History Is Calling: Australian Referendum on Indigenous Voice

On 14 October 2023, a referendum will be held asking Australians to decide whether to allow an Indigenous Voice to be enshrined into the Constitution. This would be a small but important first step to improving the lives of Indigenous people in Australia. As voting is mandatory in Australia, everyone will have their say. How will Australians approach the historical referendum, and what will they choose?

Colonisation and Indigenous people in Australia

When British colonisers claimed possession of what is now called Australia, they did not recognise the people who were already there. They did not treat nor negotiate. Instead, they concocted the fiction “terra nullius” (the land is empty), and in propagating this falsehood that there were no people, they used violence to dispossess Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander inhabitants of their lands, culture, language, family structures, and livelihoods, disrupting 65,000 years of the longest continuous living culture in the world.

That was 230 years ago. This dehumanising of Indigenous people continued until there was a first shift in 1967, when Indigenous people were counted as people for the first time, in a successful Constitutional referendum. Recognition of Indigenous rights has accelerated over the past fifty years. However, whereas, some nations such as Kenya regained sovereignty, and Canada and New Zealand struck treaties, Australia has remained the only Commonwealth nation with no treaty with its Indigenous people and no recognition of its Indigenous people in the Constitution.

In 2017, there was an extraordinary meeting of Indigenous people at monolithic Uluru, a red rock that represents the very heart of the country. In a culmination of a series of dialogues a plaintive request emerged: Indigenous people would like to have some permanent say in their own affairs. They asked for Voice, Treaty, and Truth and the first part, Voice, was directed at the Australian people. Treaty and Truth will follow.

The meeting at Uluru, was by no means the first time that Indigenous people have taken a stand. Since colonisation, they have been fighting hard for their rights. These battles have taken many forms: walks to the seats of power, a Tent Embassy in front of the national parliament, walk-offs from workplaces, petitions written on bark, individual letters pleading with their white Protectors for permission to marry, to see their children the State removed , or to receive their hard earned income which the State was supposed to be holding in trust (but which somehow disappeared). This is what the Uluru Statement from the Heart called “the torment of our powerlessness”.

Their pleas finally found a receptive ear when the progressive Labor Party came into power in 2022. The new Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, made it clear in his acceptance speech that supporting Indigenous people and their demands was a priority for his new government.

What does the referendum mean for Australians?

Referenda must reach a high bar, and in Australia, few succeed. A referendum to become a republic (to move away from the British monarchy) in 1999 failed, and an omnibus four-part referendum entrenching trial-by-jury rights, religious freedom expansions, and fair terms for state-compulsorily acquired land also failed in 1988. Encouragingly, the most successful referendum in Australian history was the 1967 Indigenous referendum, allowing Indigenous people to be counted as people in the national census, with a 90% yes vote. This was the first time a nail in the coffin of “terra nullius” was enshrined in the foundations of Australia.

On 30 August 2023, the referendum date of 14 October 2023 was announced, with a six-week campaign period. Until now it has been unclear which way Australia will lean: the opinion polls have waxed and waned. Now that attention and focus can be concentrated, we will have better indications. The vote also comes at a point in history of domestic cost of living pressures, a housing crisis, climate crisis, and international geopolitical challenges to democracy and deeply partisan worldviews creating division, all grabbing the attention of Australian people. So, while some see this referendum as a test of our identity as a nation, others have attentions focused elsewhere. However, as voting is mandatory, each Australian will have to make a decision, one way or another.

If successful, the mechanisms for setting up the Voice will begin, creating a network of Indigenous bodies from the grassroots to the Federal Parliament. By embedding in the Constitution, this Voice cannot be undone (as has happened with previous Indigenous advocacy bodies, removed easily by a government revoking legislation). The thinking behind the structure has been done in the past four years, so this will largely be a procedural phase.

If the decision is against an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, the status quo will continue, and the hopes of Indigenous people will be dealt a serious blow. The statistics are terrible: Indigenous people live shorter lives, 9 in 10 have no financial security, suffer more health problems, including mental health, are more likely to be subjected to violence and placed in custody. Government after government has openly admitted their defeat: their failure to change the situation, has been holding Indigenous lives in poverty and disadvantage for years. If Australians vote against the proposal, this decision is most likely to have international repercussions too, by impairing the country’s ability to negotiate on any rights agendas or tap into the ecological expertise of Indigenous people to answer the climate challenge.

How will Australians make their decision?

97% of Australians are non-Indigenous, which means that the power to decide the outcome of the upcoming referendum will be in the hands of the non-Indigenous population. The referendum will surely prompt them to think about the past, present, and future of the nation. It also invokes their own origin story: how did they come to be on this land and what they believe is owed to the people who were displaced from it.

We should not forget that the 97% are immigrants, whether first generation or descendants: convicts, slaves, war, religious or economic refugees, free settlers, migrants of choice. Waves of diverse people needing safety, harbour and a new life have come to this continent from other continents: Europe, Africa, and the Americas, to build new lives. The Voice referendum prompts us to examine our collective responsibility. We have taken all the rights, prospered, sheltered, and thrived in this country. With rights come responsibilities: this referendum asks us to decide what is our responsibility to this land and its people.

This is not a question many people have needed to consider until now. Few people know First Nations people personally or have had an opportunity to learn the deep richness of their culture, leaving a thin factual base to draw upon. In that gap of knowledge, some unhelpful and harmful tropes lie. The most pernicious of these is that the plight of Indigenous people is due to their choices, ironic when in 2023, a voice to be heard is the ask, demonstrating how little choice there really is.

I believe the best place to start is deeply personal and different for everyone: our individual origin stories. My origin story began four generations ago when my great grandparents were lured (coerced or forced) from the Pacific Islands (Vanuatu) to work in Australia, then treated in the most appalling way, similar to the treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. We were dispossessed of our ancestral homes, forced to work until dead, and prevented from sharing in prosperity, an underclass.

We are kin to the Torres Strait Islander people and our history naturally creates a deep feeling of kinship with Aboriginal people too. This is why, in the 1967 referendum mentioned before, it was one of our people, a Vanuatu descendant Faith Bandler, who led it to become the most successful referendum in Australian history, finally allowing Indigenous people to become part of the western accounting of the nation.

In my origin story, it has taken four generations for my family living on this Aboriginal land to move from slavery to indentured labour, to employment, to me being the first person in my extended family to complete university. My origin story teaches me that there is enough to go around, and a Voice is a small step in a direction where settlers finally, with humble open hearts, learn from the deep wisdom of the most successful people who have ever lived.

This is an easy vote for me: I follow my Elders and support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander aspirations as an expression of reciprocity, in thanks for the benefits I have enjoyed on Indigenous lands, seas, and waters.

I will vote yes.

The views expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme, the International Inequalities Institute, or the London School of Economics and Political Science.