There’s a lot of different views, many with some truths to it. I’ll try to give an answer but please take into account my answer is quite bias too.
The question, unlike the title of the article, the actual vote is on
whether the Constitution should be changed to include a recognition of the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
The problem is, how exactly or what exactly is an Aboriginal/Torres strait Islander voice. It’s not like Australia is voting to not give these groups voting rights like many articles seem to suggest.
It’s about what does this voice mean, do they have the power over government, can they stop laws, does it even help, whose even in it?
And there is no answer real answer, most answers I see are “it’s about creating a voice” or “we want to see Aus support before putting into action” etc (this may have changed later but that was the initial info I was getting), so you basically asked the Australian people to vote into changing the consitution on a potential something? Which for many feels like a permanent change or an unknown thing.
So all the no side had to do was be like “oh if you don’t know, then best to err on the safe side and vote no”. “Who knows what this could do”. “You can always wait and change it later”.
Imo the votes would have been very different if it instead just asked “would you like to see an Aboriginal / Torres strait Islander voice in government” and not touched the constitution. Or if they just made the voice/team/group and showed Aus how helpful it was before asking them to change the consitution.
And (I’m prob showing more bias here) if the yes side didn’t just call everyone racist who looked at the no vote (which I believe many are swing voters), it couldve provided enough time/listening to make changes to the argument that would change the voters. For example if they made it clear that it would just be used to support better decision making and help understanding etc. Though I can’t be too harsh when many of the no side arguments felt objectively like lies.
There’s a lot of different views, many with some truths to it. I’ll try to give an answer but please take into account my answer is quite bias too.
The question, unlike the title of the article, the actual vote is on
The problem is, how exactly or what exactly is an Aboriginal/Torres strait Islander voice. It’s not like Australia is voting to not give these groups voting rights like many articles seem to suggest.
It’s about what does this voice mean, do they have the power over government, can they stop laws, does it even help, whose even in it?
And there is no answer real answer, most answers I see are “it’s about creating a voice” or “we want to see Aus support before putting into action” etc (this may have changed later but that was the initial info I was getting), so you basically asked the Australian people to vote into changing the consitution on a potential something? Which for many feels like a permanent change or an unknown thing.
So all the no side had to do was be like “oh if you don’t know, then best to err on the safe side and vote no”. “Who knows what this could do”. “You can always wait and change it later”.
Imo the votes would have been very different if it instead just asked “would you like to see an Aboriginal / Torres strait Islander voice in government” and not touched the constitution. Or if they just made the voice/team/group and showed Aus how helpful it was before asking them to change the consitution.
And (I’m prob showing more bias here) if the yes side didn’t just call everyone racist who looked at the no vote (which I believe many are swing voters), it couldve provided enough time/listening to make changes to the argument that would change the voters. For example if they made it clear that it would just be used to support better decision making and help understanding etc. Though I can’t be too harsh when many of the no side arguments felt objectively like lies.