The Voice referendum: Simple question tearing Australia apart
The main street of Derby, Western Australia, is bathed in red dust and a faint breeze is stirring the gum trees that dot the edge of this Outback town. Outside the small supermarket, locals gather to shop and exchange gossip in the predominantly Indigenous community of 3000 people. Dogs and small children play on the cracked pavement.
The weekend’s races are dissected, as is the Gibb River Road’s recovery after January’s flood. Crime is talked about – always – plus where the fish are biting. But there is one big topic that’s not on the agenda.
“Have you heard of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament?” I ask locals. “Have you heard of the Voice?” In a crowd of a dozen, only a handful know what I am talking about. When I try to explain it – a referendum to create a federal representative advisory body of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders – people’s eyes glaze over.
“That’s not for us, that’s white fulla business,” says one older man.
In most parts of Australia, certainly the wealthy and city-dominant east coast, the Voice has been the single biggest news story this year. Every day, television and radio broadcasts and newspapers feature multiple angles, and social media is flooded with advertisements from the Yes and No campaigns, as well as an avalanche of fearmongering, conspiracy theories, hate speech and fake news.
But in the bush, and in the remote communities of Indigenous Australia, it is as if the Voice doesn’t exist.
“I am not a supporter. To me, there are too many issues, too many questions left unanswered,” says James, an older Aboriginal man who doesn’t want his full name used because the issue has become so divisive. “It hasn’t been properly drawn up and mapped out and shown to us. If it gets through, we don’t know what it will look like.”
In Canberra, on the other side of the country, Indigenous leader, academic and Voice advocate Professor Marcia Langton says the journey to bring the Voice to a referendum has left her in tears many times.
Flanked by Indigenous leaders and Aboriginal ministers from Parliament, Langton held a crumpled tissue in one hand as she urged Australians to vote “yes” in the referendum, slated – but not yet called – for October.
Often described as a “warrior” and “intimidating”, Langton was showing a side few had ever seen.