Senator Pat Dodson has warned there is “no alternative” if the Indigenous voice referendum is defeated on Saturday, saying that would be a “very sad outcome” that would leave a “legacy of lies” denying recognition of First Australians’ status.
Dodson, the government’s special envoy for reconciliation and implementation of the Uluru statement from the heart, also warned of the Coalition’s “draconian” agenda towards Indigenous Australians and an increased sense of national “shame” if the no vote wins the 14 October referendum.
After decades at the forefront of reconciliation, the Labor senator appeared at the National Press Club remotely from Broome on Wednesday to make a last-ditch appeal to Australians voters to entrench the advisory body to the parliament and executive government in the constitution.
Dodson described the alternative to a yes vote as settling for Indigenous Australians “picking up the crumbs that fall from the table, the largesse they want to give to us”.
“There’s no credibility, no integrity, no respect for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and no buy-in [from them] to carry their responsibilities … and affect the changes to get rid of the poverty and dislocation we can see in our societies,” he said.
Dodson described symbolic constitutional recognition, without a voice, as a “hollow gesture” of “no substance” and like buying an adult child a car “but not giving them the keys” to allow Aboriginal people to “drive … in a new direction”.
“Do we want to leave a legacy that we stand for supporting lies? That there are no Aboriginal people here and there’s no need to recognise them? Is that what we’re going to stand for?”
Dodson acknowledged if the Australian people say no, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has said there would be no legislated voice, describing that as a “very sad outcome”.
“That’s the burden the Australian people have to weigh up when they cast their vote. Do you want to go forward? Or do you want to go backwards? Or do you want to do nothing?
“Do you want to look yourself in the mirror and have pride the next day, or have some doubts, uncertainties, and even an increase in shame?”
However, Dodson said it was “right for the states” to consider legislating their own voice bodies, encouraging his home state of Western Australia to follow that course, as South Australia and the ACT plan to.
After a divisive campaign in which yes campaigners and senior members of the government have accused opponents of misinformation and lies, Dodson argued “the no campaign is something that we ought to be concerned about”.
“And I’m not just saying that because I support the yes campaign,” he said.
“I’m concerned for the future of political debates and our election campaigns, and the quality of social and civil discourses as nation around many other [issues] if we allow the dynamics that underpin the no campaign to dominate the future of our democratic society, of our work into the future.”
Responding to the claim by the shadow minister for Indigenous Australians, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, that there are no negative ongoing impacts of British colonisation on Indigenous Australians, Dodson questioned why they faced higher rates of suicide and poverty if they already lived in “the promised land”.
“We’re not in the Garden of Eden here – they’re the consequences of how we came to be colonised, and they have to be dealt with.”
Asked about what might happen to funding for Indigenous programs in remote areas in the event of a no vote, Dodson said he would not go into “the draconian agenda that I sense the opposition have got if they were in government”.
“It’s just too awful to contemplate.”
