A group that supports the Indigenous voice to parliament wants to alienate No campaigners

It comes as Marcia Langton says the voice will help fix the Constitution by ameliorating racism in the nation’s birth certificate.

nearly half of Indigenous Australians don’t know about the upcoming referendum. Picture: Kevin Farmer

A GetUp-backed group that supports the Indigenous voice to ­parliament is urging advocates, organisations and journalists to alienate opponents and encourage them to make racist comments so more Australians join the Yes camp, as its research shows nearly half of Indigenous Australians don’t even know about the upcoming referendum.

The results of the research can be revealed as prominent Yes campaigner Marcia Langton declared the establishment of a voice would help fix the Constitution by ameliorating racism in the founding document.

Professor Langton said there were sections of the nation’s birth certificate, such as the so-called race power, that could cause ­Aboriginal Australians harm.

The government’s Constitution Alteration Bill, laying out the question and amendment Australians will vote on at the referendum later this year, is due to pass the Senate next week, amid warnings from NSW Liberal senator Andrew Bragg that soft Yes votes were turning into hard No votes because the Albanese government had refused to find a centre ground.

In an almost two-hour webinar earlier this month, the group – called Passing the Message Stick – advocated the best ways to win over undecided parts of the population and found Indigenous people were “largely sitting in the persuadable audience, which is really a problem for the campaign because they are so influential”.

Led by Indigenous leaders including referendum working group member Jackie Huggins and GetUp chief executive Larissa Baldwin, Passing the Message Stick describes itself as “a message research project designed to shift public narrative in support of First Nations justice and self-­determination, paving the way for long-term change”.

“Over 45 per cent (of Indigenous Australians) are saying they have heard very little or know nothing about the referendum (and) 25 per cent have said they’re a No in terms of where they are sitting on the campaign,” Ms Baldwin told at least 400 viewers of the ­webinar. She also noted there was a “significant grassroots No camp” among Indigenous Australians, many of whom believe treaty processes should come before a voice to parliament, as former Greens senator Lidia Thorpe has argued.

In research provided by Common Cause Australia – one of the organisations supporting Passing the Message Stick – about 20 per cent of the broader population were identified as strong voice supporters, or the “base” of the campaign. Another 65 per cent were identified as “open to being persuaded either way”, while 15 per cent were opponents.

“The opponents, we do not need or want them, they are the staunch opponents,” Common Cause Australia director Eleanor Glenn told the webinar. “Our messages should alienate them. When we do this, they start making outlandish and racist comments that turn off the persuadables because persuadables don’t want to see themselves as being racist or aligned with those kinds of comments. It’s then easier to bring the persuadables on-board to our welcoming, inclusive better future.”

After addressing an Aboriginal health conference on Wednesday, Professor Langton told The Australian those who lied about the voice stoking racial division would be “judged by history and even sooner by Australians who bother to find out the facts”. “What we are doing is fixing the Constitution to ameliorate the racism of the Constitution,” she said.

Professor Langton gave a keynote address to the Lowitja Institute’s third international indigenous health and wellbeing con­ference, in which, according to the institute’s tweets of her speech, she reportedly said supporters of the voice were trying to destroy the fabric of the Constitution.

“People who are opposing (the voice referendum) are saying we are destroying the fabric of their sacred Constitution. Yes, that’s right, that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Professor Langton said, according to the institute.

“Our Constitution is racist … it was designed as a racist Constitution. The slogan was ‘Australia for the white man’.”

The Australian was told a copy of her speech was unavailable because it was spoken ad lib and the audio had not been processed.

Professor Langton said the institute’s reporting of her speech was not quite accurate and she had been misquoted by tweeters.

James McGrath, one of the Liberals who will be drafting the No argument in the official referendum pamphlet, raised concern with the strategy of provoking racism and the move to “deliberately alienate” Australians. Opposition Indigenous Australians spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price called the tactics “nasty and divisive” in attempting to ostracise people who disagreed with the proposed body.

Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney declined to comment on the matter.