Early reflections

The results of the referendum were quickly and resoundingly clear – Australia has voted No to this Voice proposal.

The Australian people rarely get it wrong, so what does their judgement mean?

A full understanding of this historic moment will emerge over time.

That being said, two fundamental truths about the Australian character have been clearly reaffirmed.

First, we are a practical people with a watchful caution when it comes to change.  

We are the inheritors of one of the most successful democracies on earth and, with much worth conserving, it should not surprise that we are naturally conservative. 

And while other nations have famous rhetoric and soaring prose in the founding documents, our Constitution is practical and workman-like.  

A no-nonsense Constitution for a common sense people. 

I wrote on 14 April this year (back when Yes was polling at 60 per cent) “... the Prime Minister is botching this process and is picking a model far-removed from the original intent of the Voice. I believe this referendum will fail if he maintains this course.”  

The Prime Minister and others sought to retrofit radicalism into this practical document, with an ever-expanding model that exceeded even the early hopes at Uluru. 

The Voice was to no longer just advise Parliament, but to now make representations on a vast remit to executive government as well – from Ministers of the Crown through to far-flung public servants in obscure agencies – replete with all the legal risks to our system.  

Its significance enshrined in an unprecedented new chapter of the Constitution (Chapter IX), alongside the other three arms of government: the parliament (Chapter I), the executive government (Chapter II), the judicature (Chapter III). 

The Prime Minister misunderstood the fundamental character of Australians and our Constitution and the failure of the Voice is a direct consequence of his error of judgement. 

It is also telling that Australians maintained their determination to uphold the practical wisdom of our system of government at considerable cost. 

They stared down pressure from nearly every elite institution in our country (politics, media, big business, sport and more) and hectoring accusations of ignorance and racism from Yes activists. 

Despite being founded relatively recently, Australia is one of the oldest continuous democracies on earth.  

Good Constitutions are hard to find and Australians guard theirs very closely. 

The second truth of this referendum is that it clarifies our abiding instincts about equality as the guiding principle for the betterment of all Australians. 

Indeed this result sits comfortably alongside the landmark 1967 referendum on indigenous affairs and the same-sex marriage plebiscite, where ordinary Australians voted clearly for equality before the law. 

This runs counter to what the Yes case had no doubt thought would characterise the two sides. 

Activists right up to the Prime Minister clearly imagined themselves to be building a movement of national unity, bolstered by the vast institutional support mentioned above. 

But there was no more persuasive concept in this whole debate than that this would be “the Voice of division.” 

It would be a Constitutionally enshrined body available to only some of us based on ancestry. 

It would violate Labor PM Bob Hawke’s shining creed that “in Australia there is no hierarchy of descent: there must be no privilege of origin”. 

And that is at odds with our egalitarian ethos that defines us perhaps more than any other value. 

No campaign leader Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price took on what the Yes case thought would be its core truth, demonstrating time and again families, communities and our nation was, and would be, divided by the Voice.  

In April when I wrote about the PM’s Voice model I said that I had long been an in-principle supporter of the Voice but was concerned about the permanent legal risks in his chosen path. 

Like many people of good will towards Aboriginal Australians, I found it sad and painful to be unable to support the proposal, particularly having grown up in indigenous communities. 

But as the debate has gone on and the argument against enshrining different categories of Australian citizenship based on race has fully taken shape, I too have found this steadfast principle of equality persuasive. 

It is a tonic to the toxic identity politics of our age that puts common birth characteristics ahead of common values and allegiances.  

We must put things we can all share ahead of things we cannot change. 

Many Australians look to the splitting social fabric of the United States and other racially-obsessed countries and are relieved that largely doesn’t happen here. 

Efforts to re-racialise societies seem doomed to create more social fragmentation, when a better future was always meant to be colourblind. 

The unique Voice proposal, an institution which would further embed race as a permanent feature of our Constitution, and therefore racial division or disadvantage as a permanent feature of our democracy, was clearly rejected. 

This makes uncomfortable reading for many Yes supporters, and even soft No voters, because racial discrimination has been such a terrible feature of indigenous disadvantage. 

But the democratic message from the Australian people about the path to progress being through a commitment to equality rather than further racial separatism cannot be ignored.  

It is a cliché to say that we are all Australian but only because it is so obviously true.  

And it was a refrain repeated time and time again around barbecues, bonfires and over beers as our country came to grips with whether the Voice would align with our guiding lights. 

Many Aboriginal people and communities, including here in Tasmania, rejected the Voice.  

The reasons were many and varied but so many opposed because they reaffirmed the rightful place for first people is in fact as equals, not separate, in this land we all share. 

National symbols do tell us a great deal about ourselves. And in our anthem, recently changed lyrics point again to these two fundamental truths about the Australian character revealed in the Voice vote. 

We are one and free. 

A people committed to each other in equality and unity, with an indigenous heritage, a British foundation and a migrant character. 

With freedom and peace guaranteed through a Constitution which has stood the test of time while other nations with grander pretenses collapsed under internal or external forces. 

We have much work to do.  

There is division to heal and the Gap to Close. Our nation’s promise will never be truly fulfilled until all of us, from first Australians to new Australians, have a fair go at life. 

But the message from this referendum is clear. 

Change must be practical and conserve what has made this the best country in the world. 

And we must walk this journey together as equals. 

It won’t be easy but good things rarely ever are.