Brisbane, Australia CNN —
With a two-letter word: Australian has destroyed the first attempt to amend the constitution in 24 years. Experts say the move will cause lasting harm to First Nations people and dash any hopes of modernizing the nation’s founding document.
Preliminary results from the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) suggest most of the country’s 17.6 million registered voters wrote “no” on their ballot papers, and CNN affiliates 9 News, Sky News and SBS all predicted no path for the yes campaign.
The proposal to recognize indigenous peoples in the constitution and create an indigenous body to advise the government on policy issues affecting them required a majority at the national level and in four of six states to pass.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese campaigned for the referendum and said in a national address on Saturday evening that his government remained committed to improving the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
“This moment of disagreement does not define us. And it won’t divide us. We are not yes voters or no voters. We are all Australians,” he said.
“As Australians, we must collectively lead our country beyond this debate without forgetting why we had it in the first place. Because too often in the life of our nation and in political discussions, the disadvantages of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been marginalized.”
“This referendum and my government have brought it to the forefront.”
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Supporters of the Yes vote hailed it as an opportunity to work with Indigenous people to address problems in their most remote communities — higher suicide rates, domestic violence, children in out-of-home care and incarceration.
However, opposition grew as conservative political parties came forward to denounce the proposal as lacking detail and an unnecessary duplication of existing advisory bodies.
On Saturday, leading No campaigner Warren Mundine said the referendum should never have taken place.
“This is a referendum we should never have held because it was based on the lie that Aboriginal people had no voice,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
During the months-long campaign, the “no” vote gained momentum with slogans that appealed to voter apathy – “If you don’t know, vote no” – and a host of other statements that experts say were designed to stoke fear, including the Saying there would be a divide based on race in Australia is legally risky, despite expert advice to the contrary.
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Vote No volunteers at a polling station in Canberra on October 13, 2023.
There was no shortage of high-profile voices supporting the Yes campaign.
Constitutional experts, Australian of the Year, eminent retired judges, businesses large and small, universities, sporting legends, netballers, footballers, reality stars and Hollywood actors have signaled their support. There was even an unlikely intervention from US rapper MC Hammer.
Australian music legend John Farnham gave a Yes campaign a song that is considered Australia’s unofficial anthem, with a stirring message of national unity. But the opinion polls continued to slide to number one.
Objections mounted from opposition party leaders picking at the proposal’s loose threads. “Where is the detail?” they asked, knowing that Parliament would decide and legislate on it.
Some members of the indigenous community said they did not want to be part of a settler document and called for more than a body to give non-binding advice to the government. Other Australians were completely uninterested.
Yes activist Marilyn Trad told CNN that volunteers calling potential voters had to break the news to some this week that there was, in fact, a referendum.
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Kevin Argus, a marketing expert from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), told CNN the Yes campaign was a “case study in how not to signal change on issues of social importance.”
“From a public relations perspective, the proposal is quite simple: an advisory group for the government. Not unlike what business councils, mining corporations, banking groups and others expect and gain when laws are drafted that impact the people they represent,” he said.
Argus said only the No campaign used simple messaging, maximized the reach of personal profiles and acted decisively to counter challenges to its arguments with clear and repeatable slogans.
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Campaign signs are seen outside the voting center at Old Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on October 14, 2023.
The result does not mean a constitutional change, but experts say the referendum will have lasting consequences for the entire nation.
For First Nations people, this is seen as a rejection of reconciliation by Australia’s non-Indigenous majority and tacit acceptance of a status quo that is widely believed to have failed them for two centuries.
Ahead of the vote, Senator Pat Dodson, the government’s special envoy for reconciliation, said whether the country wins or loses it faces a “major healing process”.
“We need to think about the impact of a no vote on future generations, young people,” he told the National Press Club this week. “We already know that the suicide rate among this country’s Aboriginal youth is high. Why? They are not bad people. These are good people. Why don’t they see a future?”
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Maree Teesson, director of the Matilda Center for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use at the University of Sydney, told CNN that Voice to Parliament has offered Indigenous communities self-determination, the opportunity to have a say in what happens in their lives.
“Self-determination is such a crucial part of their social and emotional well-being,” she said.
Teesson said a no vote would not only maintain the status quo but “undermine the self-determination of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples”.
“I hope that we don’t lose the hope that this has given our nation and that we somehow work to find another way to make this happen,” she said.
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Some experts say more broadly that the No result could deter future leaders from holding referendums because it could suggest that the bar for constitutional change – set in the document in 1901 – is too high.
The last time Australians rejected a referendum was in 1999, when they were asked to break ties with the British monarchy and become a republic – and little has changed since then.
“The framers of the Constitution said this is the rule book and we will only change it if the Australian people say they want to change it – we will not leave it up to the politicians,” said Paula Gerber, a professor of law at Monash University .
“So the power to amend, modernize and update the Constitution lies in the hands of the Australian people. And if they say every time, “If you don’t know, vote no,” then what politician is going to spend the time and money on a referendum that can be so easily defeated?”