Australians resoundingly rejected a referendum reform of Aboriginal rights on Saturday October 14, after a bitter campaign deepened racial divisions in the country. According to the counting of votes from three quarters of polling stations in the country, 55% of voters voted no to the text, which proposed recognizing Aboriginal people in the constitution as the first inhabitants of the island and giving them a specific “voice”.
The plan called for the creation of an advisory council – nicknamed “The Voice” – for parliament and government to advise on laws and public policies affecting Indigenous, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. which includes 984,000 people or 3.8% of the Australian population. “Australians voted against changing the constitution,” Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said on public broadcaster ABC, acknowledging the failure of the referendum.
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The camp, which advocated changing the 1901 constitution and was initially largely in the majority, has increasingly lost ground in recent months, particularly due to the campaign by the conservative opposition led by former defense minister Peter Dutton. For the conservative camp, the reform represented a falsification of the constitution and would have caused divisions within society by creating a distinction in citizenship.
“It’s a difficult result, a very difficult result,” said Yes23 campaign manager Dean Parkin. The campaign sparked an avalanche of racist comments on social media. To pass, the reform had to receive a majority of votes not only nationally but also in at least four of the country’s six states. She got neither one nor the other.
False information circulated, some of which claimed that property titles could be questioned or that reparations would have to be paid if the reform was passed. Today, more than two hundred years after British colonization, Aboriginal Australians, whose ancestors have lived on the continent for at least sixty thousand years, have the same rights as other citizens, but still suffer significant inequalities.
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