John Peel writes: The Yes campaign has been utterly pathetic confronting the No campaign for what it is (“Australia — where pointing out racism is now worse than racism itself”). Of course the No campaign is based entirely on racism — either in the form of outright nastiness or in the form of a patronising “We know what’s best for you; you’re very lucky to have us” condescension.
It’s unbelievable that long past-it figures such as John Howard and Tony Abbott are allowed uncontested opinions when the Yes campaign should have called them out for the bigots they are. This tip-toeing around is very likely to cost it the referendum.
Irene Goldwasser writes: The Yes campaign was obviously told over and over again not to label those in the No campaign as racist, so many have taken the softly-softly approach now being criticised.
Australians have a serious problem with racism and this is not new, but they are amazingly thin-skinned when it comes to anyone calling it out. And although Indigenous Australians are at the forefront of this appalling abuse, they are not the only ones. Anyone of a non-Anglo-Saxon background is also targeted, including Asians, Africans, Jews, Muslims and Greeks.
The major problems with the referendum lie with (a) the No campaign and (b) with the Australian people. The lies, the misinformation, the deceit and fearmongering spread by the No campaign have reached epidemic levels, but it is the Australian public that has drunk far too much of the green cordial and chosen to believe it. The inability or unwillingness to do legitimate research, to use critical thinking and logic — as well as empathy — is a damning indictment of our collective lack of courage and maturity.
And thank you Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price for being either ignorant of the true history of white settlement or being so arrogant as to try and persuade gullible Australians that white settlement had no negative consequences.
Anthony Jones writes: Upsetting No voters and effectively cementing their viewpoint, defining them as racist — although highly pleasurable for a Yes voter and in the main accurate — is counterproductive. However, the No campaign itself can be accurately described as racist and we Yes voters can and should do our best to describe it as such.
But our reason for voting Yes should also be positive. One of the very influential arguments for voting Yes is the example presented by the very successful adoption of the almost identical vote by Norway, Finland and Sweden.
Laurie Forde writes: Racism should definitely be called out. Mainstream media journalists, producers etc are behaving disgracefully in not attacking No when they accuse the Yes campaign of being based on division and racism yet pillory Professor Marcia Langton.
The reality is that Australian history screams of racism against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as well as anyone with darker than white skin. In fact anyone non-Anglo has been attacked by the majority throughout our history. However, it is undeniable that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have copped the worst racist treatment for 250 years to protect those who have exploited this country the most: i.e. big landholders, miners, religious organisations and right-wing politicians who have thrived on making them the enemy.
Robert Inder-Smith writes: I disagree with the vote not because I’m a racist, but because I believe it will achieve nothing. If it gets up, I hope I’m proved wrong — preferably in my lifetime.
If the vote was for full self-determination, I’d tick the non-racist box unbidden. If I’m racist for thinking that a capitalist-driven balanda (non-Indigenous)-inspired miracle is needed for Aboriginal people to suddenly start to enjoy better health outcomes and life expectancies, and that their women won’t continue to die in great numbers etc, then at least I’m not being naive.
Marilyn Hoban writes: As a 75-year-old grandmother campaigning for Yes23 Mornington Peninsula I have been shocked and deeply saddened by what has been said about First Nations peoples and what has been said to me while doing local markets and street stalls for the Yes campaign. I walked home in tears after one street stall and at times have felt ashamed of Australians I encounter.
Research shows the attitude and coverage of the Murdoch press and Sky News to be heavily biased. If you cross them they will destroy you. Professor Marcia Langton has dared to tell a few home truths and is being made to pay for it. I think this is another Adam Goodes moment — [Aboriginal peoples] have dared to poke their heads above the parapet, and they will have to be shot down.
Gayle Davies writes: Recently a taxi driver who, after a perfectly pleasant conversation about how he was doing up his caravan so he could go travelling until he became eligible for the pension, saw the Yes sign on my gate and launched into a summary of his experience of “them”, which included all the tropes used against “them” since 1788: lazy, dirty, won’t work but get everything they want for free, rude and abusive to each other as well as “us”, culminating, as I was paying the fare, with their high incarceration rate: “You know what would teach ’em to behave? Bring back the whip.”
Perhaps we non-Indigenous Australians have not travelled psychologically very far from our penal colony origins. We still have these pathologies in our psychic DNA: punishment (of others), guilt combined with victim-blaming, envy and/or contempt for so-called “elites” masked by faux egalitarianism, wilful ignorance and antagonism towards learning, reading and thinking as well as towards those who teach or practise them for a living. All these aspects of the Australian psyche have been transmitted very successfully by the Murdoch media over the past 30 or so years to the US and the UK and back again.
If it fails, the Yes campaign cannot be blamed for underestimating the depths to which the non-Indigenous Australian character can plunge. The No campaign should not even have existed, and those who have whipped it up, and no doubt profited from it, deserve nothing but contempt.
Peter Barry writes: The constitution has powers to make special provisions for subsets of the community based on race. The 1967 referendum removed the specific restriction on making such provisions for people of Aboriginal ancestry and also allowed them to be counted in the census. These current powers are based on race but are not considered racist in that they allow benefits to flow specifically to Indigenous people. No assertion is made as to the intrinsic or relative value of Aboriginal persons compared with other members of Australian society.
Since the constitution itself uses the term “race” to define subgroups in the community, why should we be coy about using this term alongside Indigenous, Aboriginal, autochthonous, First Nations and other words identifying the specific citizens we want to talk about? It is only racist when we imply that people of certain provenance and characteristics are innately inferior or superior? But I’m probably just confused.
Steve Brennan writes: The gloves must come off if we have any chance of salvaging our self-esteem, honour and decency. The British monarchy declared Australia terra nullius, a bare-faced lie. Our constitution is founded on lies written by a bunch of white guys in the British establishment and signed by the queen of the time. The No campaign is in many ways a perverse extension of this mentality and grounded in white supremacy — it wishes to stamp out notions of Indigenous rights once and for all, like an infestation of invasive species.
I am insulted by the mentality and scam tactics of No campaign — it implores us not to seek the truth or knowledge but to “vote No if you don’t know”. I’ve listened to Price and Nyunggai Warren Mundine and they are both good at play acting. The fact remains the referendum has laid bare deep racism in Australian society — and the opportunity for the alt-right to exploit the fear in a wider group to convert it into white supremacist beliefs.
Karina Jabrail writes: To vote No is not racist. It’s simply not wanting to submit yourself to the unknown and give the power to only one political group whose intentions are uncertain. I’m not weak and won’t be intimidated or shamed into delusional thinking that there’s something wrong with voting as one pleases. I hope the majority of Australians aren’t either.
Catherine van Zanten writes: Re “Price’s denialism takes the Coalition to a new Indigenous Affairs policy: erasure of First Peoples”: the Coalition must be feeling very sure of a victory for the No vote in the Voice to Parliament referendum to say out loud what has been its hidden agenda all along: to not only defeat the Voice but to erase the history of colonisation and dispossession of First Nations peoples.
The cat is well and truly out of the bag and takes us straight back to John Howard’s “black armband view of history”. It is quite shocking in its audacity. I feel nothing but shame.
Julanne Sweeney writes: I read a letter in a recent issue of Adelaide’s The Advertiser from a reader who plans to vote No because she mistakenly believes Price is the only one speaking for remote communities. No doubt the senator has some followers in the bush but the reader might change her mind after checking facts from 90 elected leaders of the Central Land Council that Price “neither speaks for them nor listens to them”.
A Yes vote will ensure an elected Voice with power to lobby government and senior bureaucrats on decisions made in different communities all over Australia for their different needs. Senators cannot do this as they must represent their entire state or territory. At present there is no Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elected body registered as a lobbyist among lists of big corporations, unions and special interest groups, although some Indigenous individuals may be among the 1,958 whose names are not disclosed.
Imagine how much stronger Australia would be if Price’s energy was put into working for all her people, and if she found time to reflect on Albert Camus’ words, which might explain intergenerational trauma. He wrote: “On the day when crime puts on the apparel of innocence, through a curious reversal peculiar to our age, it is innocence that is called on to justify itself.”
April Patterson Harper writes: Price’s comments derive from right-wing “me-ism” and the Americanisation of Australia. I arrived here from the US in 1975 intending to stay for two years but never left. One of the factors that kept me here was that Australia was a compassionate country. I literally felt like I could relax and breathe vs the feeling in the US that my soul and spirit were being crushed due to a culture of “me-ism”: if it works for me it’s due to me and if it’s not working for others it’s their fault.
This is a nonsensical proposition, of course, as it denies the roles of even the physical environment and genetic inheritance let alone the many social determinants of behaviours and psychological well- or not well-being. It’s a rationalisation to justify privilege and abandonment of the “take people as they are and treat them compassionately” ethos that so stood out when I first arrived.
We see it in compassionless “dole-bludging” rhetoric — I got a job so they must be lazy. Any of us, all of us, would be different had we been subject to different circumstances. Was Price raised on nutritious food? Did she have clean water to drink, role models of success, better access to education and medical care than some, a supportive family, freedom from physical and psychological abuse?
We can never wholly know the circumstances of others and it’s gross hubris to assume that because we can, all can.
