Gomeroi traditional owners in northern New South Wales have criticised the regional launch of the leading no campaign against the voice, accusing it of featuring racist talking points and “really dehumanising” language.
The One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, the local Nationals MP, Barnaby Joyce, the former broadcaster Alan Jones and the former Labor minister Gary Johns appeared at the event in Tamworth on Friday. It was hosted by Recognise a Better Way, the leading group organising the no campaign led by the Indigenous businessman Nyunggai Warren Mundine, Johns and the former Nationals leader John Anderson. Mundine and Anderson did not attend.
Recognise a Better Way uses a lot of First Nations people in its marketing images but there were no First Nations people invited to speak on Friday, and Joyce’s attempt at an acknowledgement of country was interrupted by Johns, who insisted they instead welcome Hanson to the stage.
The first Gomeroi person elected to Tamworth regional council, Marc Sutherland, attended the event, as did Guardian Australia. Sutherland said he was “disappointed” the group chose Tamworth to launch the campaign without any community consultation, and said while he would have welcomed an “open discussion panel” about the proposed referendum, that was not what was on offer.
Sutherland said it was ironic that he was Gomeroi and an elected official, yet was expected not to take part in the conversation about the voice. He asked people in the audience their views after the event.
“There’s two key parts to this referendum,” he said. “One, do we acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as the first people of this country? And should that be reflected in the constitution?
“I was surprised by the amount of people who said no to both those questions.”
The event at Tamworth town hall began with panellists arguing that there was not enough information about the voice. They then suggested the powers of the body, which have been set out in the proposed alteration to the constitution as a body that “may make representations” to parliament and government on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, would create an unequal state similar to South Africa under apartheid.
Jones claimed the voice would be a “new Indigenous-only bureaucracy that will have sweeping constitutional powers”.
“That was once called apartheid and we set our face against it,” he said.
Joyce said giving First Nations people a dedicated advisory body would be racist. “If one group has a right based on their DNA, another group does not have that right,” he said.
Sutherland accused some of the speakers of using dehumanising language and racist talking points.
“The Aboriginal community have made it really clear that language like ‘Aborigines’, ‘real blacks’, or ‘true blacks’, or Aboriginal people as ‘them’ or ‘those people’ is not only really dehumanising, but really othering,” he said.
“And it’s that foundation of language that leads to the supposed superiority of one race over another – which is the core of racism.
“It made me feel, hearing the perspectives of the speakers and for them to then receive almost standing ovations, made me feel as though I was living in a different country in a different time, under a different regime.”
At the event, Johns argued that the voice was not necessary because “the 80% of [Indigenous] men who did not go to jail are doing about as well as other Australians”.
The incarceration rate for Indigenous men in 2022 was just over 4%, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Johns did not cite a source for the much higher figure he used.
He then made an assimilationist argument, claiming that rates of intermarriage between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians were such that “there will come a time in Australia when we are all Aboriginal”.
“Now, if that is true, we will be making deals with ourselves – it’ll be a nonsense,” he said.
In another throwback to the assimilationist views of the early 20th century, he claimed, again without source or the support of any First Nations voices, that most “integrated Indigenous were happy to keep their race, identity and beliefs to themselves”.
Hanson told the crowd she was drafting a private member’s bill to define “Aboriginality” in response to what she described as an unreasonable increase in the numbers of First Nations people.
Australia has a three-point legal definition of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander heritage, used by government and other bodies.
“A lot of people jump on the bandwagon and claim the benefits, because they claim to be Aboriginal,” Hanson claimed.
She also described herself as a friend of “the true blacks – from up Darwin, up Cairns”, causing an outcry among Indigenous people in the room.
Gomeroi yinarr (women) who held a protest outside the event made a joint statement afterwards, calling attention to the real-life impact of giving a platform to racist views and misinformation.
“There is a big fear that conversations held by rightwing speakers will not produce critical dialogue about the voice to parliament,” they said. “Instead, it will bring out harmful racism in our society, putting our community at risk, especially our babies, our young people and elders.”
The audience was only allowed to ask questions via SMS, not directly from the floor.
A Gomeroi woman, Amy Hammond, was one of a dozen people protesting outside the meeting. She told Guardian Australia the protesters had received a few negative comments from the audience before the event but after it those comments had escalated. Hammond said one person had said: “The whites will win.” Another said: “The dingos have been here longer than you.”
“It’s something that we deal with, we experience those kinds of comments from childhood,” she said.
Hammond described the rhetoric used by some of the panellists as “really disgusting”. “It’s divisive, it’s hatred,” she said.
Also at the protest was another Gomeroi woman, Kisani Upward.
“There were such racist comments, such as saying there’s never been a civil war in Australia, that we’re not ‘real’ Blacks,” she said. “If it had been an information session, like they advertised, it would be a different story.
“Everyone’s entitled to a voice. And our voice keeps getting squashed.”
