Truth-telling beyond the Voice referendum

In order to transcend the disappointment of the Voice referendum, many political and Aboriginal leaders are focusing on ‘truth-telling’.

The starting point for this shift could be the truth of the public’s rejection of the Voice.

In explaining the outcome of the Voice referendum, many ‘Yes’ supporters have focused on: 1. The power of the conservative media; and 2. The apathy, gullibility or racist dispositions of ‘No’ voters.

While these explanations may have some validity, it’s important to look more broadly at Australia’s complex national psyche to understand the rejection.

By ‘psyche’ we mean the aggregation of our diverse communities and their defining knowledge systems.

Knowledge systems are comprised of an individual’s information about their world. This information is internalised and personalised through experience, sensibilities and the nefarious qualities we call ‘values’. 

We reference to these relatively organised knowledge systems in order to make sense of ourselves and the social conditions in which we live.

These knowledge systems are acquired, developed and shared between the individuals with whom we identify and have particular bonds. 

This sharing may be through family, friendships, community, recreational groups, political affiliations or various media systems – including mass and social media.

So, when individual electors were making their decision about the referendum – ‘Yes’, ‘No’, or informal – they referenced to their primary knowledge systems.

We already have information about the voting patterns of various geographical and social categories. There are exceptions within these patterns, of course, but they do provide some clues about the rejection of the Voice. 

We know, for example, that the ‘Yes’ vote was strongest in inner city electorates, and weakest in rural areas. It was also weak in outer suburban areas, such as western Melbourne and Sydney. 

So let’s look at this more closely.

Voters in the ACT and inner-city Melbourne and Sydney are often university educated, professional, or affluent. Their knowledge of the world is shaped by relative privilege, abstract ideas, and a sense of social leadership. 

Whether they vote Green, Liberal or Labor, these voters mostly interact with one another, consume ABC media, and read ‘ideas’ newspapers like The Australian, The Guardian, The SMH and The Echo. 

They are often world travellers, but very few have regular or direct interaction with Indigenous Australians. Where interaction does occur, it’s usually media-based rather than in the shared locale of the affluent suburbs.

Impact of life and history

Rural residents, on the other hand, are more likely to encounter Indigenous Australians living in conditions of struggle. This clearly affects the ways in which rural knowledge systems engage with Aboriginal issues and people. These experiences possibly contributed to the strong ‘No’ vote in those areas.

Generally, rural voters live quite material lives. Their work is less shaped by abstract ideas or concepts. The rural economy and lifestyles are largely based around farming and farmer-based services. Farming fundamentally involves the cultivation of crops, and the rearing and slaughter of animals. Rural residents’ lives and survival are vulnerable to frontline crises like floods, fire, and drought.

There was similarly a strong ‘No’ vote in the western suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney. These areas have significant numbers of first and second generation migrants, along with longer term residents who work in trade and the shorter-training workforce.  

Like farmers, many migrants – especially refugees – have an acute understanding of physical threat and struggle. While their religious and community leaders may well have exalted the Voice – many members of migrant communities have little interest or time to appreciate Australia’s complex and violent racial history.

For first and second generation migrants, a troubled history is their own lived experience. Australia represents their opportunity for personal, familial, and community renaissance. It’s less about regret on behalf of others.  

There also appears to be a strong ‘No’ vote among other trade and shorter-training worker categories. This is not so much about ‘apathy’ as ‘relevance’. Long hours of material and physical work make little concession for abstract concepts like ‘historical redress’. Many are snared within the daily struggles of personal and familial survival, working toward greater security and prosperity. 

Whether in the major cities or elsewhere, these individuals made perfectly rational decisions about the Voice according to their personal knowledge systems and circumstances – some choosing ‘Yes’, others choosing ‘No’.

Suspicion of authority

The other feature that a number of ‘No’ voters shared was a suspicion of authority. The heavy messaging of the prime minister and other ‘Yes’ campaigners could have alienated many prospective ‘Yes’ voters, including some Indigenous people themselves.

Some of this may be linked to a suspicion of state power, politicians and the professional progressives more generally.

It is possible that some ‘No’ voters were persuaded by the campaign’s ‘unity’ arguments. In a country that now lionises ‘social cohesion’ as an effect of ‘multiculturalism’, the idea of special privileges for one particular ethnic group may have seemed anathema to the ideals of unity.

The ‘Yes’ campaigners denounced this argument as calumny conjured by right-wing broadcast and social media. Commentary and opinion articles in the Murdoch media have been singled out as ‘muddying’ the debate and confusing voters.

As a great deal of research has shown, however, media messaging usually just reinforces existing ways of thinking and frames of knowledge. People choose their media and its form of messaging according to pre-existing opinions, experiences and sensibilities.

That is, their primary knowledge systems.

People’s media consumption habits are quite stable. Murdoch readers and viewers were already consuming that sort of media before the proposed referendum was announced. 

Similarly, social media algorithms customise messaging according to the users’ established tastes, preferences and patterns of media consumption. In other words, users received the messages they wanted to receive.

The Voice referendum forced voters to sift their knowledge systems and vote only ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. This binary choice simply subsumed the complexity of the issue, without regard for the equally complex knowledge systems of voters.  

This doesn’t mean that people are eternally gullible, fixed or incapable of change. It simply means that knowledge systems are actually more nuanced than political and social leaders often appreciate. Knowledge systems are intrinsically porous and capable of new learnings and change.

That’s precisely why voters switched from 60:40 in favour of the Voice to 60:40 opposed.

Individuals are always alert to new ways of making sense of their world. So, just as the ‘Yes’ voters based their decision on reasoned arguments and intuitive responses to the world – ‘No’ voters did exactly the same thing.

Ultimately, though, the Voice referendum amendment, and the ‘Yes’ campaign more generally, failed to properly engage with the national psyche. The proof is in the result.

Aboriginal Australians have suffered from generational privations directly linked to the history of war, invasion, and exclusion. This is an unequivocal fact.

And this fact should be a primary feature in all Australians’ history education.

Beyond that fact, though, we need a truth that engages with our national psyche and what it means to be a member of a complex modern nation like Australia.

In particular, we need to confront the violent hierarchies that define all modern nations, including Australia. Indigenous Australians should be central to a redress of these hierarchies. Not in isolation, but in relation to all other groups with particular social and economic needs. 

The framework of ‘inclusion’ is not enough in itself. It must be mediated with the redress of these hierarchies.

If we are to shift the national psyche, there needs to be more equitable sharing of the resources that comprise the nation’s wealth and wellbeing. In our view, no nation is worthy of itself, when significant communities of its people are excluded from that sharing.