Now at its first anniversary point, the voice represents a tragic saga for Aboriginal Australians. The wounds are still fresh – and there is little sign of leadership to identify a way forward.
Paul Kelly
11 min read
October 11, 2024 – 10:30PM
The defeat of the October 14, 2023, referendum on the Indigenous voice – now at its first anniversary point – represents a tragic saga for Aboriginal Australians, highlights the need to learn the right lessons from the vote and work to repair the national social compact in relation to First Australians.
But the wounds are still fresh. Blame is being attributed in different directions. There is little sign of leadership to identify a way forward. Perhaps the hardest thing is to recognise the limits of the referendum’s defeat – it was not a repudiation of Indigenous peoples; it does not extinguish goodwill; and it cannot be seen as undermining the capacity of Australians to live together.
Much of the country seems confused or indifferent a year later. Bipartisanship remains a lost cause. The major disappointment has been the extraordinary absence of an initiative from the Albanese government, working with the Coalition and Indigenous leaders, to build a new political framework.
There is no excuse for the Albanese government. Professional politicians are expected to regroup after a setback. For Labor and the Yes case the reality is the need for a rethink and new direction. The Yes case was filled with ambition but it overreached, the upshot being a double defeat – no constitutional recognition and no voice. It was a misjudgment on a mammoth scale.
There were, in retrospect, alternative options. For instance, if the legislative route had been taken for the voice, it would have been authorised by the parliament and would be operating by now. And if the symbolic route had been taken for constitutional recognition, based on achievable Labor-Coalition bipartisanship, the referendum (without any voice) might have been carried by now.
The upshot could have been a transformed Indigenous landscape – but this was never an option given the Indigenous leaders insisted on their big gamble. They fiercely rejected symbolic constitutional recognition and rejected creating the voice by legislation even when they had the numbers in both houses to achieve that. Future historians will ponder on this conundrum.
Constitutional recognition and the voice were separate ideas. There was no iron logic saying they needed to be tied together. The mistake the Indigenous leaders made was their high ambition saying that constitutional recognition must come through the mechanism of the voice.
A new direction in Indigenous affairs is the inexorable logic from the referendum defeat. But where that new direction goes is undefined. Anthony Albanese’s retreat from implementing the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full has provoked hostility from many of the Yes campaign Indigenous leaders. The issue of the treaty is being left to the states. Federal Labor seems immobilised.
The leaders of the No campaign, senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Nyunggai Warren Mundine, see the referendum’s defeat as a pivotal opportunity for fresh policy, yet they are being thwarted by a paralysed power structure.
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Now at its first anniversary point, the voice represents a tragic saga for Aboriginal Australians. The wounds are still fresh – and there is little sign of leadership to identify a way forward.
Paul Kelly
11 min read
October 11, 2024 – 10:30PM
The defeat of the October 14, 2023, referendum on the Indigenous voice – now at its first anniversary point – represents a tragic saga for Aboriginal Australians, highlights the need to learn the right lessons from the vote and work to repair the national social compact in relation to First Australians.
But the wounds are still fresh. Blame is being attributed in different directions. There is little sign of leadership to identify a way forward. Perhaps the hardest thing is to recognise the limits of the referendum’s defeat – it was not a repudiation of Indigenous peoples; it does not extinguish goodwill; and it cannot be seen as undermining the capacity of Australians to live together.
Much of the country seems confused or indifferent a year later. Bipartisanship remains a lost cause. The major disappointment has been the extraordinary absence of an initiative from the Albanese government, working with the Coalition and Indigenous leaders, to build a new political framework.
There is no excuse for the Albanese government. Professional politicians are expected to regroup after a setback. For Labor and the Yes case the reality is the need for a rethink and new direction. The Yes case was filled with ambition but it overreached, the upshot being a double defeat – no constitutional recognition and no voice. It was a misjudgment on a mammoth scale.
There were, in retrospect, alternative options. For instance, if the legislative route had been taken for the voice, it would have been authorised by the parliament and would be operating by now. And if the symbolic route had been taken for constitutional recognition, based on achievable Labor-Coalition bipartisanship, the referendum (without any voice) might have been carried by now.
The upshot could have been a transformed Indigenous landscape – but this was never an option given the Indigenous leaders insisted on their big gamble. They fiercely rejected symbolic constitutional recognition and rejected creating the voice by legislation even when they had the numbers in both houses to achieve that. Future historians will ponder on this conundrum.
Constitutional recognition and the voice were separate ideas. There was no iron logic saying they needed to be tied together. The mistake the Indigenous leaders made was their high ambition saying that constitutional recognition must come through the mechanism of the voice.
A new direction in Indigenous affairs is the inexorable logic from the referendum defeat. But where that new direction goes is undefined. Anthony Albanese’s retreat from implementing the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full has provoked hostility from many of the Yes campaign Indigenous leaders. The issue of the treaty is being left to the states. Federal Labor seems immobilised.
The leaders of the No campaign, senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Nyunggai Warren Mundine, see the referendum’s defeat as a pivotal opportunity for fresh policy, yet they are being thwarted by a paralysed power structure.