The Women’s Agenda Leadership Awards on Friday October 13 showed me the courage of women, the strength of First Nations peoples and the gravity of the referendum and the potential Voice to Parliament.
Young women from the Melbourne Indigenous Transition School stood on stage in front of a crowd of 350 people to give the Acknowledgement to Country. They spoke of their aspirations for the future – to become footy legends, politicians and our future leaders.
This moment showed me the best of Australia. And then, just 24 hours later, the result of the referendum showed me the worst.
On Saturday, more than 60 per cent of Australians voted No to enshrining an Indigenous Voice to Parliament in the Constitution, recognising over 65,000 years of histories, cultures and our First Peoples. It was a modest proposal with the intent to improve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lives at the expense of nobody else.
I thought of it as a no brainer. It wasn’t.
24 hours later, the future I envisioned at the Women’s Agenda Leadership Awards was quickly and inexplicably tainted by one word: No.
Now, a referendum that held so much hope has been reduced to a “wake-up call” for white Australia. Something that hundreds of people poured time, money, resources, energy and, most of all, their hearts and souls into, is now simply an opportunity for the rest of the country to take a good long hard look at ourselves. And the picture isn’t pretty.
Whatever happens; there’s a line in the sand. We’ll remember who stood up and did the most. There was always going to be work to be done, now we’ll know where to spend our energy.
— Senator Briggs (Biblically Accurate) (@Briggs) October 14, 2023
Non-Indigenous Australians knew that 80 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples suppported a Voice to Parliament enshrined in the Constitution, well before voting day. Results from the final count of the vote shows similar results. In remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory’s electorate of Lingiari, 73 per cent voted Yes. It’s the same story in communities in other parts of the country, like Mornington Island in Queensland or Halls Creek in WA.
But ultimately, we allowed fear and racism to win over love. Our colonial past solidified a colonial future.
I was so naively optimistic for a positive result out of the referendum. I thought people would do the right thing, get informed, vote with their hearts, their humanity.
But this whole process has proved that our hearts are in the wrong place.
And I say “our” because I am part of the problem. On Saturday, I was left with the overwhelming and shameful feeling, that I could have done more. I could have had that hard and heated discussion with family members. I could have checked in with friends on where they were getting information, whether they had enrolled to vote, whether they knew the date of the referendum. (I spoke with someone who thought voting was open for two days…)
Each time I open my phone, I see a new person posting a black screen, or someone resharing a post, disappointed at the result. This shows solidarity with Indigenous people. But it must not stop there.
In the last 200+ years, when white Australia has ignored the voices of Indigenous Australians, First Peoples have risen up. We’ve heard from First Nations peoples that they intend to do the same– I just hope we haven’t lost our chance to walk with them.
My message to non-indigenous Australians? Before you post a black screen on your Instagram story, or reshare something a First Nations person has posted, ask yourself: are you part of the problem?