Rita Panahi: The referendum result is a proud moment for the Australian people

Don’t listen to Waleed Aly’s snide but simplistic analysis of the referendum outcome, the real reason it didn’t succeed was because it was racist in principle and costly with far-reaching consequences.

The mass meltdown, denials and recriminations from the Australian Left were as predictable as Waleed Aly’s snide but simplistic analysis of the referendum outcome.

If you listen to The Project host, those lacking tertiary education are behind the Voice’s resounding failure.

The truth is the most culturally diverse outer suburbs – including in Sydney’s west and Melbourne’s outer suburban seats such as Aston and Lalor – voted No while the affluent, inner-city Green and Teal seats that have next to zero Indigenous residents voted Yes.

Indeed the five seats with the biggest percentage of Indigenous voters resoundingly voted No while the five seats with the smallest percentage of Indigenous residents, including my seat of Goldstein (0.2 per cent), voted Yes.

Waleed Aly says those lacking tertiary education are behind the Voice’s resounding failure.

It’s hardly a surprise that the most affluent voters backed the Voice; they now routinely back a range of leftist policies in a trend that is evident from Britain to the US to right here in Melbourne.

Now, you can accuse the non-Indigenous voters in Lingiari, the seat with the biggest percentage of Indigenous residents (40 per cent), of being unrepentant racists but that’s a hard thing to prove when they have elected Indigenous politicians.

The current member is Indigenous woman Marion Scrymgour, but her electorate voted against the Voice, as did the constituents of the Minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney.

It’s hardly a surprise that the most affluent voters backed the Voice. Picture: Getty

That said, Aly’s analysis was far more sophisticated than the emotive diatribe offered by his Project colleague Rove McManus on Friday.

The comic who was funny for about 10 minutes in 2002 quoted his nine-year-old in urging Australians to back constitutional change.

“I wrote, ‘Yes’. My daughter was there, she got it. She’s nine,” McManus said.

“She said, ‘I can’t believe anyone would vote No to this’. And that’s what breaks my heart. What are we doing to ourselves?”

Rove McManus quoted his nine-year-old in urging Australians to back constitutional change. Picture: Josh Woning

It’s not that Australians lacked the necessary education to understand the Voice.

It’s that the proposal was rotten to the core.

The referendum result is a proud moment for the Australian people who withstood an ugly, unrelenting and deeply dishonest campaign of intimidation to guilt us into backing a change in our founding document that was racist in principle and costly with far-reaching consequences if it were ever put into practice.