With the Voice to Parliament Referendum date announced to be October 14 2023, this thread will run in the lead up to the date for general discussions/queries regarding the Voice to Parliament.
The Proposed Constitutional Amendment
Chapter IX Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples
129 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice
In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:
there shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice; the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; the Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.
Past Discussions
Here are some previous posts in this community regarding the referendum:
- The Voice referendum official Yes/No pamphlets
- Linda Burney says there is everything to gain and nothing to lose by supporting the Voice
- Families distressed after 'highly misleading' video used by anti-Voice campaigners goes viral
- The Indigenous Voice to Parliament – separating fact from fiction | 7.30
- 10 questions about the Voice to Parliament - answered by the experts
- The yes pamphlet: campaign’s voice to parliament referendum essay – annotated and factchecked
- Fact-checking for the "No" referendum pamphlet was not compulsory
Common Misinformation
- "The Uluru Statement from the Heart is 26 Pages not 1" - not true
Government Information
- Referendum question and constitutional amendment
- voice.gov.au - General information about the Voice
Amendments to this post
If you would like to see some other articles or posts linked here please let me know and I'll try to add it as soon as possible.
- Added the proposed constitutional amendment (31/08/2023)
- Added Common Misinformation section (01/07/2023)
Discussion / Rules
Please follow the rules in the sidebar and for aussie.zone in general. Anything deemed to be misinformation or with malicious intent will be removed at moderators' discretion. This is a safe space to discuss your opinion on the voice or ask general questions.
Please continue posting news articles as separate posts but consider adding a link to this post to encourage discussion.
The idea that the voice is some sort of useless idea is seriously flawed. Policy institutes and Parliamentary hearing and committee are the biggest drivers of policy in this country. Media attention and petitions aren't nearly as effective in this regard. The voice will likely not be integrated as a Parliamentary comittee is, due to its being a separate body, but will still offer valuable representation to Parliament to those who came before these institutions and this country. Aboriginals had their own traditions, nations and sovereignty on land that was not ceded. We have accepted their legal and unique history with this land, this is merely saying that within the framework of Australia as a country, that Aboriginals deserve access to our legislature and executive on matters that affect them.
The popular argument by resident no voter @whirlybird@aussie.zone seems to be that this is virtue signalling and that this would be the end of social justice for Aboriginals, that resistance would develop in trying to advance a cause further. They seem to suggest that we would be better off doing something of substance, as to not foment resistance and resentment. I would hope that on the first point, its been made clear that there is real benefit to having a Voice, and the second is irrelevant, the Australian population will tire after a no vote, and after a yes vote. Its the jobs of those politically active, the media, the Voice itself, politicians, and those non apathetic people to push for more when the time comes.
A second argument I hear, and the most factually true argument I hear is lack of detail. It is true that there is a lack of official detail from those legislators who will be advancing bills if the referendum finishes in the affirmative. It is also understandable to want to know in substance what the fruits of your vote would be. Id encourage those who would like to learn to listen to ideas from the referendum working group and those associated with the yes campaign on rough ideas of a Voice if this is the case. Its important to remember that we are voting on the amendment though, not the bill itself. There are significant measures that must go into establishing the voice in substance:
All of these questions take significant time. If you can focus on the amendment, and whether support those ideas outside of what a future voice may look like, it will help.
That's your opinion. It's not mine or plenty of other peoples, including lots of indigenous people.
Yeah, they just don't actually get any power over it. Gee aren't we nice for giving them the ability to say "hey nah we don't like this" before we say "tough shit, we're doing it" and there's nothing they can do.
It hasn't, no matter how many times you want to say it has.
I don't care about "rough ideas", I care about knowing the actual details of the things I'm being asked to put in our constitution. Why on earth should I vote to add something to it that we have no idea what it will look like, but we know that it can just change at the whim of the current party in power?
Then they should have taken that time before asking us to vote on it. This didn't need to be rushed through. Any issues of timelines are caused by the people pushing for the referendum, thinking they can just bully everyone into voting yes by calling them racists, when all we want is to actually have details on what the voice will look like and what it can do. The referendum should not have been pushed without these details, and it would likely be a dramatically different result if we had what we are asking for but being told we can't have unless we vote yes.
Who? All polling suggests an overwhelming majority (>80%+ Yes, <15% No) of Indigenous Australians support the Voice. Provide some evidence or stop making this baseless claim. And no, more boring anecdotes about your "Indigenous friends" is not sufficient evidence.
It wouldn't be a Whirlybird comment without some more crying about hurt feelings. Are you ever going to grow up and get a real argument? Maybe provide some evidence to back up anything you say? Or is this really the best you've got? Just another completely irrelevant sob story about how some imaginary Yes campaigner was mean to you online.
Never mind the actual hard, documented evidence of racism within the No campaign - the real problem (according to you) is that once upon a time a mythical Yes campaigner misidentified your ignorance as racism and you found that so incredibly offensive and life altering that you now feel the need to remind us of it in every single comment. Get over it already.
Ah yes, the infamous “over 80% support it” based on a poll of 700 indigenous people 😂.
I’m assuming you’re the same person that said I had “hurt feelings” like this last time? My feelings aren’t hurt at all, though I have to wonder about yours considering how upset you seem to be getting. I’m stating facts - a big part of the yes supporters tactics are just say that anyone who doesn’t vote yes is racist. I’m sure you’ve done it plenty of times already, since you just did it to me 😂
The way you’re just making stuff up to try and attack me is exactly what I’m saying. You just try and bully people into your beliefs. Like I said, when you do that you shouldn’t expect people to side with you, but to turn even more against you. That’s how it has worked all throughout history.
More deflection. Where's your evidence for your claim?
What claim? What deflection?
You’re just calling me racist and claiming my feelings are hurt, literally proving my point.
Source?
You think I need a source to say lots of indigenous people are voting no? 😂
What you're saying implies the existence of some sort of majority. Something which you have argued a lot. Some polling shows that around 80% of Indigenous Australians support the voice, last time I checked around 20% is a minority
Is 20% not “lots”? If 20% of our population died would you not say a lot of people died?
I'm not arguing over whether 20% is an insignificant amount of people which by most measures it isn't. But it also isn't close to a majority, if it was something like a 60-40 or 50-50 split I would accept your argument. But it would appear that a fairly strong majority of First Nations people support the voice, substantially more than those that don't.
I’ve never said the majority don’t support it though, so I don’t know why you’re arguing like I have?
I’ve said a poll of 700 people isn’t worth the paper it was printed on, and that 20% of the population would classify as a lot, which it does. There are not many measures where 20% isn’t a significant amount.
You're not even interacting with my comment, I never said that 20% was insignificant, in fact I said it's not. What it sounds like you're trying to say is that Indigenous people are more divided on this than polling would indicate. However, you don't provide any evidence to the contrary because you cannot, as you just said polling is pointless, the only time all Indigenous Australians will be asked this is on the 14th of October. Even then we won't be able to tell how many Indigenous people voted each way, and it will be too late for people to make their votes based on that. Thus nullifying your reasoning against the alteration.
You shouldn't be voting based on what other people think. There will never be something that 100% of a reasonably large group will be happy with. Never. At what point do you accept that not many people are against something 10%? 1%?
The poll being cited isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. 732 people. It’s irrelevant. You can make a poll say whatever you want, especially with such a tiny number of participants.
Almost every indigenous person I personally know and interact with - which is a lot since my wife works in the indigenous health field and I went to a school with about 40% indigenous population - are voting no.
You said I am saying the majority are against it. I didn’t say that, and we don’t know either way. I’m saying that 20% in a shitty poll is still a LOT of people and that shouldn’t be ignored, and that’s in the shitty poll that was no doubt run and paid for by Yes leaning organisations/people.
I’ll us whatever is available to me to make my decision on how to vote, including what other people I trust think, especially those that were supposedly doing this for. If you shouldn’t be voting based on what others think then why is the 80% poll still being brought up?
I'm not voting based on the poll, I've got my own reasons. No one should vote based on the poll. You're the one voting based on how many people you think support it not me and many other people here
That’s not at all why I’m voting no.
You claimed "lots of Indigenous people" think the Voice is a useless idea. Where is your evidence?
Yeah, and I’m shocked you’re actually asking for a source on that because that’s ridiculous.
The source you’re quoting was a poll of 700 indigenous people 😂
Why is it ridiculous? If you make a claim, back it up with evidence.
The two polls I cited are evidence. Despite your faux scepticism, their accuracy was explained clearly to you by another user earlier this month. First you attempted to argue that they were inaccurate because Australia has a population of 5 million Indigenous Australians, and when it was pointed out to you that this figure is completely wrong and you have no idea what you're talking about, you proceeded to double-down and make baseless claims about the validity of the reults despite being unable to provide a single, statistical explanation of how they were "wildly and massively incorrect".
Every time someone asks you to provide a source or some evidence, you crumble. You start strawmanning, or attempting to divert or deflect attention away from your obviously fake and flawed arguments to something completely irrelevant like your feelings. You have absolutely nothing of value to offer in this debate and it is painfully obvious for everyone to see.
So much wrong here lol.
Just because the people doing the study claim a tiny margin of error doesn’t mean they’re right. I didn’t claim 5 million either, I said that as the post I responded to said 20% of our population, which equals about 5 million. I was responding to what was written.
A poll of 700 people, with no details on how they were selected or who made up the 700 people, can not be used to say 80% of all indigenous people support it 😂.
You’re going off the rails mate lol. Calm down and stop making things up that have only happened in your head.
Why not? You are still yet to offer any scientific or statistical explanation as to why this poll is flawed.
Because it’s 700 people.
It was already explained to you that a sample size of 732 is more than enough. Most nationwide political polls are conducted with similar sample sizes that represent a significantly smaller proportion of the total population. The poll has been checked by experts who endorsed its methodology and said there is no scientific evidence to suggest it is inaccurate.
Again, where is your evidence that "lots of Indigenous people" don't support the Voice or think it is a useless idea?
You're free to believe that, but I don't. Just because it was "explained to me" it doesn't make it true. I can "explain to you" how the earth is flat, but that doesn't mean it is. A poll of 732 people (that we don't know the selection process/criteria for btw) is not to be taken seriously as being representative of the entire indigenous population. It's an absolutely pathetic sample size.
By your own favourite poll, 20% don't support it. 20% of the population is "lots".
No it's not. It would be a standard sample size for a nationwide poll if we were dealing with the entirety of Australia's voting population, and in this case we are limited to a significantly smaller number of people. You are essentially claiming that every political poll is completely useless because they all have an "absolutely pathetic sample size" according to you.
Wrong. The No vote was between 10 and 14% across those two polls. That is not "lots", it is a minority.
Most are, yes.
Using a poll of unknown selection criteria and size of 700 people to determine the popularity of an entire population is stupid and should be taken with a grain of salt - like all tiny polls like that. They can say their margin of error is 2% or whatever they want but it doesn't make it true.
If only 80% of them support it, 20% don't. Math, how does it work?
Also a minority can still be "lots" 🤣. Words, how do they work? You're saying that there aren't lots of indigenous people then, since they're a minority, right?
The YouGov poll was not "tiny". It was of a normal size. What do you find difficult about this concept?
The Ipsos poll reported 80% Yes, 10% No, 10% Undecided. The YouGov poll (the one you keep referencing) reported 83% Yes, 14% No, 4% Undecided. Neither of these polls reported No at 20%, that is a complete fabrication on your part. Stop lying.
Was that the 732 person one? If it was, it's tiny.
It can be the "normal" size for a poll while also being tiny/small. These things aren't mutually exclusive. Again, words, how do they work?
If you're not voting yes you're voting no. If you're undecided and don't vote yes, it's a no. This is embarrassing for you. If you don't vote yes, you're against it even if you are "undecided".
Is that the one that was only 300 people? 🤣
is this a big thing that was faked, and has no evidence?
?
By your braindead logic, the undecided responses can also be interpreted as support for Yes because they failed to indicate their support for No. According to you, Indigenous support for Yes is between 87% and 90%.
If you’re undecided on an issue you don’t support it.
You should probably just go back to virtue signalling and calling people racist.
If you're undecided on an issue, you haven't decided whether you support it. That's why they call it undecided.
????????
If you’re undecided it means you don’t currently support it.
Might have got you mixed up with one of the virtue signalling “everyone who votes no is racist” posters, if so I apologise.
@Whirlybird @Ilandar Uh yes. You do.
If you're a white person you really shouldn't be trying to represent the views of Indigenous Australians. I don't care how you're voting, we all need to reflect on and consider whose voices we're trying to represent here.
So white people also shouldn’t be saying that “80%” of indigenous people support the voice either?
I would argue that's different because these people are citing polling information not trying to represent Indigenous voices. By design, quantitative data does not represent qualitative data. If they were trying to represent qualitative experiences, then yes absolutely this applies. It's important that we all reflect on our positions in this debate, especially if we are claiming to represent the perspectives of Indigenous Australians.
When I say lots of indigenous people don’t support the voice I’m also quoting polling data because even if you believe that 80% poll, 20% is a significant number. Even 10% is a significant number and qualifies as “lots”.
Statistically this argument makes no sense. I'm a qualitative researcher myself so i would agree that the qualitative experiences of those 20% are important, but quantitatively they are not. Regardless, the argument still stands, we need to critically reflect on our positions within this debate. You can vote however you want, but if you are advocating for your opinion on the basis that you know what Indigenous Australians want then well frankly that's not a great position for a non-indigenous person to occupy.
I’m not and never have advocated for that.
Also 20% is quantitively a big percentage.