It has been billed as Australia’s Brexit – a vote that pitted the so-called elites against the masses. The issue in question was the “voice to parliament”, a consultative body that would have given the roughly 3% of the Australian population that is Indigenous a constitutional right to be consulted before legislation pertaining to them was passed in parliament.
On October 13, the proposition was only backed by 39% of voters. It was a snub to Labor prime minister Anthony Albanese, who was elected last year on a promise to put the issue to a vote.
A bit of background is helpful to understanding how this came about. In 2017 then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, of the centre-right Liberal party, and Bill Shorten of Labor, the then leader of the opposition, appointed a council to come up with proposals for recognition of the indigenous population. In their so-called Uluru Statement of the Heart, the appointed members – Indigenous elders – called for “a First Nations Voice to be permanently included in the Constitution”.
