“My whole ethos is to welcome debate,” Kerry O’Brien says. “We are in a democracy and healthy debate is central to a healthy democracy. I just wish this debate could take place based in fact and not emotion, and not in misinformation, and not in scare tactics.”
The former ABC journalist, who has co-authored a new book designed to explain in simple terms what the Indigenous voice to parliament is all about, says a poll showing a slip in support for the voice could be a sign there has been more attention paid to the “noise” and “confusion” being sown by its opponents than to the facts.
Wednesday’s survey by Nine newspapers showed 44% of those polled supported the voice, 39% were opposed and 18% were undecided. When asked to vote yes or no, 53% were in favour and 47% against. The poll indicates there has been a slide in support over the last few months, something O’Brien partly attributes to misinformation circulating in the public discourse.
“I do think that the pressure is on the yes campaign now to get into stride and begin to make its presence felt more than it has,” he says.
“The time to speak up is now and to sustain the message from now until when the referendum is held. This is way too important to mess this up.”
The book O’Brien has written with Thomas Mayo, The Voice to Parliament Handbook, was also released on Wednesday. It’s pitched as a clear and simple guide for Australians who want to better understand what they’ll be voting on later this year.
The two men might seem an unlikely pair. O’Brien is one of the country’s most respected journalists and Mayo is an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander man, a Maritime Union of Australia official and former wharfie who since 2017 has crisscrossed the country explaining the Uluru statement from the heart to anyone who will listen. But they have a few things in common: an unshakeable belief that a voice to parliament is the right thing to have. And they are both compelling communicators.
Mayo met O’Brien at a literary festival. A few conversations and a dinner later, they decided to collaborate on a handbook that offers “all the detail you need to know” about the voice. It’s a pocket-sized explainer with diagrams and cartoons by Cathy Wilcox, a portable reference to be whipped out to clear up confusion or answer questions that arise in day-to-day conversations.
Mayo says the book is more concerned with facts and context than motherhood statements. As the referendum campaign heats up, giving voters the tools to identify and reject misinformation will be crucial.
“Absolutely vital,” he says. “I think the only reason this would fail is if the no campaign has successfully confused enough people or made them fearful of this change. I don’t believe there’ll be a sentiment among a majority of Australian people to reject recognising us or giving us a voice. And so that’s why this book, with a whole lot of truth-telling and myth-busting, is important.”
Mayo provided answers to the most frequently asked questions, while O’Brien wrote a concise but comprehensive chapter on Indigenous history.
“I guess I knew where to look, and I knew what I was looking for, because I’ve lived it,” O’Brien says. “I’ve reported on so much of that history, certainly since the 67 referendum.”
The chapter provides a chronology of the fate of every past Indigenous advisory body – all of them have ended up being watered down or abolished as governments have changed.
“So all of these different iterations of the voice never really had the chance to bed in, never really had the chance to prove their worth, never really had the chance to mature and evolve in the same way that all of our fundamental institutions have, whether you’re talking about the Reserve Bank, whether you’re talking about the parliament itself,” O’Brien says. “And that is why it’s been so hard for Indigenous people to be heard.”
This means any gains have been incremental and never guaranteed, he says, citing the abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission under the Howard regime in 2005.
“We’ve had some very dark times … in the Howard years, you had the so-called culture wars and the history wars and the attempts to discredit the best of Australia’s historians in this field, who were gradually putting together the story of the massacres, and the wars, and the dispossession and all the rest of it.”
Those days are over, he says.
“The massacres have been so well-documented. And what we now know is that the archives around Australia are absolutely full of the facts. It’s just that people either didn’t know where to look, or weren’t interested.”
O’Brien and Mayo are about to embark on a book tour together but both say they are thinking much longer term. Mayo’s personal marathon won’t end until the vote is held, which is expected sometime between October and the end of the year.
“I’m going to work hard all the way through,” Mayo says. “I’m not going to wake up the next morning wondering if I could have put a bit more in.”
It’ll be the culmination of seven years of work and travel, five books; an unwavering commitment.
“I think it’s because I know it’s the right thing. And it’s because I understood from back when the trial dialogue was held in late 2016 that this was a very, very rare opportunity for us to come together in a national process, and to reach a consensus …
“That frames just what’s at stake with this referendum if we lose it, it’s not just [a return to] the status quo. This is a big step backwards if we should fail.”
