Voice to parliament referendum fails in defeat that Indigenous advocates will see as a blow to progress towards reconciliation

Australians have resoundingly rejected a proposal to recognise Aboriginal people in its constitution and establish a body to advise parliament on Indigenous issues.

Saturday’s voice to parliament referendum failed, with the defeat clear shortly after polls closed.

  • WaxedWookie@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13·
    1 year ago

    Because they’ll have an official body they’ll be dismissing rather than one of many groups, which aren’t always unified - it forces nothing, but does give a go-to body that the government will need to take an optical hit to ignore.

    The constitutional amendment helps because the deserve recognition, and because it stops the next government disbanding the body.

    • Seudo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      1 year ago

      So there will be just as many people saying the voice doesn’t represent them or their country but white folks can feel like everything is fine and dandy. Swell

      • WaxedWookie@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Would you mind clarifying what you mean? There’s a few ways to interpret this.

        If you mean that it’s not a perfect representation of the views of the indigenous community, that’s obviously true, but unavoidable in any representative body. What it does is solicit feedback from the community and effectively pushes that forward as a single, strong voice. This works in the same way that a union brings together workers that are powerless as individuals and small groups, into a single, far more powerful, though not perfectly representative body that’s able to campaign for meaningful positive change for all members.

        Sounds swell to me.