In a quiet street in Melbourne’s north, Tom Nash knocks on a door.
It is his first for the morning – Nash and his volunteer buddy Allegra Pilati are nervous. They clutch their clipboards and clear their throats.
The pair are part of a small group of volunteers disrupting the sleepy Saturday morning in Melbourne’s northern suburbs to ask people to vote yes in the upcoming referendum on the Indigenous voice to parliament.
The resident who opens the door says he’s probably voting no. Then he pauses. “You might think what I’m going to say is racist,” he says.
He goes on to say he doesn’t trust politicians, that he wants Australia to be “one country” and he’s worried about how the voice will impact government.
These are concerns Nash is ready for – they’re covered in the talking points tucked under the clipboard.
“What I said to him was, you’ve got all these industries that can walk into government, you’ve got all these different cultural groups that can walk to government, but traditionally first Australians have been left out of that,” Nash tells Guardian Australia on the street afterwards.
“This is a chance to recognise them and give them a voice.”
Doorknocking is a tough job. A lot of people don’t know the referendum is happening. But there is support, too.
A few doors down a woman tells Nash and Pilati that her husband died the previous day. Her son quickly adds he thinks their whole unit block will vote yes.
But then, at the next house, a woman yells at them across the yard. There’s nothing on their clipboards that addresses straight-up racism. So they politely thank her for her time and walk on.
The volunteers spend Saturday in Oak Park and Glenroy. On the surface, it’s an odd choice: the area is within a safe Labor seat Wills; the council recently changed its name to Merri-bek; and 290 local volunteers have signed up to help – the highest number in the country.
But, like the no campaign, Yes23 is looking at data from the marriage equality campaign to work out which voters to target.
Labor voters weren’t necessarily always yes voters in 2017 and Yes23 wants to change that when it comes to the referendum.
In Wills, 70% of voters did vote yes to marriage equality in 2017. But in the ALP-held seats of Bruce and Calwell, less than 50% of voters said yes, for example.
The yes campaign needs to win over the majority of Australians and the majority of states. Another of the volunteers says they’ve all but given up on Queensland and Western Australia. They think New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania are needed to land it.
Peter, who did not want his last name used, came to Australia 57 years ago from Greece. He met his wife, had three boys and bought a house in Glenroy. He has been living alone since she died five years ago.
Yes23 volunteer Helen Politis translates what he is saying. “We must support these people because they have been left behind,” Peter says.
The date for the vote has not been set, but it is widely tipped to be 14 October. A spate of recent polls shows support is falling below 50% and in some cases being overtaken by the no vote.
The captain of the Wills for Yes campaign, Jenne Perlstein, has been out every Saturday. She says the vibe in the community has followed the polling.
They’re getting different questions on doorsteps now. Will the voice be more powerful than parliament? Could it divide the country?
Perlstein says these are easy to answer: Australians love to think we are equal but the closing the gap statistics show we are not.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are imprisoned at a higher rate than in previous years, the number of children in out-of-home care continues to rise and the number of Indigenous people taking their own lives is increasing.
There’s another question Perlstein gets frequently. Why is there division in the Indigenous community about the voice?
“I say, we’re all in different communities and have different identities. You and I wouldn’t agree on everything, so why should Aboriginal people?
“But the important thing is for me, 83% of Aboriginal people in the latest survey support the yes vote. And we got the invitation from the Uluru statement from the heart. This is an invitation to support voice, treaty and truth and the voice is the first step.”
Last week the volunteers were in Brunswick – an inner-north suburb renowned for its progressive residents. The doorknockers were there to check whether the progressive no vote has gained traction. It hasn’t: all but one home they knocked on said they would be voting yes.
They might not have found many progressive nos that day but they are out there. Others are reluctant yes supporters. These voters want a treaty first but will vote yes because they “don’t want to wake up to a country which has voted no in October”, Perlstein says.
Sheena Watt has tears in her eyes while out doorknocking on Saturday.
The Yorta Yorta MP is the only Indigenous woman representing the ALP in the Victorian parliament now. She is talking about what will happen if the referendum doesn’t pass.
“It’s going to hurt,” she says between visits to houses. “It’s going to cut deep for generations to come. It will set Indigenous relations back to a time that bears not thinking about.”
But Watt is out and about to convince people. That means staying positive. One man arrives home as she knocks on the door. Yelling, he demands to know what the campaigners are doing. Watt explains and he instantly softens.
“I’m sorry about Sam Newman,” he says, referring to his rant where he claimed Aboriginal Australians had no history. “I’ll be voting yes.”
Watt says the referendum is proving divisive but, at its core, campaigning is about bridging the gap and celebrating the country’s rich history.
“We are the custodians of the oldest living continuous culture in the history of mankind,” she says. “Shouldn’t we as a nation be enormously proud of that?”
