Australians missed their chance to enshrine an Indigenous Voice in parliament by a large majority. Invited to vote in a referendum on Saturday, October 14, on constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians, they answered "No" by 60%, according to a provisional count on Sunday morning, burying a project six years in the making.
"It's very clear that reconciliation is dead," declared Marcia Langdon, one of the leading voices of the Indigenous Australian activist community, shortly after the first results were announced. Like many "Yes" supporters, she made no secret of her disappointment and bitterness at what was seen as a rejection of the planet's oldest civilization. "It's now up to all of us to come together and find a different way to the same reconciled destination. I am optimistic that we can. And indeed, that we must," the head of the Labour government, Anthony Albanese, tried to reassure voters.
When the referendum was announced at the end of December 2022, the "Yes" side enjoyed a comfortable lead with over 60% of voting intentions. "Campaigns of this type, which facilitate dialogue with the powers that be, exist and function perfectly in several states such as New Zealand, Canada and the Nordic countries. This was a very modest proposal that should have received bipartisan support," observed Amanda Nettelbeck, professor of colonial history at the University of Australia.
Glaring inequalities
But this was not the case. The leader of the Conservative opposition, Peter Dutton, called for a "No" to the voice referendum led by Anthony Albanese, in response to a request made in 2017 by Indigenous communities in the Uluru Statement from the Heart. The petition, the result of extensive dialogue and consultation, was based on three principles and as many stages: The establishment of a "voice," the creation of a truth commission and the signing of a treaty.
While the British Empire concluded agreements with most Indigenous communities during the colonial era, this was not the case in Australia, which it considered a terra nullius, or nobody's land. Indigenous communities, decimated by massacres and the diseases brought by settlers, then the subject of assimilation policies that saw children taken away from their parents until the 1970s, are still the victims of glaring inequalities, with a life expectancy eight years lower than the national average, higher incarceration and suicide rates, and more difficult access to education, employment and health services.
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