After the hammer-blow on 14 October comes the inevitable attempt to rationalise the result. Confronting the cold, hard fact that 61% of the Australian electorate rejected the constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians and a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous voice to parliament, we look for a rescue narrative of some kind that will enable us to find a fragile patch of common ground.
If you believe the platitudes – “the Australian people always get it right” – or the spin: that the emphatic result was explained by the “robust common sense” of the Australian people; you might imagine that Australians, having carefully studied the proposal to alter the constitution and the arguments for and against change, delivered their judiciously reasoned response: “NO”.
But the truth is both more bitter and more complicated. Although much has been made of the similarities between the recent referendum and the 1999 referendum on the republic – including education as a key determinant of voting behaviour, and the respective no campaigns’ reliance on the same mind-numbing slogans (“If you don’t know vote no”) – the tenor of the republic debate appears tame by comparison.
While misinformation and scare-mongering certainly abounded in 1999, there was nothing like the outpouring of resentment and prejudice towards one group of Australians that First Nations’ people endured in 2023, much of it effectively licensed by Nyunggai Warren Mundine and Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who appeared on some no campaign leaflets that showed a fist full of dollars accompanied by a dire warning: “How much will compensation cost?” The implicit message – featuring two Indigenous leaders but cynically targeting the lowest base of a non-Indigenous audience – wasn’t difficult to decipher. “They’ve got too much already. Now they’ll want even more and we’ll have to pay.”
Of all the reasons given for voting no by the pollsters, one of the most disheartening and widely registered was the low priority accorded to Indigenous issues by many voters. This was not ignorance so much as a failure of empathy and understanding; a failure to care about anyone’s concerns or disadvantage other than their own. In the dying days of the campaign, Noel Pearson appealed to Australians’ sense of morality, arguing there was only one “morally correct” choice, and that the alternative would only bring “shame and dishonour”, which we would have to wear “for a long time to come”.
The result on 14 October pointed to the failure of this moral argument. A country that had steadfastly refused to recognise the humanity of Indigenous Australians for almost two centuries, let alone their equality, threw the principle of equality back in their face – “No! We’re all equal now”. And this when the voice was designed to correct historical and constitutional inequalities that have entrenched present day disadvantage. As for morality, how is it possible for Australians to understand the moral case for change if they don’t understand Australia’s history?
Appeals to history were central to both the yes and no campaigns. On 30 August, announcing the referendum date, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, urged Australians to vote yes “in recognition of 65,000 years of history”. The yes campaign reminded us that “history is calling”. Offering his support, former high court chief justice Robert French put the case eloquently. The referendum, he explained, was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Australia to fill a moral and historic shortcoming in the constitution – to recognise our first history and the First Peoples who bear it and the painful legacy of its collision with the second history of colonisation”.
It looked very different on the other side of the ledger. After Price baldly told the National Press Club there were “no ongoing negative impacts” of colonisation, Senator Kerrynne Liddle was asked by ABC 7.30 what she thought of Price’s comments. Talking about the negative impacts of history, Liddle argued, “takes us back to 1788 and it completely ignores the incredible contribution of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples … to the growth and development of this country”. In any case, she insisted, Indigenous communities “don’t want to talk about colonisation … that’s what the academics talk about”.
A few days later, on ABC Insiders, Mundine warned “if we do not move forward then we are stuck in history”. By the time Price stood before the media to bask in the triumph of the result on referendum night, echoes of the Howard era culture wars were omnipresent. Australia was “not a racist country”, she declared. “We are one of, if not the greatest nation on the face of the earth. And it is time for Australians to believe that once again, to be proud to call ourselves Australian.”
The most significant thing about this seductive cocktail of denial and self-congratulation was not that it was new – Price’s comments were strikingly reminiscent of Howard in 1996, telling Australians they did not have “a racist, bigoted past” – but that they were uttered in the context of this particular referendum, and intended to resonate with non-Indigenous voters who did not want to hear about the history of violent dispossession that marked modern Australia’s foundation. The pitch proved to be remarkably successful.
In the wake of the referendum, and at a time when the future of history and the humanities is under threat in our universities, the need for truth-telling, history and civics education is more urgent than ever before. If truth-telling of any kind is to change minds and hearts, then it must begin at a local level, where it cannot be so easily kept at a distance, or imagined as an abstraction. And while telling the truth is one thing, hearing the truth and taking it in is something else entirely. Nor will truth-telling necessarily lead to different political outcomes. At the very least, a broader understanding and acceptance of Australia’s history might help to create a more informed political culture, and more informed votes in future referendums.
Despite the understandable uncertainty and pessimism regarding the way forward after 14 October, questions surrounding truth-telling and the need for a lasting settlement between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians remain. At the age of 90, esteemed Yuin elder Ossie Cruse has lived through decades of racist policies and failed government attempts to address Indigenous disadvantage. “This referendum”, he told me, “was really about one thing: it was an opportunity to say that Australia is not a racist country and that failed. The true message of the Uluru Statement was drowned out. The promise held out by the Uluru Statement is that our children – white and black – would walk together into the future. We wanted to build something that would bring our future generations together. And it’s for them that we have to keep setting an example whatever the cost, and press on”.
• Mark McKenna is a writer and historian. He is emeritus professor in history at the University of Sydney and an honorary professor at the National Centre of Biography at the ANU
