No campaign targets soft Yes vote

Soft Yes voters are more likely to vote No if they believe Indigenous Australians are against the voice, as new polling shows split support among First Nations people.

No campaigner Warren Mundine says Indigenous Australians are “concerned about the consequences of speaking up”. Picture: Adam Yip

The number of Indigenous voters backing the voice remains divided according to new No campaign polling and focus group research showing that soft Yes voters were more likely to vote against the voice if told that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were opposed.

Unreleased No campaign polling of Indigenous Australians conducted between February and May shows a softening in support for the voice referendum among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Amid a battle between Yes23 and No to win over Indigenous Australians and soft voters ahead of an expected October referendum, the government on Sunday accused the Nationals and Liberals of splitting over the ­Coalition’s commitment to implement regional voices.

On the ABC’s Insiders, Nationals leader David Littleproud distanced his party from Peter Dutton’s plan to legislate regional and local bodies across the country instead of a national voice.

“I have a real concern about going back to regional models because what it means to us in regional and remote areas is hundreds of thousands of square kilometres, not 20sq km across a couple of suburbs,” he said.

Asked if he was at odds with Mr Dutton, Mr Littleproud said his partyroom would ultimately decide on the details of how regional voices would progress if the ­Coalition won the 2025 election.

“There will be a change in how we’re doing things at the moment but … it’s not my decision to make in isolation, that’s the primacy of the partyroom and we’ll work through our lived experience that we have from representing rural and remote Australia and making sure we get their interests heard in policy settings,” he said.

In The Weekend Australian, the Opposition Leader committed the Coalition to fighting for constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians and rejected Anthony Albanese’s claim that Australia would not have another chance to vote on the issue if the referendum failed.

Pushing the Not My Voice campaign, No spokesman Warren Mundine said it was “incorrect” to say almost all Indigenous people support the voice to parliament.

While 60 per cent of Indigenous Australians from a sample of 441 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were in favour of a voice up to June, No campaigners say the overall number of people supporting the referendum is lower than previously suggested by the government and Yes23.

Focus group research by the No campaign found that when Australians were told not all Indigenous voters supported the voice, a number of people who indicated a soft Yes vote switched to No. Of the six groups of soft Yes voters the No campaign spoke to, nine of 10 voters shifted to No.

The numbers also shifted when voters were told there were 11 Indigenous MPs and senators in parliament and the government could legislate a voice without altering the Constitution.

Mr Mundine said many Indigenous people were concerned about the “consequences of speaking up”. “Take it from me, when you stand up and make it clear that you’re against the voice, the activists and the trolls come after you. The voice has been very divisive in the Aboriginal community. It’s been very divisive in mainstream Australia,” he said.

The No campaigner attacked the voice as a “project of inner-city elite Indigenous activists (who) don’t speak for me and don’t speak for many other Aboriginals”.

Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

Ahead of ALP national conference this week, which Labor will use as a springboard to kickstart its referendum campaign, Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil and Immigration Minister Andrew Giles on Sunday launched Multicultural Australia for the Voice.

With Yes23 campaigners targeting multicultural communities in key outer-suburban electorates, representatives from the Sudanese, Hazara, Khmer, Bangladeshi, Tamil, Indian and other communities attended the Melbourne launch.