Voice debate: Candidate, Indigenous campaigner slams MP’s ‘hurtful’ comments surrounding No vote
An Indigenous Yes campaigner and a political candidate for the region have slammed an MP’s ‘disheartening’ comments regarding the Voice following a positive summit on understanding the referendum this week.
Warwick
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Undecided voters and Yes supporters packed out a Warwick hall to hear the upcoming Voice referendum broken down by a panel of three experts on a chilly Wednesday night.
The Understanding the Voice forum event was held to help local voters understand which way to vote mere days before the Southern Downs, and Australia, heads to the poll booths next Saturday.
The Voice to Parliament issue has proven divisive in the Downs region, where notably in Toowoomba, Federal Member for Groom Garth Hamilton filmed an altercation with a Yes voter, with the pair getting into a public spat.
This didn’t stop Warwick locals stopping by the forum, and while some may have had their minds made up, organisers believed some who may have been undecided “left with a sense of understanding”.
UniSQ law professor Dr Simon Young summed up the upcoming vote simply, and said it was like a “sequel to the 1967 referendum, but more modest”.
“There's nothing to be scared of here,” he said.
“I think this is the perfect opportunity because we cant keep asking our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to keep investing their intellectual and emotional energy and resources, I’m not sure if we can keep asking them to invest their time.”
Indigenous support worker and Reconciliation QLD chief executive Erin Lang, a proud Bundjalung woman, said the Voice would make “life-changing impact” on First Nations people across the country.
“It’s a moral, human kind of question,” Ms Lang said.
“If someone had to make a decision absolute you and your family, wouldn’t you expect that at an absolute bare minimum they would have some sort of understanding of your life and what’s important to you?
“Wouldn’t you expect that common respect?”
Yorta Yorta man and founder of Empower Digital, Adam Wooding told Warwick Daily News as an Indigenous man living in the Southern Downs, the Voice will impact First Nations people in the region “positively”.
“Policies, programs and initiatives for First Nations people will improve and have far greater outcomes as they will be designed with input from First Nations people,” he said.
In a statement given to Warwick Daily News ahead of the Voice vote, Member for Southern Downs James Lister publicly stated he would be voting ‘No’ on October 14, calling the upcoming referendum “hollow political correctness” and “wasted spending”.
“The Voice referendum is deeply unpopular in my electorate of Southern Downs, and the communities I represent would probably tar and feather me if I voted Yes,” Mr Lister said.
“We are tired of being labelled as racist and stupid for disagreeing with the political and cultural elites of this country, whose whole approach to Indigenous advancement has failed for decades and wasted untold billions of taxpayers’ dollars.”
Yes23 supporter Mr Wooding described Mr Lister’s comments as “disheartening”.
“We have amazing people in our electorate who I believe really want to do the right thing for our area and for our country, but I believe that there's been a lack of encouragement from our elected members to seek more information, to seek the facts and to find out the heart of the Voice rather than the politicised encouragement to vote No,” he said.
During the forum, one of the ideas raised to the panel was that farms would be seized if a Yes vote was the majority, which Mr Wooding said was a common misconception.
“When people have a deficit mindset and worry that in order to help someone, someone else has to lose something, fear takes over and we lose sight of the big picture, that we're all Australians who need to be here and look out for each other,” Mr Wooding said.
“If we follow the invitation in the Uluru Statement from the Heart we realise that lifting up First Nations people and closing the gap will actually reap rewards for all of us, making us a happier and more unified country.”
Southern Downs Labor candidate Joel Richters slammed the comments made by Mr Lister, describing them as “hurtful” and “should not go unchecked”.
“I was offended to read the comment where James seemingly called the 250 Indigenous leaders of the First Nations National Constitutional Convention “political and cultural elites,” the candidate said in a statement on Thursday.
“I take displeasure in reading the words ‘hollow political correctness’ when he too well knows that the Voice is coming from hundreds of Indigenous leaders who via the Uluru State of the Heart is totally disconnected from politics, as it should be.”
Regardless of the outcome of the referendum, the Voice debate has been raging on both sides of the political spectrum, and time will tell how Australia decides.
Read our article about where to vote early around the Southern Downs and southwest Queensland.
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