Voice to voiceless: A year on, Yes leaders head overseas on sad anniversary

The ambitious campaign to give Indigenous Australians a Voice to parliament has given way to a sense of voicelessness a year on from the historic referendum defeat.

“We’re back in the shadows,” said Thomas Mayo, a high-profile Yes advocate.

Some of the leading referendum campaigners, including Dean Parkin and Karen Mundine – and Mayo himself – have all separately gone overseas on the one-year anniversary. Unlike some colleagues, Mayo’s trip was not timed to miss the milestone, but it was a happy coincidence.

Thomas Mayo: “we’re back in the shadows”. Credit: James Brickwood

“Even though I’ve dusted myself off, I’ve written a new book and I’m trying to inspire people again, it’s still difficult to be hearing about it.”

Noel Pearson has not been heard in the media for a year and is barely in contact with some long-time mates. Marcia Langton is not speaking to the press for stories on the anniversary.

“It’s been a long year of grieving,” constitutional lawyer Megan Davis said this week, giving her view that Indigenous children went to school after the vote in what they felt was a harsher country.

Nearly 16 million people, representing 90 per cent of eligible voters, defeated the referendum question down by a national margin of 60-40, with every state and territory except the progressive ACT voting against it.

Political consequences were far-reaching. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s key moment of first-term conviction was ultimately viewed within Labor as a noble blunder as voters chafed over soaring interest rates and the political courage underpinning the referendum push gave way to a more cautious governing spirit.

Peter Dutton ran a brutal campaign to bring his ailing party back to life and prove his values. Support for Yes was still high when Dutton made the heavily criticised call to go full-throttle as he lay on the mat after the once-in-a-century Aston byelection loss.

Labor’s polling slide throughout the Voice-dominated 2023 could have been partly offset if late July crisis talks at the top levels of Labor and the Yes campaign yielded a call to cancel the referendum. Senior figures in the Yes movement knew then, months out from voting day, that the Voice was headed for probable defeat, but consensus could not be reached within the Indigenous leadership to formally ask the prime minister to delay or call off the vote.

Silence on Indigenous affairs is not new, according to Mayo. This void in the Australian consciousness “was the whole reason we were calling for [the Voice]”.

Mayo says Indigenous affairs was used as a political opportunity to wedge the government and “they got wind in their sails from keeping us voiceless”.

“The other side [Labor] has returned back to the status quo, which is having no vision for Indigenous affairs,” he says.

The Indigenous establishment has not yet come together to pick up the pieces and is itself split.

Anti-Voice leader Jacinta Nampijinpa Price transformed Indigenous politics during the referendum, and her exalted status in the Coalition means she will have huge sway on future Indigenous policy. But in the last year, she has not captured the headlines as she once did as Indigenous issues have been sidelined.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Nyunggai Warren Mundine were key Indigenous faces of the No campaign.Credit: Dan Peled

If Dutton wins the next election, Price has pledged to review all federal funding on Indigenous affairs, reform land councils and abolish Australia’s international Indigenous ambassador role.

Her key Indigenous ally on the No campaign, Liberal figure Warren Mundine, said debate on the Voice body provoked a more profound national discussion about whether Indigenous people should have what he termed “special rights”.

He says progressives and conservatives he spoke to during the campaign wanted practical improvements on issues such as education but were sick of gestures such as welcome to country ceremonies.

“People like the concept, but it goes overboard when it is every meeting at work and every plane when you land. It’s like a new religion, like the new saying of grace before meals,” he said.

“The Yes people haven’t realised they are actually turning people against them by overkill.”

Indigenous leader Noel Pearson addressed a more than 3000-strong Yes rally in Parramatta Square, Sydney, the week before the referendum. Credit: Dean Sewell

Mayo, Davis and others such as Rachael Perkins and Marcus Stewart emerged during the campaign as next-generation leaders destined to drive the next wave of political activism. But after the defeat, it’s unclear if any person or faction within the Indigenous leadership has a mandate to generate momentum for a new vision. Instead, there’s a sense of malaise and paralysis.

Davis still supports the Uluru Statement from the Heart from which the Voice idea emerged, even though Labor has gone cold on the ambitious political document forged in 2017 that calls for a treaty and truth-telling.

More conservative Yes leaders such as Sean Gordon have reverted to the bread-and-butter Empowered Communities program.

Davis told the ABC this week Australians “didn’t get a clear idea” of the Voice in a campaign marred by what she said was “misinformation”.

She rejects a symbolic form of constitutional recognition backed by more conservative figures and said her group of supporters were thinking about how to continue prosecuting the Uluru statement.

“No one said to the republicans [after the failed 1999 referendum] ‘hey, don’t come back’,” she said.

Labor’s post-Voice agenda on Indigenous affairs has narrowed sharply, swapping symbolism for practicality. It did not appear to have a plan B after the referendum loss. Its new policy focus is on a remote jobs program.

The cultural forces unleashed during the vote mean a new bipartisan approach to Indigenous affairs is difficult to envision.

Yet even with a divided political and Indigenous leadership, Indigenous figures cling to optimism in their journey to achieve equality and justice in the lands of their forebears.

“We know that 40 per cent of Australia certainly wanted structural reform that favoured Indigenous people,” Mayo said of the referendum vote.

“And I also know, or believe, most of the 60 per cent who voted ‘no’ were not voting against recognition and justice. They just weren’t sure.”

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