When I clicked to purchase a black cap with the simple slogan, ‘Yes’, I didn’t think for a second. I wanted people in my community to know where my vote lay in the upcoming referendum. I felt it was important.
In truth, I’ve always been upfront about my political and social standpoint. The many opinion pieces I’ve penned over the last decade are testament, and I hate the notion that certain conversations are off the table: money, politics, sex… serve them all up, I say.
But yesterday, I put my new cap on for the first time and I instantly felt… fear.
I live in a regional town in northern NSW. Its population is just over 7000.
The community is a distinct mix of young professionals and families who have recently thrown the towel in on big city life, and staunch locals who have lived in this beautiful spot for decades. As a result, there’s a palpable divergence on attitudes and feelings from everything from the latest cellular tower to the bakery turning into a bottle-o.
But this divergence ultimately runs deeper. A few people around the neighbourhood in recent weeks have proudly stuck up posters supporting The Voice. They have been swiftly ripped down by ‘No’ supporters.
There’s a persistent narrative that The Voice is divisive– a line adopted straight from the Peter Dutton handbook.
When I queried a neighbour about why she felt the same, she told me that “everything’s she’s heard, points to it dividing the country”.
It’s a staggering take, but sadly a far-reaching one. Too many Australians perceive The Voice as a policy that will rupture us.
Instead of seeing it for what it is, a simple step in recognising First Nations people in our constitution and finally listening to them, we’re folding to the rhetoric of fear and falsehoods. We’re allowing something that should unite us, to do the very opposite.
Of course, it was a sharp, albeit egregious ploy by Dutton. Backflipping on the LNP’s support for The Voice in April this year, made the issue an instant, red-hot, political football.
Before this, all published opinion polls showed the proposal had majority or near-majority support in every state and territory. But after the Liberal Party’s thumping defeat in the Aston byelection, Dutton knew his only hope was to cling to the one, failsafe approach for conservatives: division. He knew Australians would capitulate.
Two weeks out from the referendum and the polls indicate that 44 per cent (up 8% points since May) of Australians will vote ‘No’ to establish an ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice’ at next month’s referendum if it were held today according to Roy Morgan. Only 39 per cent (down 7% points since May 2023) say they would vote ‘Yes’ and a further 17 per cent (down 1% point) are ‘Undecided’ on how they would vote.
And while I’ll continue to wear my cap and hang my posters, I know that I’ll face plenty of uncomfortable conversations in the next fortnight. I can feel a thousand critical eyes seared into me as I walk down the street. And the truth is, my town isn’t an anomaly.
It makes me wonder, how did we get to this point?