Referendums are relatively infrequent in Australian politics, and difficult to win, as the yes campaign for the voice to parliament is finding out. They are also inherently polarising: we are asked to make a simple, yes or no choice about a complex, multifaceted question.
This tends to advantage the no side – “if you don’t know, vote no”, as the official pamphlet statement by opponents of the voice says – and it’s an easy case to make, even if it means sticking with a status quo that has systemically disadvantaged Indigenous Australians ever since the lie of “terra nullius” was created by the first colonists.
