this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
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With a two-letter word, Australians have struck down the first attempt at constitutional change in 24 years, major media outlets reported, a move experts say will inflict lasting damage on First Nations people and suspend any hopes of modernizing the nation’s founding document.

Early results from the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) suggested that most of the country’s 17.6 million registered voters had written No on their ballots, and CNN affiliates 9 News, Sky News and SBS all projected no path forward for the Yes campaign.

The proposal, to recognize Indigenous people in the constitution and create an Indigenous body to advise government on policies that affect them, needed a majority nationally and in four of six states to pass.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (18 children)

Here in the European press, I read that many Aboriginals also opposed it. They want recognition, land transfers or compensation.

To really reconcile over past wrongs, I get that. There needs to be something substantive and I think something like that will only be possible when most boomers are gone.

We have similar debates over our colonial and enslaving past.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 10 months ago (4 children)

The point is that this would have given them a path toward voicing those sorts of things, directly to the people who can actually do something about it.

It could have been the start to a lot of great change, it was a simple easy thing to do

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Sure, I understand the idea and it would have been good if it passed.

But they can still voice their opinions, we have free speech, and change in the future is still possible.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

As others have stated, we explicitly don't have free speech in Australia.

We also don't have any laws requiring political campaigns to be truthful. And as we saw, the day after the vote was done. All the leaders of the "No" campaign flat out abandoned indigenous people and explicitly said they wouldn't be fronting a new referendum for recognition in the constitution without the voice. A promise they made repeatedly.

The leader of the opposition who spearheaded the no campaign has been called a fascist by his peers. And once commented that if elected he would do away with parliament and elections if he could.

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