White demographics did not drive the Voice vote

It has been 12 months since the Voice Referendum was defeated and you have to wonder what has happened since.

The former Yes Campaigners appear to be either curled up into a foetal position or caught up in a continuing whinge or both.

None has taken any responsibility for the referendum defeat. As far as they are concerned, it’s everyone else’s fault — Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pushed them aside and they became invisible, he didn’t listen to them; Australians are racist and Australia is a racist country; the No Campaign lied and led a misinformation campaign.

Most recently Megan Davis blamed the result on old, white people. She says Albanese should have delayed the referendum, allowing more time to build support and for voting demographics to change saying: “You have a really dramatic change 10 years ahead from now because all the Baby Boomers will be gone, and our multicultural brothers and sisters are going to overtake the Australian-born population … We are on the cusp. We thought we were on that wave, but we weren’t. We’re on the tail end of old, white Australia.”

This is a bizarre take. And another example of Yes campaigners not understanding why their proposal was rejected by some 60 per cent of Australians, one of the largest No votes in Australian history. Of the 45 referenda, only nine had a lower Yes vote than the 2023 Voice referendum, and it is one of only 12 referenda to not achieve a majority in any state.

Davis is mistaken to blame Australian white demographics for the defeat of her Voice.

Support for Yes was concentrated in the well-heeled suburbs close to Australia’s major capital cities and among university-educated, high-income voters. The No vote prevailed in the expanse of most multicultural suburbs around greater Sydney and Melbourne. Voters speaking a language other than English were more likely to vote No.

More to the point, the vast majority of electorates where at least two of the top three non-English languages are not European returned a No vote and most were a strong No (greater than 55 per cent). Electorates with a high prevalence of Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism among the top religions also overwhelmingly voted No and, again, more returned a strong No. These demographics are hardly correlated with white Australia.

The 10 electorates that returned the highest Yes votes have Indigenous populations well below parity, ranging from 0.3 per cent to 2 per cent and most of them were below 1 per cent. By contrast, the 10 electorates with the highest No votes have Indigenous populations at or above parity, with most well above, ranging from 5 per cent to more than 16 per cent Indigenous. More broadly, the No vote prevailed across remote and regional Australia and in the working-class suburbs — this is, in the areas where most Indigenous people — and most people who count Indigenous people among their friends, colleagues, family members and neighbours — live.

It is also a lie that support for the Voice was high in remote Indigenous communities. Available booth data indicates that more than 60 per cent of Indigenous voters in remote communities didn’t vote at all, and the percentage of eligible Indigenous voters who voted Yes was less than 30 per cent.

The reality was that the Yes campaign took the Australian people for granted. It didn’t understand that Australians wanted to know how the Voice would have practical, outcome-driven results for Indigenous Australians in closing the gap, that they didn’t want racial separation and race-based rights in the constitution and that they want all Australians to be treated equally.

The Yes campaign took an elitist approach. They spoke to the so-called leadership of Australian society — the big corporates, the law societies, bar associations, universities, sporting bodies and the like. Those bodies and institutions overwhelmingly gave their support to the Yes campaign. But they didn’t speak to the 60 per cent of their shareholders, members, workers, customers, etc who voted No.

The Yes campaign spoke to the migrant associations and religious associations, the peak bodies of the various migrant communities and people of faith. An elitist approach. They failed to speak directly to the 50 per cent of Australians who are migrants or children of migrants, or to the people who worship at churches and mosques and temples every week. But the No campaign did.

The Yes campaign was the most divisive, racially abusive, campaign I have seen in the 40 years of political campaigns I have been involved in. The abuse and threats to people who campaigned for No — from the lead campaigners like myself and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price to the individuals who volunteered at booths — were relentless. People were scared and feared losing their jobs and contracts.

It is significant the referendum in Australian history that achieved the highest Yes vote, as well as a majority in all six states, was the 1967 referendum that gave Indigenous Australians equal status in the Australian Constitution and led to the dismantling of the state and territory segregation regimes.

Australia is not a racist country. Australians rejected the Voice in 2023 for the same reasons they supported an end to segregation in 1967. Because Australians oppose racial division and racial separation and support all Australians being equal, with the same rights regardless of race.

If Yes supporters think that waiting a decade for old, white Australians to die off will see a change in support for a constitutional Voice then this just shows they still don’t understand the message that the Australian people gave them a year ago.

Nyunggai Warren Mundine is Indigenous forum director of the Centre for Independent Studies.

Photo by Wendel Moretti.