This week has been declared the “national week of action” on an Indigenous voice to parliament with community barbecues, letterdrops and online “yarning circles”. Multiparty and multi-faith forums are being planned in a show of wide support for the vote, now expected to be held in October.
Until now, the voice has been a “Canberra” story: dominated by and about politicians. The yes campaigners have often said they didn’t want it to be that way. The Uluru statement from the heart, they say, is addressed to the Australian people.
“We’re asking Australians to start a yarn,” Prof Megan Davis told Guardian Australia. “Yarning with ordinary Aussies is critical because this is not about politicians, it’s not about government, it’s not about media. It’s about Australians working together and rising above politics.”
The no side has been more reluctant to share its plans, with most organisations and campaigners approached for this article declining to detail their thinking.
Here are the identities and groups who have publicly declared themselves so far.
The yes campaign
The yes campaigners are three groups with a shared history and objective: the enshrinement of an Indigenous voice to parliament in the constitution, followed by a Makarrata process of treaty-making and truth-telling.
The Uluru Dialogue
Created in 2017, the Uluru Dialogue is a collective including the architects of the Uluru statement from the heart, academics and lawyers based at the University of New South Wales.
The Dialogue is co-chaired by Davis and Pat Anderson, who are members of the government’s referendum advisory group. Davis is also a member of the constitutional expert group advising the government on the amendment and question we will be asked to vote on.
The two women have been hosting online “yarning circles” to increase awareness and understanding of the voice, in the hope that supporters will turn into advocates in their own communities.
“Most Australians understand that generations of Australian government policy have failed First Nations peoples. The parliament has failed on closing the gap for well over a decade. Australians know we can’t continue with the status quo.
“Politicians and bureaucrats have not been able to make a change. The voice referendum is an opportunity for all of us Australians to make the difference,” Davis said.
From the Heart
From the heart launched in 2020 on the third anniversary of the Uluru statement as an education project to keep the Indigenous voice on the agenda at a time when the Coalition government had rejected the statement entirely and falsely dismissed the voice as a third chamber of parliament. From the Heart operates under the auspices of the Cape York Institute, Noel Pearson’s thinktank in north Queensland.
From the Heart is hosting a two-day “campaign lab” in Adelaide this week with multicultural and multi-faith leadership, unions and other major supporters of the voice, to discuss campaign strategy ahead of a launch on Thursday 23 February.
Uphold and Recognise
Uphold and Recognise was founded in 2015 by Damien Freeman, a lawyer at the PM Glynn Institute at the Australian Catholic University, and Julian Leeser, who is now the Coalition spokesperson on Indigenous Australians, with a long involvement in Indigenous constitutional recognition. Leeser is no longer involved with the group.
It was founded on two principles: that the constitution underpins our democracy and is worth upholding, and that Indigenous Australians ought to be fairly recognised in it, on their terms.
Their centre-right approach is targeted at finding common ground among conservative voters. Freeman and constitutional lawyer Greg Craven have argued, for example, that “it is possible to design legislation that addresses most reasonable concerns around the voice”.
Uphold and Recognise board members include the former Indigenous Australians minister and Yamatji man Ken Wyatt and is led by the Wangkumarra/Barkindji man Sean Gordon.
Australians for Indigenous Constitutional Recognition
Australians for Indigenous Constitutional Recognition (AICR) is a powerhouse organisation of prominent Australians co-chaired by the lawyer and director of the Business Council of Australia, Danny Gilbert, and Arrernte-Kalkadoon film-maker Rachel Perkins. AICR has deductible gift recipient (DGR) status for its campaign, allowing tax-free donations. AICR says its role is to hold information sessions and contribute to policy proposals.
The board is a who’s who of heavy hitters including Tony Nutt, who spent 10 years as principal adviser to prime minister John Howard; Michael Chaney, chair of Wesfarmers; Andrew Fraser, chancellor of Griffith University; Tanya Hosch, the AFL’s head of diversity and inclusion; Cape York Institute’s Noel Pearson; and Mark Textor, a veteran pollster and strategist once described by Britain’s Channel 4 as “one of the most influential political strategists and pollsters to walk the planet”.
And then there’s … the Parliamentary friends of the Uluru statement. Launched on 13 February, this “non-partisan forum” is co-chaired by Labor’s Gordon Reid, Liberal Bridget Archer and independent Allegra Spender.
At the launch, Spender said she experienced “shivers” when hearing the Uluru statement read aloud. Archer said it was “an easy yes” for her to accept a co-chair position with the group, saying it was “incumbent” on MPs to meet the Uluru statement “in the spirit it’s given”. The Liberal party is still to commit to a party room position on the voice.
Are they working together? Yes, according to Thomas Mayo, an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander author and Maritime Union of Australia official.
“You’ve got different groups working towards the same goal. The underpinning thing for all of them is the Uluru statement from the heart and a rare national consensus from our people. I think that’s a strength,” Mayo said.
The no campaign
The no campaigners are less forthcoming about their plans.
Recognise a Better Way
Recognise a Better Way is the first significant group to emerge. Led by the Indigenous businessman Warren Mundine, it also features the former Nationals deputy prime minister John Anderson and the former Keating government minister Gary Johns. Until this week, it included the Coalition senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who has since decided to direct her efforts to right-wing campaigners Advance (see below).
Mundine’s organisation will push for symbolic recognition of Indigenous Australians in a constitutional preamble. It launched with a suggestion to recognise migrants in the constitution, an idea instantly derided by multicultural groups who said they supported the voice.
Mundine told Guardian Australia that he and Nampijinpa Price would be the public faces of the no campaign, travelling the country for BBQs and public events, but didn’t expect to hold large town hall forums or rallies like the yes side.
Asked how the groups would cooperate, Mundine said Recognise would spearhead academic work and contribute newspaper opinion pieces, while Advance’s campaign, titled “Fair”, would manage volunteers, door-knock and publicly campaigning.
Mundine said the no side was also obtaining deductible gift recipient (DGR) status. He said one group already had DGR status and another was applying for it, but declined to detail which organisations those were.
Mundine said he expected the no campaign to be “fun”, that he was buoyed up by the results of their own polling, and is expecting the referendum to be in October or November.
Advance
Advance came to prominence in the 2019 election, attacking progressive activist group GetUp! and waging an ultimately unsuccessful public campaign against the independent Zali Steggall and in support of the Warringah MP Tony Abbott.
Advance also campaigned prominently against the now-senator David Pocock in 2022, and funded mobile billboards showing the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, voting for Labor. The West Australian premier, Mark McGowan, branded the group “idiots”.
Fair Australia
Fair Australia is Advance’s campaign, which describes itself as a “grassroots movement of Australians” led by Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.
Fair’s website says it plans to “build an army of Aussies” to “defend our nation”, suggesting supporters do door-knocking, put up road signs or call talkback radio.
“It might be swarming polling places, it might be hitting the phones to talk to politicians, friends and neighbours, it might be taking to the streets in protest,” Fair’s website said.
Advance declined requests for comment about its campaign, and how it would work with other organisations.
Advance has for some time published social media graphics featuring Price and Northern Territory woman Cheron Long, who posts about crime and social issues in Indigenous communities to 13,000 followers on her Facebook page, Australian Black Conservative.
Matthew Sheahan, Advance’s executive director, told supporters in an email this week that 78,000 people signed up on its website and “pledged to vote no”. He described the voice as “a race-based lobby group that you have no say over”.
Advance recently had numerous ads deleted from Facebook after one of the platform’s factchecking teams from RMIT University rated one of its claims as “false”.
Fair’s website includes images of the former Coalition prime minister Tony Abbott and Liberal senator Alex Antic alongside Nampijinpa Price, Mundine, and Long. However, those two Coalition politicians haven’t officially put their names to the campaign.
Abbott’s representatives didn’t respond to inquiries about whether he would take an active role in the referendum.
Antic responded by saying he had “little reason to interact with” Guardian Australia because of his “concerns that this is nothing more than a partisan hack piece”. He did not answer whether he would join Fair’s campaign.
While not associated with the aforementioned conservative organisations, there is potential for progressive no campaign against the voice to emerge.
The Blak sovereignty movement
Voice sceptic Lidia Thorpe quit the Greens to lead a Blak sovereignty movement, saying her former party’s decision to back the voice was “icing on the cake”; and while she has so far reserved her position on the referendum, she said there were “progressive nos” in the community who would oppose the vote because they did not believe the proposed constitutional amendment would go far enough to improve the lives of Indigenous Australians.
The Blak Greens advisory group told the Greens party room that they “cannot say no” to the voice when it came to parliamentary votes, but also released a statement last week saying they didn’t support “being forced into the racist constitution”.
Price said she hadn’t had discussions with Thorpe about joining the no campaign. No organised campaign from progressive opponents to the voice has emerged as yet.
