Akerman: Whichever way votes fall, Yes camp’s attitude steeped in racist venom will linger

After October 14, Australians must come together as Aussies first, and put their ancestral heritage a distant second, writes Piers Akerman

I’ve met many ignorant people, but never have I met as many smugly ignorant individuals as I did while offering No campaign leaflets to referendum voters outside a pre-polling station in Teal territory this week. They were Yes campaign workers and Yes voters.

The whole of the Yes strategy throughout this divisive process has been designed to keep the aims of the elite group that designed the Uluru statement hidden from the public.

The proof lies in Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s disgraceful refusal to acknowledge the existence of the documents supporting the demands for the insertion of a whole new chapter in the Constitution, through to the most recent and derogatory remarks of broadcaster Ray Martin.

I’ve never joined a political party and won’t while I am a working journalist. But while I felt this referendum didn’t require me to join a party, I could not stand by and let others do all the heavy lifting in combating the might of the major corporates, the taxpayer-funded ABC and the rest of the Left-wing media and the government-funded Yes campaign. Pulling on the T-shirt with the Vote No to Division slogan was easy. Maintaining a smile while being called a racist by people who admitted they hadn’t read any of the many explosive statements made by supporters of the Uluru statement was not.

Pulling on the T-shirt with the Vote No to Division slogan was easy. Maintaining a smile while being called a racist was not. Picture: Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images

Not only had they not read the emotive and deceitful pamphlet that urges a vote for recognition in the Constitution, they weren’t aware it made no mention of the second leg of the loaded question that locks in the unelected Voice as a permanent fixture of the Constitution, giving its members the right to make representations to government.

The small group of No volunteers was heavily outnumbered by the Yes campaigners wearing their Allegra Spender for Wentworth colours.

Member for Wentworth Allegra Spender campaigning for the Voice to Parliament in Sydney. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Gaye Gerard

While younger Yes team members were friendly, others were not as congenial and there was a disturbing triteness in their apparent banal acceptance of vague assurances that absence of detail was unimportant.

None of the voters I encountered was as hostile as one prominent Aboriginal sports star who told a No worker she was a racist and that she was on his land, which she had stolen.

My fear is whichever way the votes fall, it is this poisonous attitude that will linger, so steeped are the Yes campaigners in racist venom.

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. Picture: Chris Pavlich/The Australian

The former reconciliation leader, Noel Pearson, no longer sounds profound, delivering words that can be described as ugly and divisive.

He seems to prefer multi-syllable words, as if they signify wisdom. He should study the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi or Bob Hawke. None championed divisiveness on racial grounds.

The only positive to come from Albanese’s expensive exercise in virtue-signalling has been the exposure of the money wasted by organisations tasked to work with Aboriginals. We desperately need the audit of all funding spent on these bureaucracies, as outlined by Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Peter Dutton. The 2021 census provided hard proof of the unnecessary nature of Albanese’s referendum. The division his Yes campaign is promoting is already being remedied in households across Australia.

According to the 2021 census, in households where one or both partners identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander, most of these (81.7 per cent or 130,514 couples) were couples where one partner identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander and the other identified as non-Indigenous. After October 14, Australians must come together as Aussies first, and put their ancestral heritage a distant second – just as we do when asked to serve the nation in the services and volunteer organisations that keep us safe.