Stan Grant laments Indigenous voice to parliament referendum defeat: ‘People found it easy to say No’

Stan Grant has rebutted the suggestion by Yes campaigners the Indigenous voice was a ‘modest’ ask, declaring it was actually ‘monumental’.

Former ABC presenter Stan Grant stood down from his role at the national broadcaster following backlash over the Coronation coverage.

Journalist Stan Grant has ­rebutted the suggestion by Yes campaigners the Indigenous voice to parliament was a ­“modest” ask, declaring it was ­actually “monumental” as he blasted the No vote at the ­referendum.

In an emotive speech delivered in Canberra on Monday night as part of the ANU’s Crawford Leadership Forum, the Wiradjuri man and ex-ABC presenter said the referendum’s failure meant Australians had lost a voice through which to speak to each other.

“The voice was never a modest ask, it was monumental,” Grant said, according to a pre-released copy of his speech.

“Perhaps this was the opportunity lost by the Yes campaign, to not let the voice truly speak. Instead it was shushed, shrunk small enough to fit into politics.

“In the consultants’ suites and the lawyers’ dens, it was determined that if the voice was made so inoffensive people may say Yes.

“Instead, it was so inoffensive people found it so easy to say No.

“The Constitution is not our problem. Our conscience is our problem.

“The Constitution does its job. It is an invisible hand and that’s how Australians like it.

“A nation is not written in a Constitution, it is written in the heart. And our Constitution was not big enough for our call from the heart.”

Supporters of the voice, including Anthony Albanese, repeatedly said the change to the Constitution was a modest request from Indigenous Australians for recognition and to be listened to.

Grant, who has been ­appointed Monash University’s inaugural director of the Constructive Institute Asia Pacific after he quit the ABC, also ­revealed during the oration that as he watched the votes being tallied on referendum night he heard “nothing that does not make me feel sore”.

Shireen Morris, left, Anne Twomey, Stan Grant, Thomas Mayo, and Shane Phillips at the Sydney Town Hall for a City of Sydney voice forum. Picture: John Feder

He has admitted to describing Australia as “mean” during a recent trip to Europe and criticised No campaign slogan “if you don’t know, vote No”.

“Our nation is set in stone: one word, ‘No’. Whatever hope there may be for a different Australia, I likely won’t live to see it,” he said at Canberra’s Hyatt Hotel.

“This is the Australia I bequeath to my children. Like all orphans they will have their memories and however pained they may be, they can never be reconciled. My dead: black and white – my ancestors – lie restless in this land.

“We have laid the sod over them, sealed them in. I thought in me they may be able to speak, that those two sides of me might find a common voice. “But we said no to that. My country has buried my ancestors for a second time.”

Grant reflected on the “evil” of Australia’s past and questioned if history was over while also referencing German philosopher Theodor Adorno’s famous phrase “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric”.

Comparing the voice to “a thing of poetry” and labelling the referendum outcome “a judgment on me and all the others like me”, Grant said he felt closer to his black grandfather than his white grandmother on October 14.

“That’s what this vote has done, this is its cruelty: it has robbed me of you. Australia has decided who we are. It has reminded me of the space between us,” he said.

“The weary leaders will now return to the flinty ground of Indigenous suffering in Australia. They will chip away with what tools they have. God bless them.”

Aboriginal author Jackie Huggins also said during the ­referendum campaign Australians would cast their vote based on “what people think of us”.