Campaign for Indigenous voice to rise with grassroots effort

Labor and Indigenous supporters of the voice will launch the Yes campaign with a ‘week of action’ next month.

Senator Pat Dodson says ‘a voice means listening to local communities and local solutions’. Picture: Martin Ollman

Labor and Indigenous supporters of the voice will launch the Yes campaign with a “week of action” next month, including the recruitment of everyday Australians as volunteers.

Doorknocking and community barbecues will start across the nation next month in an effort to propel momentum for a successful referendum on the question of whether to amend the Constitution to guarantee the existence of an Indigenous advisory body to parliament. The Yes campaign will begin in the same week that No campaigners Warren Mundine and senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price are due in Perth to try to convince the West Australian Nationals to withdraw their support for an Indigenous voice.

Anthony Albanese’s Special Envoy for Reconciliation, Senator Pat Dodson, told The Australian the week of action “is about talking directly with Australians about why we need a voice to parliament in the Constitution”.

“A voice means listening to local communities and local solutions, changing the policies and programs that aren’t working, and improving the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people,” Senator Dodson said.

“I’ll be out there campaigning, but this will be led by the grassroots and community organisations that have been working for years to make a voice a reality.”

The Victorian Women’s Trust will support the Yes campaign using its Kitchen Table Conversations model that it famously deployed to help Cathy McGowan break the Coalition’s hold on the seat of Indi in 2013.

The trust’s executive director, Mary Crooks, predicted women, in particular, would embrace the organisation’s “Together Yes” campaign for a successful voice referendum, based on open, respectful and honest dialogue.

“It works,” she told followers in an email.

“Together Yes will encourage huge numbers of people around the country to step up and host small group discussions about colonisation, harm and injustice; the important role of First Nations people and culture in Australia’s identity; and what it would look like to accept an invitation to walk into the future together.”

During the week of action, which is expected to start on February 20, the Uluru Dialogue campaign will launch details of its First Nations community engagement and its “yarning circles”, aimed at educating the broader Australian community who want to give clear information about the voice to colleagues, friends and community groups.

The Uluru Dialogue campaign has existed for five years and is led by Indigenous people from metropolitan, regional and remote Australia who have lobbied and worked towards a voice in the Constitution since the Uluru Statement from the Heart called for it in 2017.

The group behind the History is Calling campaign will launch a new advertisement and host community discussions around Australia in coming months.

The From the Heart initiative will launch a field campaign in Adelaide on February 23 that will rely on volunteers.

Some will make phone calls to voters or campaign door-to-door, offering information about the proposal to enshrine an Indigenous advisory body in the Constitution. Others will be encouraged to hold conversations in their workplace to “deepen understanding” of the referendum, and to discuss the agreed principles of the Indigenous voice, including that it will have no power of veto over legislation. The Prime Minister confirmed in December that the voice referendum would be held in the second half of this year.

Labor intends to introduce necessary legislation as soon as March and then support a parliamentary inquiry into the wording of the proposed constitutional amendment.

The No campaign has established a fundraising committee and intends to capitalise on the high profile of Senator Price.