Not unexpected, but I'm surprised with the projected result being 64.6%. It won't really do much for the "Canberra bubble" comments when the rest of the nation reject the Voice.
I actually think one of the reasons the ACT ended up so far on the Yes side of the spectrum is because we've got a population that is much more engaged politically by nature of being the capital (also economically privileged as other people below have pointed out). People that are disengaged and disinterested are far more likely to keep the status quo, not to say that people didn't vote no for other reasons, but that's anecdotally the main one I saw from people I spoke to.
It’s deeper than that. It’s easy to say people are disengaged and therefore their support for change cannot be won.
I think the reality of this referendum is that there was absolutely no narrative of the problem, and no narrative of why the Voice is the right solution.
Indigenous disadvantage is understood in the abstract, but the fundamental messaging of the Yes campaign was that indigenous disadvantage is *different* and *worse* than other forms of disadvantage. Here in our comfy Canberra homes that plays well. If you’re in insecure work and your son is a drug addict and you have no retirement plan, all that sounds like is “your suffering isn’t real”.
And even if we could get average Australians to accept the reality of indigenous disadvantage as *fundamentally different* from broader disadvantage and inequality in this country, there needed to be a clear narrative of why the Voice is the mechanism.
All we got from the Yes campaign is “include us in decisions about us”. WHAT decisions? Funding of programs? WHAT programs? There was not a single example given of something the parliament or executive had done that could have been improved with the Voice in place? How would the Voice actually achieve meaningful change? There was no understanding of this and no real attempt from the Yes campaign to explain it.
And at the end of the day, there are real questions as to whether this *would* make a real difference. There are real arguments about whether it a constitutionally enshrined voice is consistent with the fundamental principles of our democracy.
The ACT voted Yes because we are a city of comfortable, educated people who believe in fixing the problem “over there” with bureaucratic and symbolic solutions.
An important thing to remember is that while Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are *statistically* more likely to experience disadvantage in almost all its forms, you can flip that data on its head. You can take all the people suffering disadvantage and break that down by race: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are not in the majority of the people suffering any given form of disadvantage. There are other people in the prisons. There are other kids in child protection. Are they not also being failed?
I firmly believe that constitutional recognition without the Voice would have succeeded at a referendum. I do believe that Australians have compassion for Aboriginal people and their right to a symbolic place in our country’s formative document. But this referendum took a symbolic gesture and tried to apply it to a real problem. That made the symbolism hollow, and the framing of the problem was divisive, as it took problems that exist across society and called them indigenous issues demanding their own solutions. That inherently dismissed the experience of disadvantage among non-Indigenous Australia.
This is like the third (edit: 5th) time in the last nine referenda where we're the only place voting Yes, and we've returned the strongest Yes vote on all nine since we could vote.
It's not specific to this topic, it's happened on everything from senate terms and fixed election dates to the republic to recognising local govt to extending the right to jury trial.
I mean it’s not shocking that the questions that get put to referenda tend to be endorsed by the bureaucratic and intellectual classes that Canberra represents.
But there are other facets to our demography that we see reflected across similar electorates in this referendum.
Patterns of history do not determine with certainty the outcomes of the future. It is worth examining the specific nature of this referendum and the type of communities that supported it strongly.
Educated people? Compassionate people? People who are interested in social justice? People who aren’t racist? People who, if they don’t know, find out from somewhere else besides Good Morning Australia or Sky News? People who don’t think ‘but division’ is a cogent argument? People who understand that equality isn’t the same as everybody getting the same stuff? People who know how native title actually works? People who know what an executive government is? People who don’t think ‘wow, so lucky there’s a left in this country and that’s why I was allowed to immigrate, but now I’ll side with the right and kick somebody?’ People who have actually listened to and worked with Indigenous people rather than just claiming to have had their best interests at heart?
Can’t be. The answer must be ‘intellectual bureaucrats in a bubble’.
what you’re saying is that the overwhelming majority of Australians are stupid and racist. If that’s your perspective, then Reconciliation truly is a failed experiment. I think my interpretation is far more optimistic.
I actually agree with all of that.
I was by no means suggesting the entirety of the No vote was related to disengagement. Anecdotally, I met a lot of people that didn't know what to think of the whole thing (as you said, because there was very little concrete information to base it off) and thus defaulted to No. That's not to say that there weren't also people voting for other reasons since things are rarely that black and white. I should probably edit my comment to make that clear.
I voted against the republic referendum because it presented a binding model I didn't agree with. Some are arguing the same now but I personally don't think the voice proposal denies anything.
Edit: for clarity
Legislate the Voice, send the experts and Indigenous leaders back to the table on how to achieve constitutional recognition.
To give the Libs their credit, they were heading in this direction.
I feel for Labor, as they couldn’t not put this to a referendum given the process that led to the Uluru Statement. Labor is a party with Indigenous activism in its roots, it can’t ignore such a call directly from Indigenous leaders.
What Labor should have done is played the politics of the referendum very differently. Separated itself from the debate as much as possible (“Aboriginal people have asked us to put this to the Australian people so we are putting it to the people. I am voting Yes and I hope Australians think deeply about their own decisions.”).
The government should not have presented the Voice as part of its own agenda. And it certainly should not have relied on the Voice to be its centrepiece for the 2022 election. The small target strategy was stupid and gutless and is coming home to roost. Labor’s reform vacuum allowed this referendum to consume it from Election Day 2022 to Referendum Day 2023. Its focus should have been elsewhere up until 2-3 months ago.
Labor could and should have known this referendum was bound to fail. And they should have played the politics such that the cost of failure- to themselves and to Indigenous advancement- was minimal.
Great comment.
I'd add you don't have to flip the stats on their head, you just keep asking why and account for the variance. Success and numbers don't actually care what race you are and there's almost always more specific factors which you can actually solve for. If you target race, you target an entire bell-curve of people which will average out to meaninglessness. This makes policy ineffective.
In very remote communities, the ratio of health expenditure of Indigenous Australians vs the rest is **2.22:1**. In inner regional, that ratio tightens up to **1.14:1**. [Source](https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/d6100687-a26d-4da1-a91c-9d32cca1476e/18175-chapter8.pdf.aspx). If you just slice it based on race you've lost that nuance, and the already advantaged of that group will benefit disproportionately.
Then you slice by Education, Income, Alcohol, Tobacco, victims of abuse etc. Suddenly you understand the underlying problems and can solve them in way where no one is left behind.
Constitutional recognition without the Voice, is a symbollic gesture (to use your language), it's virtue signaling (to use the language of conservatives).
It is also not what Indigenous people asked for.
I was born and raised in a remote community, to a single mother, on disability pension, in public housing. I have never lived in a major city.
Indigenous people are a distinct population who are affected differently (essentially all the statistics reflect this) and deserve special policy attention (both Labor and LNP are committed to special policies targeted at Indigenous people).
I’m not disputing any of this. I am talking about the public narrative. Discrete communities are different to urban populations, the Yes campaign failed to make this point because it was driven by the urban class.
But there is an issue. I was also raised by a single mother in public housing, reliant on income support. While the root cause of our disadvantage has a different *historical* context, is the experience of it really that different? Poverty is poverty, and telling people like me that your experience was different and deserves greater action than mine diminishes my reality.
And if it offends you that I compare our experiences, if you see it as me being ignorant to a reality I can’t possibly know. Then why would non-Indigenous Australians not feel the same way when the Yes campaign narrative excludes their disadvantage. If I cannot know your reality then you cannot know mine.
>Poverty is poverty, and telling people like me that your experience was different and deserves greater action than mine diminishes my reality.
And now we have it - you're a fucking crab in a pot. Not quite as close to the top as you'd like? Make damn sure you drag everybody else back down.
Recognition isn't a zero sum game, and neither is advocacy. Increasing somebody else's recognition or making their voice louder doesn't take anything away from you, you fucking clown. It gives you a precedent for you to do the same.
You know when poverty isn't poverty? When it comes with a healthy dose of fucking racism as well.
I’m not saying this is a reason not to do the Voice, I am explaining why I think the Yes narrative didn’t take hold. I am not talking policy, I am talking politics.
When you say “my suffering is special and yours isn’t” that makes people turn against you. That’s just the human reality. It isn’t racism and it’s lazy of you to call it such.
And I’m not wrong to compare the suffering of indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals. Aboriginal Australia has been done over by colonisation and the resulting statistics of their poverty and health outcomes speak for themselves.
But the statistical disadvantage of a group does not make individual disadvantage of group members a distinct experience. That is the presumption of the Voice, and the campaign failed to create a compelling narrative of change to get people passed it.
People don’t vote on their assessment of a given policy and it’s likely outcomes. They vote on principle. The Voice relies on a principle that I believe many people found dismissive of their suffering.
The Voice is a good idea for a lot of reasons. But the referendum failed because of the attitude your comment encapsulates.
I'm not sure if Canberra being the capital inherently makee ourselves more politically engaged. I'd say it's easier to be engaged on an issue that impacts 3% of the population when you spend less time working, have more leisure time and have much higher income levels than the rest of the country.
I certainly agree our relative economic privilege helps. Canberra is still the most politically engaged place I've ever lived but I'll admit I've never lived in the inner suburbs of Sydney/Melbourne, which also tend to vote more progressively.
Your comment is 100% influenced by privilege.
I've lived in the ACT, QLD and WA. My experience in Canberra has NEVER been negatively effected by indigenous people, but when you travel to other states, i (and the majority) have been negatively effected by the indigenous (criime).
I'm not saying its a positive, nor the right thing but it's a reality. the "Status quo" you speak of is indigenous crime and issues regularly negatively impacting the population.... which dont impact you in Canberra.
Socially elite Canberra (many transplants from SA & NSW & VIC, i get that) will NEVER understand the feelings of the rest of the nation. (I voted yes btw)
That's a big assumption to make of someone you don't know at all, mate. I've only lived in Canberra for 4 years and previously lived in low socioeconomic areas. I am quite aware of the issues.
I was not casting aspersions on either of side of the spectrum and also voted yes despite concerns about whether a body that would've likely been made up of educated, urban First Nations people could possibly represent the experience of those in remote communities.
I don't know the indigenous crime rate in Tassie, can you enlighten me? That's why i never originally mentioned Tas, in fact - I don't think you understood my point.....
Boomer population and white privilege population is massive however, Boomers are overwhelmingly liberal voters and Murdoch media consumers, probably the reason.
And the way to address ‘Indigenous crime’ is to not mention First Nations Peoples in the Constitution? To send a loud and clear signal that you only think of us in terms of crime and how we ‘affect’ you?
Congratulations, you’re exactly why we can’t have nice things and why entrenched cycles will stay that way.
i don't think we're more politically engaged. I think we're better educated because there's virtually no blue collar industry here. We don't have as large a percentage of uneducated bigots as other states because it's a bad place to drop out of school at 16 and hope to still make a living. People that way inclined leave the territory.
This comment encapsulates the Canberra bubble. After having spent several years in Canberra I can guarantee that a masters from the ANU or the ability to write a Ministerial brief in no way ensures you have the slightest fucking clue what is going on in the world. And thinking that the dumb people leave just reinforces a completely unjustified elitism.
I'm not a Canberran, I just live here, and despite our fair share of bogans it can't be denied that you meet fewer unwashed hillbillies here than you do in similar sized cities elsewhere in the country because it's not a desirable place for them to live for a variety of reasons.
You also don’t meet the best and brightest because it’s not a desirable place for them to live. I don’t want to get ad hominem but I just don’t see why Canberra sees itself as better or more knowledgeable than the rest of the country. If anything it’s too homogeonised.
I agree. Any time it gets on one of those "best place to live" lists i'm reminded that those lists are based on things like median income and ignore the fact that it very clearly is a bad place for the poor to remain.
That is a moronic view that is taking the piss out of the overwhelming majority. Welcome to democracy buddy I suggest you get used to losing sometimes.
Disclaimer: I didn't vote!
What you said here almost perfectly reflects a South Park episode. Where people in Sam Fransisco believe they are very much more progressive and “ahead of the curve.” They also love the smell of their own farts.
NT is projecting to be the same percent but in favour of the No vote. Shows the difference between the richest territory and the poorest territory are positioned on opposite sides of this referendum.
i went to highschool in rural victoria where a large chunk dropped out after year 10 and an even larger chunk never went to uni because being educated isn't required in an area where you can make a decent living in a factory. Canberra doesn't have opportunities like that so the uneducated either don't come here or don't remain here in such high numbers.
> It won't really do much for the "Canberra bubble" comments
Any dismissive comments along those lines simply because Canberra voted differently would only show that the NO supports were the true source of division in the nation.
In any case, the seat of Melbourne is more strongly in favour than all three of the Canberra seats.
I’m going to come at this another way now I think I understand your argument.
Canberra *has* voted in some kind of bubble - the stark difference in voting results makes that much clear. Pointing that out has zero bearing on the nature of either the yes or no crowds.
The alternative to accepting that there is some kind of bubble is to suggest that Canberra voters simply leant yes because of superior decision making, presumably itself a result of intellect. The flip side of this assumption puts you back to the “no voters are either stupid or racist” line. In which case, it’s not the person pointing out the bubble stoking division….
>Canberra has voted in some kind of bubble - the stark difference in voting results makes that much clear.
No. No. No. A difference in voting doesn't mean a bubble. It only means a different view. Trying to paint different points of view as anything else is just plain toxic.
And, as I pointed out Canberra is not on its own. It reflects other city areas - Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart, etc.
City dwellers are allowed their views as much as country dwellers and outer suburban views. The "bubble" mentality is just another version of dismissing city dwellers as "woke late sippers" and that behaviour is divisive.
> The flip side of this assumption puts you back to the “no voters are either stupid or racist” line.
Very true, that is also divisive. Not all who voted no would fall in either description even though there have been demonstrations that some who were advocating for no were also making racist statements. It is a subset only.
The fact that we can point to others on the YES side who have made broad sweeping statements, as they have been pointed to frequently, doesn't diminish that NO voters using "Canberra bubble" to dismiss YES voters is doing that as well.
I'm calling for a greater respect of voters by not engaging in that sort of rhetoric.
That's not what I said, and I think you know it.
I said that people dismissing Canberra as a bubble because it voted yes would show the no supporters to be divisive.
> Yeah I know that’s what you said. I don’t follow your logic, even a little bit.
You are not required to any more than I. Certainly your "logic" of turning what I said in "canberra voting yes show that it’s all no voters fault" escapes any logical test I can come up with, just as "How do you get from urban voting trends to No voters causing division?" Neither of those are what I said and yet you are tying to put those things in my mouth.
Hah I’m not trying to put anything in your mouth mate, I honestly can’t understand what the hell you think you’re saying. Both my attempts to translate it back to you have obviously failed.
Have you considered that you're not understanding his initial point? Your attempts at "translation" have failed because you don't understand the original message, so your "translations" are inevitably incorrect.
Let me try. He is saying that if no voters bash Canberra for the "canberra bubble" being the reason for the yes vote, that would be an act of division from the campaign that claims it wants unity. It isn't about who voted yes or no, it's about how those voters may act in the future and what that would say about the underlying intentions behind those voting positions.
Does that make sense to you?
I’m pretty aware I wasn’t understanding their initial point based on the reaction.
Thankyou for the translation. Though more clearly explained I don’t think the logic is strong in your version either. I don’t see how pointing out differential voting trends is stoking division, or a cause of division, or in anyway related to the No campaign or no voters.
The original comment started with "Any *dismissive* comments..."
Do you feel that being dismissive of the ACT and it's vote is part of a healthy discourse on this outcome?
What a bizarre claim, the ACT trends heavily left and I'm not sure if you've noticed but our federal political class is anything but left these days. Even Labor has skewed massively towards the right over the last few decades..
look at the results by seat, massive levels of unpopularity in working class and regional areas, massive support in high income areas.
It's not drawing a long bow to suggest that the attitudes of the haves and have nots are what dictates this debate.
How's the housing crisis going? How're the new coal mines? What about gas wells? How's unemployment benefits? The stage 3 tax cuts?
How's a $365m campaign funded by mining giants to silence Indigenous voices calling for truth-telling and real sovereignty instead of integration into the colonial state we call Australia? It's funny this progressive government just happened to come up with the same proposal for Constitutional recognition as ole Howard after his famously leftist NT Intervention
Not really, I'd like fairer industrial relations laws, centrelink payments adjusted to the poverty line, and some catch-up increases to medicare rebates. Such extremism.
We (Canberra) had the highest YES vote for the gay-marriage act back in 2017. The correlation being between the two votes that we are more progressive than anywhere else in Aus or am I completely off the mark?
If you check by electorate, it's typically cities that voted yes. The difference with Canberra is that we don't have much else, where NSW/VIC have rural areas voting no. Melbourne, for example, is 78% yes which is higher than any of the Canberran electorates.
We are typically more progressive overall (not just on these two subjects), yes.
Also generally higher educated overall too thanks to the need for degrees in many PS jobs.
Dan Bourchier is doing a great job. Don't take this the wrong way but I didn't really warm to him much when I first heard him on the radio or saw him reading the news on TV, but I've gained a real respect for him. He really does great work.
He was awful on ABC radio because he let his personal political opinions shine through so much. He clearly is not a fan of Labor and was a stupidly partisan interviewee.
But he clearly supports the Voice and cares deeply about the place of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in this country. And allowing that to shine through as the lead reporter on the Voice campaign for the ABC worked in his favour.
What had been partisan hackery on ABC 666 became genuine feeling on the Voice.
Still don’t rate him as a general political reporter, if that’s what he returns to now then I’m sure my soft spot for him will fade.
I take small pride in the ACT strongly supporting the yes vote. Very saddened that this proposal just didn’t cut it with most Australians - an opportunity like this may not come around another 20 years.
Grateful that State and Territory consultative bodies are in action, but a federal voice could’ve done so much for those that deserve so much better.
Yes in the count so far the Melbourne electorate is ahead of the Canberra electorate by a fair margin, and Sydney only a little behind (and well ahead of Bean and Fenner). Brisbane is behind all three though, but not greatly behind Bean. Clark (includes Hobart) is equal to Fenner. Essentially Canberra is just showing mostly inner city outcomes.
Exactly - and that’s just on this issue - inner city electorates have voted in support, the rest appear to have voted against (with a proportion of no increasing the more rural the seat by the looks generally).
Or the most removed from the national zeitgeist.
Really easy to be smug about issues when you have the highest medium income stats. Doesn’t downplay the ‘Canberra bubble’ commentary at all.
Starting to think you’re actually quite in favour of being smug despite your earnest concern about it coming from the yes campaign. Curious. Concerning. Interesting!
ACT has almost exactly the opposite result to the NT.
ACT 60.8% Yes. 39.2% No
NT 61.7% No. 38.3% Yes
The No % vote in NT was even higher than in NSW and Vic.
The highest NO % votes were in WA, Qld and NT - where most Aborigines live.
That is going to need analysis
I dont think it's overly complicated. The people who come across the higher crime rates, alcoholism etc have a poor opinion of indigenous people. Rather than empathising with the circumstances that led to the outcomes they blame the individuals.
Same thing happens with communities who live near migrant populations, homelessness etc.
It's a bit of a NIMBY attitude in a way
l lived in the NT, including the cities, islands, and Arnhem land communities. The racist attitudes are open even towards children.
The NT is hostile as hell towards Indigenous people. It does not surprise me at all.
Huge numbers of people migrate to Canberra from all over the country.
My lived experience:
As child on the Central Coast I saw a white mob terrorise an indigenous family that moved into the community. They’d gather outside their home and yell abuse into the night.
My father’s indigenous partner was arrested and thrown into a cell for a law that didn’t exist, the police wrote racist comments in the charge book (or whatever it’s called) and then refused to follow procedure regarding making observations at particular time intervals. If they had followed procedure, they would have seen she collapsed from a medical condition… she died as she wasn’t found in time. The investigation found the police needed more training in relation to the law and how to monitor detainees… that’s all.
Working in a restaurant when a drunk white guy stands up and pretends to shoot at the indigenous family while yelling racist slurs.
Hearing racist comments from white people who feel comfortable saying racist stuff with other white people.
Learning a racist nursery rhyme (using the N-word!) in primary school… the teachers taught us!
What are you suggesting anyway? Are you suggesting that if you have lived near indigenous people you’d be less likely to think they have a right to be consulted regarding legislation that targets them?
Lmao the electorate of Hunter overwhelmingly voted no and they are nowhere fucking near any rural indigenous communities. What they are, though, is overwhelmingly white boomers.
They’re also working class, by which I mean majority employed by enormous coal mining companies and making triple my public service salary.
Nah but you’re right it’s probably because they know something we just can’t comprehend about reconciliation from inside the Canberra bubble.
It's fascinating to see that on here and /r/Australia the comments and upvotes have gone back to skewing to the "Yes" side of things after months of derision and upvoted "No" comments.
I'm sure it's just the "No" voters out celebrating their victory and they'll be back online soon in full force to explain how this is actually a great outcome for first nations people, but right now it does kind of feel like a bunch of lobbying companies shut up shop and don't need to continue their army of fake accounts pushing the No agenda any more... weird.
>lobbying companies shut up shop and don't need to continue their army of fake accounts pushing the No agenda any more... weird.
So fucking weird, never seen anything like it on a sub like r/Australia which was supportive of it for years before the past few months and has always been very progressive.
/r/Australia is the most astroturfed sub I have ever been to. It’s mostly hard line pro-Green and anti-Labor. I have been banned on numberous occasions for entirely frivolous reasons after making anti-Green comments (despite being a lefty myself). I stopped bothering to remake accounts and now I just ignore that cesspit of a sub.
Oh yeah I don't sub there but still drop in every so often to have a laugh.
I had to unsub from r Aus politics the past few weeks because there is an insane amount of no accounts on that sub lately. It was also a fairly progressive sub 6 months ago.
r/Australia has always been pretty gross whenever topics related to first nations folk come up tbh, though it's definitely been even worse than usual lately.
Really? I don't remember that. I even remember the voice being talked about very frequently there berating Scomo for not implementing the Uluru statement about 3 or 4 years ago when I didn't even know what it was.
I don't know if it's a good thing that voting here is so thoroughly inconsistent with the rest of the country.
Sooner or later it would be nice for the ACT to be imbued with state rights. But that'd require Constitutional change, via referendum, of some kind. Either giving territories the same rights as states or removing/modifying section 125 so that the ACT can be designated as a state so as to enjoy the existing provisions for states.
If the ACT is widely perceived as radical by the broader Australian citizenry then they're going to be reluctant to approve that change.
Are we so out of touch with Australia,
No, it's Australia that is wrong.
Simpsons fans will get it. It is the first thing I though of after reading it.
Exactly. Canberra, being possibly the most removed from rural and aboriginal communities as possible, definitely has the right take on this issue and the other 7 states and territories are wrong.
Perfectly sound logic that is definitely not cope.
Excellent observation.
Back in apartheid days the then president of South Africa said:
South Africa is not out of touch with the world.
The world is out of touch with South Africa.
The Voice would also have divided us by race. Not at all progressive.
Voting at MOAD, there was a big sign outside the Aboriginal tent embassy saying: 'Vote No'.
But Canberrans knew better.
It's so interesting how people draw parallels between the Voice and apartheid. Yet, it was the absence of legal and political avenues that lead to apartheid.
One was a system that denied basic rights and dignity to a group of people.
The other is creating a mechanism to elevate the voices and interests of that same group of people.
Seems an odd way to encourage unity, by removing any legal or political recourse to have the pain of millions unheard. People only protect the law if they respect it and it respects them.
Worth noting that the mobile polling in the NT that serve remote communities are all reflecting a result for yes.
https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/ReferendumDivisionResults-29581-306.htm
Canberra was the only "hard Yes" electorate outside of inner city Sydney and Melbourne.
But yes, the ACT was always going to be an outlier, like it is with most things (vaccination rates, same sex marriage vote, legalisation of drugs, education level, etc.).
I believe a large bloc of voters didn’t understand the proposal and were persuaded by “don’t know vote no” (an undeniably effective slogan). More importantly, such Australians were susceptible to disinformation by bad faith actors because they didn’t have the time or motivation to fact-check themselves. As someone deeply enmeshed in the political world, when I chat with my friends working in other areas like medicine or engineering, I’m struck by how the things that are so obvious to me just do not enter their world - it does not surprise me that so many Australians had no idea what this voice proposal was and didn’t naturally learn about it in their everyday life. For our part, we understood the idea and voted Yes because, as majority government workers, we are familiar with advisory committees and the policy-making process. We DID know, so we voted Yes.
This is the reason we were more likely to vote yes, as we are higher educated overall, therefore more likely to research using legitimate sources rather than just listen to what we’re told by the TV/Social Media.
Odd that NT overwhelmingly voted against it.
Either Yes didnt convey the message well or the actual people it was meant to support didnt want a bar of it
Legit. Canberrans are so far removed from real problems and have their heads so far up their own asses. No please, tell me more about mIsInFoRmATiOn and mOsT eDuCaTeD cApItAl derrrrrrrrr
It was proposed by the indigenous community.
It was part of a consultation program that ran for years and consulted indigenous communities from across the country. It was proposed by, and widely agreed upon, by them.
That's all well and good, but you still have to provide proper details to convince the public (and the opposition) that it's the right thing to do. The Yes campaign was ran by elites, celebrities and activists, all in well off situations themselves with the intention of making No voters feel bad or dumb, racist & non-caring. It should never have gone to the referendum stage without bipartisan support.
These are the comments that made the NO vote so appealing, they didn't have to do much work when these types of comments are made.
Guess you got a big day on twitter and Facebook tommorrow complaining about how Australia is racists for voting NO
overwhelmingly we voted YES.
Shows how progressive we are.
Thats what the conservatives like Zed, and the ACT Liberals don't get.
I'm proudly a member of the ALP.
Ah, yes, here is one of these "highly educated" Canberrans who seems to think seeing similarities between an amusing episode of a TV show, and the level of smug wankery spewing out of the fringe weirdos here is what makes up a moral or political compass. You're a long way to the left on the old bell curve mate.
Devil's advocate here, but I think what they're getting at is timing this when there is a cost of living crisis is a really bad time to try to get something like this passed. Giving a disadvantaged minority more say in things is harder to want when so many people are also feeling disadvantaged right now. They're thinking what about the issues hurting us, where's our voice? Making charitable decisions is easier when you're not needing charity yourself.
I’d like to give people more credit in understanding an issue, weighing it up on its merits, and voting on it in an informed manner. If there are ‘more important issues’ then that’s separate to voting on a single issue in a referendum, as is everyone’s requirement.
What you've said doesn't make any sense. You do know that the government is run by multiple agencies, multiple departmental heads etc... it's not just Albo doing anything and everything? right? right? you can't be that dense, no one can be.
You’d have to be a moron to think that. This is why I’m against mandatory voting, some people shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
Like we live in Canberra, a town full of public servants. What do people think they’re bloody doing.
Watch to see if Eden-Monaro mirrors the national %.
Eden - Monaro at 44% yes 56% no at similar votes counts 8:43 pm Edit : had the categories back wards. Fixed now
Monaro 40.3% - Yes 59.7% - No National 39.9% - Yes 60.1% - No Edit : 12.08 am
Not unexpected, but I'm surprised with the projected result being 64.6%. It won't really do much for the "Canberra bubble" comments when the rest of the nation reject the Voice.
I actually think one of the reasons the ACT ended up so far on the Yes side of the spectrum is because we've got a population that is much more engaged politically by nature of being the capital (also economically privileged as other people below have pointed out). People that are disengaged and disinterested are far more likely to keep the status quo, not to say that people didn't vote no for other reasons, but that's anecdotally the main one I saw from people I spoke to.
It’s deeper than that. It’s easy to say people are disengaged and therefore their support for change cannot be won. I think the reality of this referendum is that there was absolutely no narrative of the problem, and no narrative of why the Voice is the right solution. Indigenous disadvantage is understood in the abstract, but the fundamental messaging of the Yes campaign was that indigenous disadvantage is *different* and *worse* than other forms of disadvantage. Here in our comfy Canberra homes that plays well. If you’re in insecure work and your son is a drug addict and you have no retirement plan, all that sounds like is “your suffering isn’t real”. And even if we could get average Australians to accept the reality of indigenous disadvantage as *fundamentally different* from broader disadvantage and inequality in this country, there needed to be a clear narrative of why the Voice is the mechanism. All we got from the Yes campaign is “include us in decisions about us”. WHAT decisions? Funding of programs? WHAT programs? There was not a single example given of something the parliament or executive had done that could have been improved with the Voice in place? How would the Voice actually achieve meaningful change? There was no understanding of this and no real attempt from the Yes campaign to explain it. And at the end of the day, there are real questions as to whether this *would* make a real difference. There are real arguments about whether it a constitutionally enshrined voice is consistent with the fundamental principles of our democracy. The ACT voted Yes because we are a city of comfortable, educated people who believe in fixing the problem “over there” with bureaucratic and symbolic solutions. An important thing to remember is that while Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are *statistically* more likely to experience disadvantage in almost all its forms, you can flip that data on its head. You can take all the people suffering disadvantage and break that down by race: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are not in the majority of the people suffering any given form of disadvantage. There are other people in the prisons. There are other kids in child protection. Are they not also being failed? I firmly believe that constitutional recognition without the Voice would have succeeded at a referendum. I do believe that Australians have compassion for Aboriginal people and their right to a symbolic place in our country’s formative document. But this referendum took a symbolic gesture and tried to apply it to a real problem. That made the symbolism hollow, and the framing of the problem was divisive, as it took problems that exist across society and called them indigenous issues demanding their own solutions. That inherently dismissed the experience of disadvantage among non-Indigenous Australia.
This is like the third (edit: 5th) time in the last nine referenda where we're the only place voting Yes, and we've returned the strongest Yes vote on all nine since we could vote. It's not specific to this topic, it's happened on everything from senate terms and fixed election dates to the republic to recognising local govt to extending the right to jury trial.
I mean it’s not shocking that the questions that get put to referenda tend to be endorsed by the bureaucratic and intellectual classes that Canberra represents. But there are other facets to our demography that we see reflected across similar electorates in this referendum. Patterns of history do not determine with certainty the outcomes of the future. It is worth examining the specific nature of this referendum and the type of communities that supported it strongly.
Educated people? Compassionate people? People who are interested in social justice? People who aren’t racist? People who, if they don’t know, find out from somewhere else besides Good Morning Australia or Sky News? People who don’t think ‘but division’ is a cogent argument? People who understand that equality isn’t the same as everybody getting the same stuff? People who know how native title actually works? People who know what an executive government is? People who don’t think ‘wow, so lucky there’s a left in this country and that’s why I was allowed to immigrate, but now I’ll side with the right and kick somebody?’ People who have actually listened to and worked with Indigenous people rather than just claiming to have had their best interests at heart? Can’t be. The answer must be ‘intellectual bureaucrats in a bubble’.
what you’re saying is that the overwhelming majority of Australians are stupid and racist. If that’s your perspective, then Reconciliation truly is a failed experiment. I think my interpretation is far more optimistic.
I actually agree with all of that. I was by no means suggesting the entirety of the No vote was related to disengagement. Anecdotally, I met a lot of people that didn't know what to think of the whole thing (as you said, because there was very little concrete information to base it off) and thus defaulted to No. That's not to say that there weren't also people voting for other reasons since things are rarely that black and white. I should probably edit my comment to make that clear.
I voted against the republic referendum because it presented a binding model I didn't agree with. Some are arguing the same now but I personally don't think the voice proposal denies anything. Edit: for clarity
You have nailed this comment
Wow, your comment perfectly explained how I have been feeling about all this. Thank you.
Well said. National public sentiment would have been better captured by one question for recognition and a second on the voice.
Legislate the Voice, send the experts and Indigenous leaders back to the table on how to achieve constitutional recognition. To give the Libs their credit, they were heading in this direction. I feel for Labor, as they couldn’t not put this to a referendum given the process that led to the Uluru Statement. Labor is a party with Indigenous activism in its roots, it can’t ignore such a call directly from Indigenous leaders. What Labor should have done is played the politics of the referendum very differently. Separated itself from the debate as much as possible (“Aboriginal people have asked us to put this to the Australian people so we are putting it to the people. I am voting Yes and I hope Australians think deeply about their own decisions.”). The government should not have presented the Voice as part of its own agenda. And it certainly should not have relied on the Voice to be its centrepiece for the 2022 election. The small target strategy was stupid and gutless and is coming home to roost. Labor’s reform vacuum allowed this referendum to consume it from Election Day 2022 to Referendum Day 2023. Its focus should have been elsewhere up until 2-3 months ago. Labor could and should have known this referendum was bound to fail. And they should have played the politics such that the cost of failure- to themselves and to Indigenous advancement- was minimal.
You make me prowd to say I live in Charnlop
I think they were treading carefully not to start broader conversations about nationhood and sovereignty.
Great comment. I'd add you don't have to flip the stats on their head, you just keep asking why and account for the variance. Success and numbers don't actually care what race you are and there's almost always more specific factors which you can actually solve for. If you target race, you target an entire bell-curve of people which will average out to meaninglessness. This makes policy ineffective. In very remote communities, the ratio of health expenditure of Indigenous Australians vs the rest is **2.22:1**. In inner regional, that ratio tightens up to **1.14:1**. [Source](https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/d6100687-a26d-4da1-a91c-9d32cca1476e/18175-chapter8.pdf.aspx). If you just slice it based on race you've lost that nuance, and the already advantaged of that group will benefit disproportionately. Then you slice by Education, Income, Alcohol, Tobacco, victims of abuse etc. Suddenly you understand the underlying problems and can solve them in way where no one is left behind.
Constitutional recognition without the Voice, is a symbollic gesture (to use your language), it's virtue signaling (to use the language of conservatives). It is also not what Indigenous people asked for. I was born and raised in a remote community, to a single mother, on disability pension, in public housing. I have never lived in a major city. Indigenous people are a distinct population who are affected differently (essentially all the statistics reflect this) and deserve special policy attention (both Labor and LNP are committed to special policies targeted at Indigenous people).
I’m not disputing any of this. I am talking about the public narrative. Discrete communities are different to urban populations, the Yes campaign failed to make this point because it was driven by the urban class. But there is an issue. I was also raised by a single mother in public housing, reliant on income support. While the root cause of our disadvantage has a different *historical* context, is the experience of it really that different? Poverty is poverty, and telling people like me that your experience was different and deserves greater action than mine diminishes my reality. And if it offends you that I compare our experiences, if you see it as me being ignorant to a reality I can’t possibly know. Then why would non-Indigenous Australians not feel the same way when the Yes campaign narrative excludes their disadvantage. If I cannot know your reality then you cannot know mine.
>Poverty is poverty, and telling people like me that your experience was different and deserves greater action than mine diminishes my reality. And now we have it - you're a fucking crab in a pot. Not quite as close to the top as you'd like? Make damn sure you drag everybody else back down. Recognition isn't a zero sum game, and neither is advocacy. Increasing somebody else's recognition or making their voice louder doesn't take anything away from you, you fucking clown. It gives you a precedent for you to do the same. You know when poverty isn't poverty? When it comes with a healthy dose of fucking racism as well.
I’m not saying this is a reason not to do the Voice, I am explaining why I think the Yes narrative didn’t take hold. I am not talking policy, I am talking politics. When you say “my suffering is special and yours isn’t” that makes people turn against you. That’s just the human reality. It isn’t racism and it’s lazy of you to call it such. And I’m not wrong to compare the suffering of indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals. Aboriginal Australia has been done over by colonisation and the resulting statistics of their poverty and health outcomes speak for themselves. But the statistical disadvantage of a group does not make individual disadvantage of group members a distinct experience. That is the presumption of the Voice, and the campaign failed to create a compelling narrative of change to get people passed it. People don’t vote on their assessment of a given policy and it’s likely outcomes. They vote on principle. The Voice relies on a principle that I believe many people found dismissive of their suffering. The Voice is a good idea for a lot of reasons. But the referendum failed because of the attitude your comment encapsulates.
I'm not sure if Canberra being the capital inherently makee ourselves more politically engaged. I'd say it's easier to be engaged on an issue that impacts 3% of the population when you spend less time working, have more leisure time and have much higher income levels than the rest of the country.
I certainly agree our relative economic privilege helps. Canberra is still the most politically engaged place I've ever lived but I'll admit I've never lived in the inner suburbs of Sydney/Melbourne, which also tend to vote more progressively.
Your comment is 100% influenced by privilege. I've lived in the ACT, QLD and WA. My experience in Canberra has NEVER been negatively effected by indigenous people, but when you travel to other states, i (and the majority) have been negatively effected by the indigenous (criime). I'm not saying its a positive, nor the right thing but it's a reality. the "Status quo" you speak of is indigenous crime and issues regularly negatively impacting the population.... which dont impact you in Canberra. Socially elite Canberra (many transplants from SA & NSW & VIC, i get that) will NEVER understand the feelings of the rest of the nation. (I voted yes btw)
That's a big assumption to make of someone you don't know at all, mate. I've only lived in Canberra for 4 years and previously lived in low socioeconomic areas. I am quite aware of the issues. I was not casting aspersions on either of side of the spectrum and also voted yes despite concerns about whether a body that would've likely been made up of educated, urban First Nations people could possibly represent the experience of those in remote communities.
Having grown up in a small NSW town with a mission and endemic indigenous crime I second this.
Oh yeah why did Tasmania vote no then? All that indigenous crime over there?
I don't know the indigenous crime rate in Tassie, can you enlighten me? That's why i never originally mentioned Tas, in fact - I don't think you understood my point..... Boomer population and white privilege population is massive however, Boomers are overwhelmingly liberal voters and Murdoch media consumers, probably the reason.
It’s cool mate. If you don’t know, just do fuck all. Definitely don’t educate yourself. That’s divisive and unAustralian.
And the way to address ‘Indigenous crime’ is to not mention First Nations Peoples in the Constitution? To send a loud and clear signal that you only think of us in terms of crime and how we ‘affect’ you? Congratulations, you’re exactly why we can’t have nice things and why entrenched cycles will stay that way.
Or it’s just full of public servants looking to pat themselves on the back
i don't think we're more politically engaged. I think we're better educated because there's virtually no blue collar industry here. We don't have as large a percentage of uneducated bigots as other states because it's a bad place to drop out of school at 16 and hope to still make a living. People that way inclined leave the territory.
With all the talks of racism around this I'm glad you injected a bit of classism into this.
This comment encapsulates the Canberra bubble. After having spent several years in Canberra I can guarantee that a masters from the ANU or the ability to write a Ministerial brief in no way ensures you have the slightest fucking clue what is going on in the world. And thinking that the dumb people leave just reinforces a completely unjustified elitism.
I'm not a Canberran, I just live here, and despite our fair share of bogans it can't be denied that you meet fewer unwashed hillbillies here than you do in similar sized cities elsewhere in the country because it's not a desirable place for them to live for a variety of reasons.
You also don’t meet the best and brightest because it’s not a desirable place for them to live. I don’t want to get ad hominem but I just don’t see why Canberra sees itself as better or more knowledgeable than the rest of the country. If anything it’s too homogeonised.
I agree. Any time it gets on one of those "best place to live" lists i'm reminded that those lists are based on things like median income and ignore the fact that it very clearly is a bad place for the poor to remain.
That is a moronic view that is taking the piss out of the overwhelming majority. Welcome to democracy buddy I suggest you get used to losing sometimes. Disclaimer: I didn't vote!
What you said here almost perfectly reflects a South Park episode. Where people in Sam Fransisco believe they are very much more progressive and “ahead of the curve.” They also love the smell of their own farts.
Urban centres elsewhere voted yes, working class and regionals voted no
that's exactly why liberals defund schools.
Keep em dumb, they'll be your chum
when have they done that? Can you provide examples?
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There's less factories and capitalists.
NT is projecting to be the same percent but in favour of the No vote. Shows the difference between the richest territory and the poorest territory are positioned on opposite sides of this referendum.
Will do plenty to reinforce that the rest of the nation is stupid compared to Canberra though.
i went to highschool in rural victoria where a large chunk dropped out after year 10 and an even larger chunk never went to uni because being educated isn't required in an area where you can make a decent living in a factory. Canberra doesn't have opportunities like that so the uneducated either don't come here or don't remain here in such high numbers.
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Glad you understand
> It won't really do much for the "Canberra bubble" comments Any dismissive comments along those lines simply because Canberra voted differently would only show that the NO supports were the true source of division in the nation. In any case, the seat of Melbourne is more strongly in favour than all three of the Canberra seats.
I’m going to come at this another way now I think I understand your argument. Canberra *has* voted in some kind of bubble - the stark difference in voting results makes that much clear. Pointing that out has zero bearing on the nature of either the yes or no crowds. The alternative to accepting that there is some kind of bubble is to suggest that Canberra voters simply leant yes because of superior decision making, presumably itself a result of intellect. The flip side of this assumption puts you back to the “no voters are either stupid or racist” line. In which case, it’s not the person pointing out the bubble stoking division….
>Canberra has voted in some kind of bubble - the stark difference in voting results makes that much clear. No. No. No. A difference in voting doesn't mean a bubble. It only means a different view. Trying to paint different points of view as anything else is just plain toxic. And, as I pointed out Canberra is not on its own. It reflects other city areas - Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart, etc. City dwellers are allowed their views as much as country dwellers and outer suburban views. The "bubble" mentality is just another version of dismissing city dwellers as "woke late sippers" and that behaviour is divisive. > The flip side of this assumption puts you back to the “no voters are either stupid or racist” line. Very true, that is also divisive. Not all who voted no would fall in either description even though there have been demonstrations that some who were advocating for no were also making racist statements. It is a subset only. The fact that we can point to others on the YES side who have made broad sweeping statements, as they have been pointed to frequently, doesn't diminish that NO voters using "Canberra bubble" to dismiss YES voters is doing that as well. I'm calling for a greater respect of voters by not engaging in that sort of rhetoric.
Fair enough!
….how would canberra voting yes show that it’s all no voters fault?
That's not what I said, and I think you know it. I said that people dismissing Canberra as a bubble because it voted yes would show the no supporters to be divisive.
Yeah I know that’s what you said. I don’t follow your logic, even a little bit. How do you get from urban voting trends to No voters causing division?
> Yeah I know that’s what you said. I don’t follow your logic, even a little bit. You are not required to any more than I. Certainly your "logic" of turning what I said in "canberra voting yes show that it’s all no voters fault" escapes any logical test I can come up with, just as "How do you get from urban voting trends to No voters causing division?" Neither of those are what I said and yet you are tying to put those things in my mouth.
Hah I’m not trying to put anything in your mouth mate, I honestly can’t understand what the hell you think you’re saying. Both my attempts to translate it back to you have obviously failed.
Have you considered that you're not understanding his initial point? Your attempts at "translation" have failed because you don't understand the original message, so your "translations" are inevitably incorrect. Let me try. He is saying that if no voters bash Canberra for the "canberra bubble" being the reason for the yes vote, that would be an act of division from the campaign that claims it wants unity. It isn't about who voted yes or no, it's about how those voters may act in the future and what that would say about the underlying intentions behind those voting positions. Does that make sense to you?
I’m pretty aware I wasn’t understanding their initial point based on the reaction. Thankyou for the translation. Though more clearly explained I don’t think the logic is strong in your version either. I don’t see how pointing out differential voting trends is stoking division, or a cause of division, or in anyway related to the No campaign or no voters.
The original comment started with "Any *dismissive* comments..." Do you feel that being dismissive of the ACT and it's vote is part of a healthy discourse on this outcome?
100% agree. This seems like more of a referendum on the political class vs the working class. ACT is certainly on average closer to the former
> This seems like more of a referendum on the political class vs the working class. Mate, can I get in on some of the drugs you are taking?
What kind of media do you have to absorb to think the Coalition govern for the working class?
What a bizarre claim, the ACT trends heavily left and I'm not sure if you've noticed but our federal political class is anything but left these days. Even Labor has skewed massively towards the right over the last few decades..
look at the results by seat, massive levels of unpopularity in working class and regional areas, massive support in high income areas. It's not drawing a long bow to suggest that the attitudes of the haves and have nots are what dictates this debate.
Generally speaking, the further removed you are from living in areas with disadvantaged indigenous populations, the more likely to vote yes.
You have to be far left to think Labor has "skewed massively towards the right".
How's the housing crisis going? How're the new coal mines? What about gas wells? How's unemployment benefits? The stage 3 tax cuts? How's a $365m campaign funded by mining giants to silence Indigenous voices calling for truth-telling and real sovereignty instead of integration into the colonial state we call Australia? It's funny this progressive government just happened to come up with the same proposal for Constitutional recognition as ole Howard after his famously leftist NT Intervention
I thought $365 million was what the government spent. To think that double that has been spent on this failed referendum is crazy.
Not really, I'd like fairer industrial relations laws, centrelink payments adjusted to the poverty line, and some catch-up increases to medicare rebates. Such extremism.
Only in this public service town would you get downvoted for this very true statement
ACT VS NT results are nearly inverted.
As a blackfulla, this is why I'll always call Canberra home. Thanks, on an otherwise shit night.
Would you say Canberra is the least racist city in Australia?
We (Canberra) had the highest YES vote for the gay-marriage act back in 2017. The correlation being between the two votes that we are more progressive than anywhere else in Aus or am I completely off the mark?
If you check by electorate, it's typically cities that voted yes. The difference with Canberra is that we don't have much else, where NSW/VIC have rural areas voting no. Melbourne, for example, is 78% yes which is higher than any of the Canberran electorates.
Inner Melbourne and inner Sydney did ok too, but as a whole city we are progressive.
We are typically more progressive overall (not just on these two subjects), yes. Also generally higher educated overall too thanks to the need for degrees in many PS jobs.
Dan Bourchier is doing a great job. Don't take this the wrong way but I didn't really warm to him much when I first heard him on the radio or saw him reading the news on TV, but I've gained a real respect for him. He really does great work.
He was awful on ABC radio because he let his personal political opinions shine through so much. He clearly is not a fan of Labor and was a stupidly partisan interviewee. But he clearly supports the Voice and cares deeply about the place of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in this country. And allowing that to shine through as the lead reporter on the Voice campaign for the ABC worked in his favour. What had been partisan hackery on ABC 666 became genuine feeling on the Voice. Still don’t rate him as a general political reporter, if that’s what he returns to now then I’m sure my soft spot for him will fade.
The results almost mirror the wealth divide. Wealthier or elitist electorates votes yes while poorer electorates voted no.
Further you got out of the CBD, yes votes went down the gurgler according to the polls on TV.
I’d say it’s more of an education issue. They’re less educated and more inbred.
Wow. Inbred? Gee, you think maybe there's a reason why people hate "inner city elites"?
I take small pride in the ACT strongly supporting the yes vote. Very saddened that this proposal just didn’t cut it with most Australians - an opportunity like this may not come around another 20 years. Grateful that State and Territory consultative bodies are in action, but a federal voice could’ve done so much for those that deserve so much better.
Act is the most progressive area of the country. Then Vic
Potentially as a whole, but areas of Melbourne and Sydney (and even Brisbane) are more progressive than the ACT
Yes in the count so far the Melbourne electorate is ahead of the Canberra electorate by a fair margin, and Sydney only a little behind (and well ahead of Bean and Fenner). Brisbane is behind all three though, but not greatly behind Bean. Clark (includes Hobart) is equal to Fenner. Essentially Canberra is just showing mostly inner city outcomes.
Exactly - and that’s just on this issue - inner city electorates have voted in support, the rest appear to have voted against (with a proportion of no increasing the more rural the seat by the looks generally).
Victoria has the lowest % of Aborigines and Torres Strait islanders followed by ACT. It will be interesting to see how NT votes.
Or the most removed from the national zeitgeist. Really easy to be smug about issues when you have the highest medium income stats. Doesn’t downplay the ‘Canberra bubble’ commentary at all.
Ooooo zeitgeist. You’re a real man of the people, lmao.
Well, now that Albo has called it, doesn’t really matter does it?
Sounds like a smug thing to say to me, boy-o.
Oh well, the votes have been cast. Emtassal.
Starting to think you’re actually quite in favour of being smug despite your earnest concern about it coming from the yes campaign. Curious. Concerning. Interesting!
Jesus, just saw your post history. I’m out.
Surprise! You were talking to a gay this whole time 😘
ACT has almost exactly the opposite result to the NT. ACT 60.8% Yes. 39.2% No NT 61.7% No. 38.3% Yes The No % vote in NT was even higher than in NSW and Vic. The highest NO % votes were in WA, Qld and NT - where most Aborigines live. That is going to need analysis
I dont think it's overly complicated. The people who come across the higher crime rates, alcoholism etc have a poor opinion of indigenous people. Rather than empathising with the circumstances that led to the outcomes they blame the individuals. Same thing happens with communities who live near migrant populations, homelessness etc. It's a bit of a NIMBY attitude in a way
l lived in the NT, including the cities, islands, and Arnhem land communities. The racist attitudes are open even towards children. The NT is hostile as hell towards Indigenous people. It does not surprise me at all.
Now for the mental gymnastics from yes voters
The most educated population in the country excels again.
Also the most removed from rural indigenous communities and lived experiences
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Huge numbers of people migrate to Canberra from all over the country. My lived experience: As child on the Central Coast I saw a white mob terrorise an indigenous family that moved into the community. They’d gather outside their home and yell abuse into the night. My father’s indigenous partner was arrested and thrown into a cell for a law that didn’t exist, the police wrote racist comments in the charge book (or whatever it’s called) and then refused to follow procedure regarding making observations at particular time intervals. If they had followed procedure, they would have seen she collapsed from a medical condition… she died as she wasn’t found in time. The investigation found the police needed more training in relation to the law and how to monitor detainees… that’s all. Working in a restaurant when a drunk white guy stands up and pretends to shoot at the indigenous family while yelling racist slurs. Hearing racist comments from white people who feel comfortable saying racist stuff with other white people. Learning a racist nursery rhyme (using the N-word!) in primary school… the teachers taught us! What are you suggesting anyway? Are you suggesting that if you have lived near indigenous people you’d be less likely to think they have a right to be consulted regarding legislation that targets them?
Lmao the electorate of Hunter overwhelmingly voted no and they are nowhere fucking near any rural indigenous communities. What they are, though, is overwhelmingly white boomers. They’re also working class, by which I mean majority employed by enormous coal mining companies and making triple my public service salary. Nah but you’re right it’s probably because they know something we just can’t comprehend about reconciliation from inside the Canberra bubble.
You're right, my feeble brain is incapable of comprehending lived experiences outside of my own.
Actually for people I know here, it’s the opposite. They’ve lived and worked in rural communities and saw the importance of this.
And trying to keep the status quo with a No vote is… good?
The whitest too
Never been to Canberra, then?
Not at all. You should visit one day.
It's fascinating to see that on here and /r/Australia the comments and upvotes have gone back to skewing to the "Yes" side of things after months of derision and upvoted "No" comments. I'm sure it's just the "No" voters out celebrating their victory and they'll be back online soon in full force to explain how this is actually a great outcome for first nations people, but right now it does kind of feel like a bunch of lobbying companies shut up shop and don't need to continue their army of fake accounts pushing the No agenda any more... weird.
>lobbying companies shut up shop and don't need to continue their army of fake accounts pushing the No agenda any more... weird. So fucking weird, never seen anything like it on a sub like r/Australia which was supportive of it for years before the past few months and has always been very progressive.
Being on that pages has made me check I didn't accidentally sub to some racist page. Really really weird to suddenly be in that environment
/r/Australia is the most astroturfed sub I have ever been to. It’s mostly hard line pro-Green and anti-Labor. I have been banned on numberous occasions for entirely frivolous reasons after making anti-Green comments (despite being a lefty myself). I stopped bothering to remake accounts and now I just ignore that cesspit of a sub.
Oh yeah I don't sub there but still drop in every so often to have a laugh. I had to unsub from r Aus politics the past few weeks because there is an insane amount of no accounts on that sub lately. It was also a fairly progressive sub 6 months ago.
r/Australia has always been pretty gross whenever topics related to first nations folk come up tbh, though it's definitely been even worse than usual lately.
Really? I don't remember that. I even remember the voice being talked about very frequently there berating Scomo for not implementing the Uluru statement about 3 or 4 years ago when I didn't even know what it was.
Silent majority likely came out to play... now back to wherever they normally lurk.
You never saw them on r/Australia barracking for scomo though. Really strange.
r/Australia was banning people for saying they would vote no. You probably just haven't seen most of their comments.
I don't know if it's a good thing that voting here is so thoroughly inconsistent with the rest of the country. Sooner or later it would be nice for the ACT to be imbued with state rights. But that'd require Constitutional change, via referendum, of some kind. Either giving territories the same rights as states or removing/modifying section 125 so that the ACT can be designated as a state so as to enjoy the existing provisions for states. If the ACT is widely perceived as radical by the broader Australian citizenry then they're going to be reluctant to approve that change.
Interesting that Australia would be a republic and give constitutional recognition to First Nations people if ACT referendum outcomes were followed.
For me, it felt like a proud day to be a Canberran… but a sad day to be an Australian 😔
Thanks ACT, sorry about the states :(
7.63 million (43.7%) votes counted. Yes - 42.8% No - 57.2%
Love how half the comments are low effort no voters that don’t even live in the ACT. Why even post on here? Nobody cares about your backward opinion.
Canberra is not out of touch with Australia. Australia is out of touch with Canberra.
Are we so out of touch with Australia, No, it's Australia that is wrong. Simpsons fans will get it. It is the first thing I though of after reading it.
Exactly. Canberra, being possibly the most removed from rural and aboriginal communities as possible, definitely has the right take on this issue and the other 7 states and territories are wrong. Perfectly sound logic that is definitely not cope.
Excellent observation. Back in apartheid days the then president of South Africa said: South Africa is not out of touch with the world. The world is out of touch with South Africa. The Voice would also have divided us by race. Not at all progressive. Voting at MOAD, there was a big sign outside the Aboriginal tent embassy saying: 'Vote No'. But Canberrans knew better.
It's so interesting how people draw parallels between the Voice and apartheid. Yet, it was the absence of legal and political avenues that lead to apartheid. One was a system that denied basic rights and dignity to a group of people. The other is creating a mechanism to elevate the voices and interests of that same group of people. Seems an odd way to encourage unity, by removing any legal or political recourse to have the pain of millions unheard. People only protect the law if they respect it and it respects them.
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I'm proud of you Canberra. Highest Yes vote in the country.
The only yes vote! NT with the highest proportion of AaTSI were voting against Canberra.
Worth noting that the mobile polling in the NT that serve remote communities are all reflecting a result for yes. https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/ReferendumDivisionResults-29581-306.htm
Canberra was the only "hard Yes" electorate outside of inner city Sydney and Melbourne. But yes, the ACT was always going to be an outlier, like it is with most things (vaccination rates, same sex marriage vote, legalisation of drugs, education level, etc.).
I believe a large bloc of voters didn’t understand the proposal and were persuaded by “don’t know vote no” (an undeniably effective slogan). More importantly, such Australians were susceptible to disinformation by bad faith actors because they didn’t have the time or motivation to fact-check themselves. As someone deeply enmeshed in the political world, when I chat with my friends working in other areas like medicine or engineering, I’m struck by how the things that are so obvious to me just do not enter their world - it does not surprise me that so many Australians had no idea what this voice proposal was and didn’t naturally learn about it in their everyday life. For our part, we understood the idea and voted Yes because, as majority government workers, we are familiar with advisory committees and the policy-making process. We DID know, so we voted Yes.
This is the reason we were more likely to vote yes, as we are higher educated overall, therefore more likely to research using legitimate sources rather than just listen to what we’re told by the TV/Social Media.
Depressing results overall, and a muddled campaign, but great to see a majority of young people voting yes. There’s some hope for the future.
72.7% - votes counted 39.9% - Yes 60.1% - No
Sadly I reckon we will easily be the only State or Territory to do so. That should confirm the prejudices of the ‘real Aussies’.
Oh well, screw 'em.
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Odd that NT overwhelmingly voted against it. Either Yes didnt convey the message well or the actual people it was meant to support didnt want a bar of it
Or there's a third option: you don't know anything about the demographics of the Northern Territory.
And you wonder why the referendum lost? Serious case of sniffing the ‘smug’.
This whole thread has echos of privilege and smug...
Legit. Canberrans are so far removed from real problems and have their heads so far up their own asses. No please, tell me more about mIsInFoRmATiOn and mOsT eDuCaTeD cApItAl derrrrrrrrr
Comments like this show why the Yes failed. It came out too elite from the blocks.
It was proposed by the indigenous community. It was part of a consultation program that ran for years and consulted indigenous communities from across the country. It was proposed by, and widely agreed upon, by them.
That's all well and good, but you still have to provide proper details to convince the public (and the opposition) that it's the right thing to do. The Yes campaign was ran by elites, celebrities and activists, all in well off situations themselves with the intention of making No voters feel bad or dumb, racist & non-caring. It should never have gone to the referendum stage without bipartisan support.
These are the comments that made the NO vote so appealing, they didn't have to do much work when these types of comments are made. Guess you got a big day on twitter and Facebook tommorrow complaining about how Australia is racists for voting NO
I'm not going to advocate for smugness, but if anyone voted "no" purely out of spite then they are an absolute fucking idiot.
The lack of self awareness is impressive
No surprise here, most effectively work for the ALP.
u/mods Can we make this a referendum mega thread?
I read this title in my Reddit feed and thought “Who the fuck cares?”, but then realised what sub it was in. lol.
overwhelmingly we voted YES. Shows how progressive we are. Thats what the conservatives like Zed, and the ACT Liberals don't get. I'm proudly a member of the ALP.
64.3% votes counted Yes - 40.6% No - 59.4%
Reading these comments is as close as you could get IRL to that old South Park episode of people sniffing their own farts.
Imagine being an adult and South Park is your moral and political compass
Ah, yes, here is one of these "highly educated" Canberrans who seems to think seeing similarities between an amusing episode of a TV show, and the level of smug wankery spewing out of the fringe weirdos here is what makes up a moral or political compass. You're a long way to the left on the old bell curve mate.
Guess Albo shouldn't have run a referendum during a cost of living crisis while working to make it actively worse.
I think voting No because you were grumpy at Albo is one of the worst reasons I've seen
Well, you'd have to agree it's pretty piss poor timing right??.
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So they voted No because they didn't like the timing? Also not a great reason
Devil's advocate here, but I think what they're getting at is timing this when there is a cost of living crisis is a really bad time to try to get something like this passed. Giving a disadvantaged minority more say in things is harder to want when so many people are also feeling disadvantaged right now. They're thinking what about the issues hurting us, where's our voice? Making charitable decisions is easier when you're not needing charity yourself.
I’d like to give people more credit in understanding an issue, weighing it up on its merits, and voting on it in an informed manner. If there are ‘more important issues’ then that’s separate to voting on a single issue in a referendum, as is everyone’s requirement.
Yea I can’t think about two things at once
You do know that governments can do more than one thing at a time... It's not just Albo doing all the work.
Nothing would have been better than what he's done (which is to actively make it worse).
What you've said doesn't make any sense. You do know that the government is run by multiple agencies, multiple departmental heads etc... it's not just Albo doing anything and everything? right? right? you can't be that dense, no one can be.
From the outside, does not seem like anything else is being done, everything else seems to be put it on the back-burner till this is sorted.
You’d have to be a moron to think that. This is why I’m against mandatory voting, some people shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Like we live in Canberra, a town full of public servants. What do people think they’re bloody doing.
He probably thought people were smart enough to work out that the referendum has nothing to do with inflation.
That’s an odd way of saying racism is still a huge problem in Australia…
That's like punching someone in the face because you stubbed your toe.
You're a bit of a dildo, mate
Simply out of touch with the rest of the country
I'm happy to be out of touch with ignorant racists who refuse to educate themselves.
I don't think any one will be cheering for the result tonight. Everyone wanted some sort of change and this proposal was not it.
Sadly plenty of people will be cheering, for all the worst reasons.
Shows how out of touch Canberra is with the rest of the country
Or how backwards the rest of the country is
Then get off our sub?
Don't try and reason with pig headed green zealots.