If the No wins, the world will think we’re racist anyway

If the referendum is lost, all Australians will be losers.

However much we may enjoy the spotlight on the world stage, the danger is that on October 15 and afterward, it will be interpreted by outsiders, whether we like it or not, as the vote of an ignorant and racist populace.

Alfred Deakin, one of the architects of the Constitution, was a white supremacist.Credit:

What other country would frame its opposition to constitutional change with a heartfelt appeal to cluelessness: “If you don’t know, vote No”? If you don’t know, then you should have found out and might then have realised that the Voice is only a problem if you vote against it.

The problem is that intelligent observers all over the world recognise that Indigenous people do have a right to address the government and the executive on matters in which they have a legitimate interest. This is entirely normal and uncontroversial and the least that should be vouchsafed to communities who have suffered genocide and displacement.

In the USA, Canada, and several nations in northern Europe, Indigenous people are guaranteed their land and legal rights to petition the government. From New Zealand to Mauritius, they have their own seats in parliament.

A UN declaration, celebrated this week on its anniversary, asserts the special entitlement of all First Nations. If Australians vote No, we will appear to outside observers as racist, in the sense of denying to an ethnic minority an opportunity for advancement to which they are entitled.

Racism has tainted the Australian Constitution from the outset. The founding fathers (as a law student, I once read all their debates) spoke of Aboriginals as if they were kangaroos threatening the crops and were not entitled to any protection; not even a single reference in the Constitution.

Alfred Deakin, three times prime minister, hoped they would all die out and erected a White Australia policy to ensure they would not be replaced by those he referred to as “tinted people” from abroad.

They should not underestimate the toxicity that attaches to people connected, even inadvertently, to racism. This will tarnish Australians if this referendum, now publicised throughout the world, does not pass. It will open Australia up to charges of hypocrisy when its government complains of China’s discrimination against Uyghurs, and it will undermine the important efforts we are making to be a force for good in the Pacific.

Ironically, Australia will have to lower its own voice to a considerable degree within the international community, and it will damage the chances of Australian candidates for international positions if they come from a country perceived as unfair to its Indigenous people. I doubt whether Mathias Cormann would have won appointment to the OECD had his candidacy come in the wake of a referendum defeat for the Voice.

It might be worth risking international obloquy if there were anything of worth in the case for No. But all it offers are idle and pettifogging debating points – the Voice is “legally risky” (which it is not, entrusted to a robust High Court), “there are no details” (just thousands of pages of reports on how it will work), “it opens the door to activists” (no, it opens the door to a new generation of Indigenous leaders). The No case continues with a claim that “we all want to help Indigenous Australians” – but many of its proponents show no desire to do so. “It divides us” – but those doing the dividing for reasons of partisan politics of self-publicity, are the promoters of No.

The best reason for voting Yes to my mind, is that the original constitution was drafted by deep-dyed racists and needs to be changed to accommodate a world that has moved on from the times of Deakin.

The racist origins of the Constitution should be a matter of shame and a concern for all Australians, and we should be grateful to the Indigenous communities involved in the Uluru Statement for coming up with this idea of the Voice which will bring our Constitution into the 21st century.

Of course, the Voice does not go far enough. The government should finally implement the recommendations of royal commissions to address the over-representation of Indigenous people in the criminal justice system, including children, and to put an end to deaths in custody which disproportionately affect First Nations peoples. But the Voice is a start to addressing the inequality embedded in our Constitution.

Those inclined to vote No should think about how they would be regarded in later times: certainly as without pride or confidence in what Australia is capable of achieving. Future generations of Australians will castigate them for the simple reason that in 2023 they chose to give their country a bad name.

I am old enough to remember a trip to Redfern with Faith Bandler, who led the Yes campaign for the 1967 referendum. To those who made the same objections to constitutional change that we are hearing today, she replied that the only way to achieve dignity was through a change in the national constitution. She had the support of all decent Australians.

Geoffrey Robertson AO KC is the author of The Statute of Liberty - How Australians Can Take Back Their Rights (Vintage).

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