If you ‘don’t know’ about the Voice, how about you actually listen?

I have to wonder what — as they sat there at the CPAC gathering listening to comedian Rodney Marks tell his jokes — was running through the minds of Nyunggai Warren Mundine and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, dabbing their eyes with their embroidered hankies and howling with laughter and saying, “It’s all true!” Were the jokes about Indigenous ceremony, “violent Black men” and theft of land to their taste? Were they truly in for the ride at the expense of their own people?

Or did a modicum of decency prevail and perhaps a little niggling feeling creep in, warning them that in their search for acceptance from some of Australia’s most repugnant, they’d gone too far? I doubt it. Years of watching have shown me that they will justify this, and the rest of the proceedings of CPAC, because at the end of the day they have gained a lot from aligning themselves in such ways.

It’s pretty shameful. What’s even more shameful is that these are the people Australians are looking to in order to gain their arguments for a No vote at the coming referendum. 

And as more material from the CPAC event drifts out into the public arena, we see that a reasonable chunk of it was spent driving this No vote via misinformation. Keynotes from Mundine, Price and Pauline Hanson. Matthew Sheahan having the floor, despite his lobbying group Advance Australia recently being found to have co-opted and twisted the voices of progressive Indigenous people to push a No vote. Gary Johns having a 15-minute slot to spruik his lines about integration of Indigenous communities along with his Recognise a Better Way campaign. Don’t conservatives have better things to do than fuel misinformation?

Apparently not, because while all that was going on, over the other side of the country in Perth, Senator Michaelia Cash was leading photo opportunities for the grinning gormless who held signs reading “Don’t know? Vote no”. Yet what is there actually to know? 

We have potentially less than two months to the referendum, and the misinformation campaigns are yet to reach a crescendo. If people were actually interested in knowing what the referendum is about, the information is readily available. The question is a basic yes/no answer, and the constitutional reforms that will happen if it does get voted up are easy to google. 

Yet time and time again, I hear claims from the regressive No camp that there is not enough information, that changing the constitution will divide the nation by race and give Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people special rights, that it is a Trojan horse for all of our other agendas such as land rights and treaties. Rubbish. 

The third dot point of the proposed constitutional amendment states that:

… 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.

In short, due to the very nature of its proposed structure, there is more danger that the Voice will do nothing at all because it is powerless and not self-determined.

It strikes me that, despite the fact that the Voice is an inherently conservative measure that is likely to achieve little, actual conservatives spent a lot of last week carrying on as if it were the biggest danger to Australia’s democracy ever suggested — even though constitutional recognition of Indigenous peoples was a measure CPAC hero John Howard actually wanted.

Meanwhile, independent Senator Lidia Thorpe was at the National Press Club outlining many of the arguments the Indigenous “progressive No” have been making, and highlighting what she believes is the way forward:

• Truth-telling about Australia’s history,
• Implementing the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody,
• Implementation of recommendations from the Bringing Them Home Report,
• Writing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into Australian law,
• Treaty.

It seemed her inherently reasonable calls mainly fell on deaf ears. It’s as if these ideas, and similar ideas that others in the community hold regarding what is wrong with the Voice and the Uluru Statement in full, are secondary to racist misinformation and rabid performance art. 

It worries me that we have to go through this for at least another two months. I am concerned about the mental health of the Indigenous community and how we’re going to fare. I also worry about the impacts these erasures of the very real discussions and concerns about the pros and cons of the Voice will have. 

I am less afraid of “racists” being emboldened should the referendum go down, for two reasons. Firstly, given all of the above, it appears folks are already emboldened to say whatever they like at our cost.

Secondly, as I have already stated, I don’t tend to buy that voting Yes is the great gesture of anti-racism that those alleged allies out there spruiking say that it is. I tend to agree with Thorpe that so much more needs to change in order for Australia to ever claim it is truly looking to a healthy and collaborative future.

Until then, if you don’t know, how about you actually listen?