in a few years.

Almost a quarter of a century later, Australia is minting new coins with King Charles III’s head on them. Indigenous reconciliation has been kicked into the long grass.

Australian football player Sam Kerr holds the national flag as she leads the Australian delegates, including Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, arriving at Westminster Abbey for the coronation of Britain’s King Charles III in London on May 6. Photo: AP

Rejection of the modest and moderate “Voice” model may embolden more extreme voices across Australia. Internationally, the referendum result undercuts the government’s efforts to present a more diverse and reconciled face to the region.

People in neighbouring countries will continue to see Australia as a country that has not come to terms with its brutal colonial history and lasting legacies of disadvantage and prejudice. When Australia calls out human rights violations elsewhere, its critics will counter with the plight of its indigenous peoples.

If there is any hope, it is that younger people seemed far more likely to vote “yes”. The commitment of younger generations will be vital to the quest for justice for Australia’s indigenous peoples in the years ahead.

Stephen Minas is professor of law at Peking University School of Transnational Law