The big lie that just won’t die in the Voice contest

The core assertion in the No campaign against the Indigenous Voice appears to be gaining power in a debate that has careered wildly from its start as a legal argument about creating an advisory body via a change to the Constitution.

The central claim is powerful because it is emotional. It says the Voice will divide Australia by race – a prospect that taps into anxieties about one group gaining an advantage at the expense of another.

Illustration: Simon Letch

This essential feature of the No campaign is operating like an oil well on the Australian political landscape: drilling into community anxiety, hitting a reservoir of discontent and bringing an ugly fury gushing to the surface.

The fury is impossible to ignore now the referendum has reached the final weeks of the campaign. Why else would No campaigner Nyunggai Warren Mundine call the Uluru Statement – the origin of the Voice – a “declaration of war” against the nation? This was overheated rhetoric in his speech to the National Press Club on Tuesday and played to the worst side of the national character.

But there is growing anger on all sides. Yes campaigners cannot hide their frustration at the way the No camp is gaining ground, while No supporters display a deep objection to the fundamental idea of the Voice. Sometimes, on social media, the result is pure hate.

The core assertion is false, of course. The Voice is not about elevating one race above another. It is not about race at all. It is about recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people because they were here first. This is fundamental, but forgotten, in a debate that is now smothered by arguments about race.

The falsehood holds a real power in this referendum and will stain the landscape long after the vote. Does the Voice really divide Australians by race? No. It is the big lie that just won’t die.

One of the architects of the Voice, Noel Pearson, punctured the falsehood in his remarks to the National Press Club one day after Mundine’s address. “We’re not a separate race – we’re humans,” he said. “It’s just that we are Indigenous. And you go to some parts of the world and indigenous people are blond and blue-eyed. This is not about race. This is about us being the original peoples in the country.”

Pearson said the opponents of the Voice had never admitted to this misrepresentation of the core proposal.

“It has been in their interest to conflate the two things – race and indigeneity,” he said. “It’s crucial to their campaign. But I would ask Australians to understand this is not about race. This is about Indigenous. And the simple question about Indigenous is, were there peoples here before 1788? And the answer is yes. There were Aborigines, and there were Torres Strait Islanders. And that’s what we’re recognising – not a separate race.”

This should not be contentious. The United Nations says there are about 370 million indigenous people in 70 countries. This is not about the colour of their skin, or stereotypes about who they are and how they behave. It is about their connection to the land before others arrived in more recent history.

The argument in favour of the Voice is simple: it is to be an advisory committee, made permanent in the Constitution, with its powers and functions defined by parliament. The claim about race, however, is unstoppable now the pressure has been unleashed – and this helps explain the undeniable racism in the debate, especially online.

There are fair reasons a voter might want to say no the Voice, such as a sense of caution about changing the Constitution or a distrust of the way parliament might empower the new advisory group. Australians will vote as they see fit. But arguments based on race are the last thing the country needs.

This week saw two utterly different visions for Australia after October 14. Mundine urged Australians to reject the “declaration of war” in the Uluru Statement, while Pearson promised a “peace dividend” by settling old divisions.

Pearson’s vision seemed idyllic. He spoke of the Voice as a forum that could reach from a national peak to local meetings in a marquee under the mango trees in places like Aurukun in Cape York. He talked about how these local groups could meet every quarter, with Indigenous people on one side of the table and bureaucrats on the other, to talk about justice, housing, health, education and more.

“There’s no construction of special offices, no creation of special bureaucracies,” Pearson said.

That assurance will probably seem naive to anyone who is cynical about the way governments work – which means most of us. But consider the utopian vision from the No side, which sets out a future where a simple No vote can end victimhood.

Mundine portrayed the Voice as a return to segregation. “No other group of Australians will have an unelected body enshrined in the Constitution to speak on their behalf with a presumed uniform opinion,” he said. Setting aside the casual misinformation in that sentence – a key fact is that the government wants the Voice to be an elected body – the argument is that the Voice would continue a form of special treatment when all Australians should be treated the same way.

This seems far more naive than the Yes argument for an advisory body. While it might be possible for the country to attain true equality for its Indigenous and non-Indigenous citizens, that day is some way off. The regular reports on closing the gap show the scale of Indigenous disadvantage on health, education and other measures.

Mundine glossed over one example of the gap between the two worlds by saying it was “just not true” that young Indigenous people were more likely to go to jail than university. Unfortunately, there were about 13,000 prisoners from Indigenous backgrounds in 2021, and only 3500 graduates that year, according to figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Universities Australia. In other words, almost four prisoners for every graduate. Data from the Productivity Commission also shows scale of the education gap.

Mundine was right to emphasise the importance of education and work – and he should know, given he climbed his way out of poverty by going to night classes to finish school. Beneath his argument, however, was the idea that things are not that bad. “The fact is that most Indigenous Australians are doing fine,” he said. This told Australians what they would like to believe is true. Actually, too many Indigenous Australians are not doing fine at all.

For the No side, the promise of a better world tomorrow relies too often on denying the scale of the disadvantage today. And there is a direct line from this false foundation to the claim that there is no need to help Indigenous Australians with an advisory group that is set up to speak for them. Worse, however, is the leap to the ultimate falsehood – that this advisory group divides Australians by race.

David Crowe is chief political correspondent.