‘If you are thinking about voting No, I am sorry’

People with “high profiles and high tempers” have said things that should never have escaped their mouths.

COMMENT

If you are someone thinking of voting No at the Voice referendum, I have just one thing to say: I am so sorry.

I am so sorry that you have been described as a dinosaur or a d*ckhead or a racist by supporters of the Yes campaign.

That should never have been allowed to happen, let alone happen again and again.

Some of my most beloved friends are ardent No supporters, and while I obviously disagree with them they are kind and intelligent people who believe they are doing the right thing for the country.

Indeed, if more Yes supporters knew more No supporters the campaign wouldn’t be in the shape it is.

Name-calling or the use of cheap labels in almost any context is juvenile and rude. In a campaign to win over opposing or undecided voters it is catastrophically damaging. And in a referendum dedicated to tackling Indigenous disadvantage it is downright dangerous.

Whatever the result, we are all going to have to find a way to live together on the morning of October 15 and emotions will be high enough without supposed statesmen and women behaving like angry children.

Veteran journalist Ray Martin said of the ‘If you don’t know, vote no’ slogan that it’s saying you’re a “dinosaur or d***head”. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Max Mason-Hubers

And so that is the first thing that must be said. The vast majority of the Yes campaign is built on compassion and hope and a love for this country and I am sorry a small handful with high profiles and high tempers said things that should never have escaped their mouths.

It is also an inescapable fact that millions of Australians who once supported the Voice have turned away from it once the campaign started to step up, and again this is something those of us in the Yes camp have to take responsibility for.

There is a temptation to blame everything on the No campaign but that is a lazy excuse.

If the No campaign has won them over with their arguments then it means we lost them with ours.

If the No campaign was able to scare them with lies then it means we were not clear enough with the truth.

And if Australia is simply an implacable hotbed of racism — the laziest excuse of all — then why were almost two-thirds of Australians in favour of the Voice until the debate began?

The fact is we had an overwhelming majority of Australians on our side and we lost them. And it is a fact we have to face.

The vast majority of the Yes campaign is built on compassion. Picture: Brendan Radke

But as long as there is time there is hope. And like the Temptations, I ain’t too proud to beg.

So if you are one of those millions of Australians, those good decent people who have been confused by the convoluted arguments or stigmatised by the sledging or simply too busy worrying about more pressing day-to-day problems, I am begging you to just take one tiny moment to shut out all the noise and the heat and the claim and counterclaim and think about what you will be voting for or against.

This is the proposed amendment in full, the whole thing:

“In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:

“There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;

“The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;

“The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.”

The words are simple and clear: This is nothing more than saying that the parliament can set up an advisory body for Indigenous people and that the parliament will have complete control over every single aspect of its very existence: Who is in it, how it works, what it can do.

It is not a third chamber, it has absolutely no binding authority, and it has no expenditure or rule-making or service delivery functions. Absolutely none. The Voice may simply speak, and even that may be ignored.

And all it can speak on is how problems might be fixed in Australia’s Indigenous communities, who have some of the worst health, education, employment and law and order outcomes in the entire Western world.

Veteran journalist Ray Martin and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese this week. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Max Mason-Hubers

Maybe the word “Voice” sounds for some suspiciously metaphysical — a touch Biblical perhaps — but it is merely a poetic title for an advisory committee.

However its beauty is that this particular committee would involve people who live at the frontiers of Indigenous life in remote and regional Australia instead of the usual urban elites.

And it is a body that would and should include free thinking and straight talking leaders — like Jacinta Price and Warren Mundine — instead of carbon copy business-as-usual activists.

And if it fails in any of its missions it can instantly be dissolved by parliament and reconstituted in a better form. It can be an ever-evolving pathway to a better future for the most long-suffering Australians.

Like the rest of the constitution it would be flexible and changeable with the parliament always reigning supreme. The last Chief Justice of the High Court confirmed this only yesterday.

However it has the hope of finally elevating Indigenous Australians to living standards the rest of us take for granted as well as making them take responsibility for the very real problems in their own communities.

But that can only happen if it happens. And only you, if you are reading this, can make it happen.