Prominent yes campaigners on the Indigenous voice referendum say they won’t be “caught up” analysing polls – some of which show a decline in the yes vote – saying their job is to “keep the faith” and talk to the Australian people, not politicians and pollsters.
Prof Marcia Langton, a key member of the government’s referendum working group, said the yes campaign was a people’s movement that had mobilised thousands of supporters.
“We have a job to do,” Langton told Guardian Australia. “We need to keep going, to reach those who are undecided. We are thinking deeply about the consequences of losing, imagining how emboldened the racists will become, but we are nowhere near considering a loss.
“This genuinely is a people’s movement. Thousands of people are involved. It’s not a political partisan movement,” Langton said.
The Uluru Dialogue leaders, Pat Anderson and Megan Davis, said they had held “countless meetings and conversations” with First Nations people and non-Indigenous Australians.
“Just in the past few weeks we’ve been in Atherton, Barunga, Brisbane, Cooktown, Dubbo, Gilgandra, Innisfail, Kuranda, Melbourne, Mossman, Mudgee, Narromine, Nyngan, Perth, Port Douglas, Sydney, Townsville, Trangie, Wellington, Warren, Weilwan (Gulargambone), and the West Kimberley,” Anderson and Davis said in a joint statement.
“Our faith in the Australian people remains as strong as ever.
“We are finding that when we sit down with people and explain the difference that the voice will make – where so many other initiatives and ideas devised within the Canberra bubble have failed – they are more than ready to vote yes.”
Earlier on Tuesday, the Yes23 campaign director Dean Parkin said campaigners “knew the numbers were going to tighten over time”.
Parkin said the voice debate has been “stuck in the Canberra bubble, with politicians and lawyers having their say”.
“Now thankfully that process is almost due to end,” he told Sky News.
The referendum bill is expected to pass the Senate by mid next week, at which point yes campaigners say they are looking forward to moving the conversation out of Canberra “and into back yards across the country where this campaign belongs”, Parkin said.
“We don’t get too caught up on analysing individual polls. There will be plenty of them between now and the referendum. They’ll say different things,” he said. “Our job is very much on making sure that Australians are involved in this conversation and taking it to the community where it belongs.
“That’s where this referendum will be won and that’s where it belongs. It belongs with the people of Australia, it doesn’t actually belong with the politicians.”
Published polls show a diverse range of results. Guardian’s Essential poll recorded 60% support for the voice this week, compared with 49% in the Nine newspapers’ Resolve. Privately, yes campaigners say their internal numbers are closer to the Essential poll, and also claim the spread of results is attributable to pollsters not having surveyed a referendum since 1999.
The psephologist Kevin Bonham calculates average support to be in the mid-50s. He told Guardian Australia that pollsters are “out of practice in polling referendums”.
“There hasn’t been one for so long. There was the marriage postal survey, but that wasn’t quite the same thing. Pollsters don’t have established methods for polling referendums that they update regularly like elections,” Bonham said.
“There are a range of approaches being seen. While pollsters seem to be coming to an agreement you should use the actual referendum question, there’s variation in the surrounding wording being asked.”
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has again asked the government to radically reshape the referendum and reduce the proposal to simple constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians, and scrapping the voice to parliament entirely. This approach will not be entertained by the government.
“The polls have suggested the best case is the voice gets up by a slim majority and the country is divided,” Dutton said, according to a party spokesperson.
“There is an opportunity now for the prime minister to unify the country, through constitutional recognition without a constitutionally enshrined voice.”
The Uluru statement from the heart specifically calls for recognition through the voice, after years of rejection of symbolic constitutional recognition by Indigenous communities. Dutton, speaking later at the Committee for Economic Development’s 2023 conference, said: “I don’t care how many people come out in support of voice, from sporting codes, public listed companies, churches or anything else. The Australian public wants the detail.”
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, told the Labor party room he remained positive about the referendum, citing support from the business, sports, arts and entertainment sectors, and that he was looking forward to passing the bill and fixing a date for the vote.
Albanese noted there was “no division” within Labor on the question, unlike the Coalition, and the government was determined to give the voice the best chance to pass.
Government sources say the PM is expected to announce the referendum date in early August, at this year’s Garma festival. The date of the vote is anticipated to be mid-October. That would allow for two months of intense, election-style campaigning in the lead up to the referendum.
