Take politics out of your Voice vote or ‘the gap’ will never be closed

Last month, Fred Chaney and I were campaigning in the west when he gave me some profound advice.

“It’s a good rule to not take too much notice of what politicians say during an election campaign, or a campaign about a referendum,” the former deputy leader of the federal Liberal Party said. “Have a look at what they say when they are just trying to solve the problems.”

On Saturday, Australians will vote in a referendum that emerged from the Uluru Statement from the Heart.Credit: Michele Mossop

We’d just taken a detour to visit The Gap, a dramatic section of WA’s coastline just outside of Albany, when Chaney offered up his perspective. There’s a plaque there explaining the history of this special Dreaming place, called Torndirrup in the Noongar language.

When I asked Chaney what had prompted his advice, he said he’d been thinking of the 2020 National Agreement on Closing the Gap.

Given what’s transpired in recent months, it’s hard to believe that the people now relentlessly campaigning for a No vote are the same parties that signed the agreement with state and territory governments, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peak bodies so recently.

Among other things, the Closing the Gap agreement binds its signatories to “listen to the voices and aspirations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and change the way we work in response”.

Fundamental to the agreement is the principle that “when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have a genuine say in the design and delivery of services that affect them, better life outcomes are achieved.”

How quickly that sentiment, agreed on by all sides of politics just three years ago, has been junked by the Coalition in their quest to defeat the referendum.

Abandoning the principle of listening will only stymie progress that has already been too slow.

In travelling much of the country, I’ve been shocked to learn how few Australians are aware of what the gap is. They don’t know the life-expectancy for Indigenous Australians is around 10 years less than for the non-Indigenous people or that in some remote communities the gap can be as great as 20 years.

As the Uluru Statement from the Heart says: “Proportionately we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately criminal people. Our children are alienated from their families at unprecedented rates. This cannot be because we have no love for them. And our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be our hope for the future. These dimensions of our crisis tell plainly the structural nature of our problem. This is the torment of our powerlessness.”

Thomas Mayo has travelled the country campaigning for the Voice.Credit: AFR

When they’re not trying to bring each other down and point score, both major political parties agree with this. Yet, neither the Coalition nor Labor have been able to close the gap. In fact, during the Coalition’s most recent decade in power, the gap got worse. The No campaign offers promises that nothing will change, which for Indigenous Australians, means nothing but more continued failure.

Not in my wildest dreams did I, an official of the Maritime Union of Australia and Labor Party member, imagine I would ever campaign alongside Fred Chaney. Never did I think I would publicly praise a former minister in Tony Abbott’s government, Julie Bishop. I couldn’t have planned to be on the Board of Australians for Indigenous Constitutional Recognition with Tony Nutt, John Howard’s former chief of staff. No one would have thought I would be shoulder-to-shoulder, leafleting with federal Coalition MP Julian Leeser.

The Yes campaign has united Australians from across the political spectrum and allowed us to act on the shared belief that all Australians deserve the right to live equally. Together, we are working to solve problems.

The first problem voting Yes resolves is the question about who we are as a nation. We will catch up with our global peers, who have already recognised Indigenous peoples in their constitutions. We will gain a shared identity with our Indigenous brothers and sisters under the Constitution – we will celebrate that we as Australians are the oldest continuous civilisation on the planet.

The second problem voting Yes resolves is the barrier to closing the gap. A Voice is the key to ending entrenched disadvantage for Indigenous children, as agreed by the majority of Indigenous organisations and communities working towards this goal.

There is one impediment in this, and that is the way Peter Dutton has inserted himself into the wound by opposing the Voice with toxic intervention, like pushing copper into the trunk of a tree. His No campaign has twisted an opportunity to listen in to a declaration of war.

Who would have thought listening to people before you impose a policy or law upon them would be thought of as divisive? The truth is: it’s not. But the No campaign is trying to convince you that it is.

Which brings me back to Torndirrup and the Noongar Dreaming story on the plaque. Dating back thousands of years, the story is about two squabbling brothers who were sent to either side of the gap in the rocky coastline by elders to resolve their dispute. Instead of resolving their differences, one brother threw his boomerang, the other his spear. Together they flung their weapons at each other, and together they were hit and fell into the sea.

That day, through Fred Chaney, the ancestors were sharing a lesson: Take the politics out of your vote or this gap between us will never be healed. And that would be to our shared and eternal detriment.

Vote YES.

Thomas Mayo is a signatory of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, co-author of The Uluru Statement from the Heart Handbook and the national Indigenous officer of the MUA.

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