There’s been a lot of talk about the Indigenous Voice to parliament from politicians as the campaigns for and against the referendum gather momentum.
With information about the proposal coming thick and fast, it’s only natural a lot of Australian voters have questions.
After setting off for an education campaign, Uluru Youth Dialogue co-chair Bridget Cama has given an insight into the three questions that keep popping up.
Do First Nations people support the Voice?
Like with any issue, not everyone is going to have the same view. However, Ms Cama pointed to YouGov polling of First Nations people conducted in April that indicated strong support.
“There’s a misconception in the community that the First Nations community have split on this issue … we’re seeing that at least 83 per cent of First Nations people across the country support the Voice,” the Wiradjuri and Pasifika Fijian woman said.
“It seems that in the media, I think that it’s being presented that half of First Nations agree with it and half don’t.”
Ms Cama said this misconception had fuelled the perception that the Voice did not have the backing of the First Nations community.
For many Australians, their first exposure to the concept of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, or the Voice, came during Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s victory speech on election night last May.
Ms Cama emphasised that part of the education sessions was to “make clear the mandate” of the Voice came from the work that preceded Mr Albanese’s speech.
“The Voice is actually a call from the people,” she said.
“We want Australians to read the other statement and read the invitation that was issued to them as Australians and make a decision based on what best aligns with them as individuals. “We don’t want this to be a politicised issue,” she said.
What’s the deal with the pamphlets?
This week the Australian Electoral Commission published the official pamphlets of the Yes and No camps online. The 2000-word essays were penned by politicians and will soon be sent out to all Australian households.
The AEC said it would publish and distribute the pamphlets even if they were riddled with typos and misinformation. Its role, the commission said, was just to send them out.
But Ms Cama said she’d already seen the shockwaves of this through the community. At a recent event she convened in Lithgow in NSW, she said frustration spilt over.
“There was quite a few people that felt very passionately about it and stood up and asked, ‘Well, why isn’t this process fact-checked?’ I had to go back and say to them, ‘Well unfortunately, it’s just way the Act sets out how a referendum is held, and there’s no requirement to be fact-checked’,” she said.
Ms Cama said the feedback she received was “quite disappointing” that the AEC would send out something that wasn’t necessarily factually correct.
“You know, it is another piece of material that will be out there that Australians will have to read and be critical of and basically sort out what they see as fact and what they don’t see as fact,” she said.
It will cost $10m to print and sent the pamphlets out to all Australian households. Labor had tried to dump the essays from the referendum process but backflipped in order to pass the legislation through parliament.
Given Australia’s last referendum was in 1999, Ms Cama also said much of the sessions she had run also involved educating attendees about how the process worked.
What happens if Australia votes no?
Australia has a history of voting no in referendums. The last successful referendum was held over four decades ago. Ms Cama hopes that won’t be the case this time.
But when asked what would happen if voters were to deny the Voice and constitutional recognition, Ms Cama said best case, the status quo would remain.
“The worst-case scenario is that we actually take a step back as a country,” she said.
“We know from the most recent Closing the Gap Report that only four of the 19 goals are on track, and we’ve actually gone back in four of them.
“I think that’s pretty telling that the way in which our governments attend to First Nations issues at the moment isn’t working, so we need to try something different.”
But should Australia buck the referendum trend, Ms Cama said focus would be put on the next steps outlined in the Uluru Dialogue: Makarrata that would facilitate treaty and truth telling.
The referendum is set to be put to a vote between October and December.