| Bass Coast Post |
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For me, voting Yes to the Voice is a no-brainer.
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We are each given a once in a lifetime chance to put our nation on a track to address the structural imbalances that condemn some Australians to shortened, sicker, third world lives.
We already have enough ineffective indigenous advisory bodies.
For 235 years, nothing has worked. Continue that with a “NO” vote or at least try another way with a “YES” vote. I’m voting “YES”. At least the Constitution would then formally admit that there were people already here.
My Yes vote is for an Aboriginal man I met in an aged care hostel. Most of his fellow residents were in their 70s and 80s. He was 56.
Voting Yes maximises the chance of preventing other First Nations people being elderly and infirm before their time. My experience, as a person that needs detail and has no belief of the "trust me" push on the YES vote, was that I didn't have enough info ... so would have voted no, based on lack of information.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart moved me to tears with its extraordinary generosity, and I’m deeply disappointed that this open-hearted gesture has been gratuitously politicized.
 We have been reading about the No campaign this morning, and it shows why we need an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
I will be voting YES for The Voice. I lived and worked in the Northern Territory for 10 years and saw many impractical and wasteful programs rolled out by ‘Planet Canberra’ whereas the successful programs were invariably designed and developed BY community Elders - in partnership with the whitefella organisation/agency. Kim Mahood’s essays in her (2022) ‘Wandering with Intent’ give some enlightening accounts of this.
The case for the Voice can be traced through evidence, not opinion, not fear, not misinformation. PM Turnbull commissioned the largest ever consultation of First Nations people to find out how they wanted to be recognised in the Constitution.
The process has been flawed from the beginning.
Without bipartisan support, the proposal was vulnerable to being irredeemably politicised, which is what has happened. Firstly, I will be voting yes on the 14th October 2023 because we need to recognise indigenous peoples as the First Nation peoples of our country in the constitution.
And secondly I fully support a treaty for Victoria. It seems to me that most No voters are of the far Left (‘it doesn’t go far enough’) or far Right (‘it goes too far’), as in ‘we need to change (or not change) Australia Day and the Australian flag..’.
“If you don’t know, vote no”.
Really??? . . . . . How about this instead: If you ‘don’t know’ but you’re about to vote ’No' to something you feel you don’t understand (something important enough for a National Referendum, no less), then surely it is your civic duty to find out about it first. I have, at times, viewed the circumstances of Indigenous Australians as an intractable, ‘wicked’ problem and despaired of the health, education, incarceration rates and other indicators, where for decades successive governments have tried to Close the Gap, with little or no success.
First experience of “Aboriginal problem” was when working in remote survey camp in South Sumatra. For each news bulletin on Radio Australia, the radio blasted out a chorus of Kookaburras, very much the same chorus as that of Spectacled Gibbons who went a little crazy.
 I will be voting YES on 14 October. And I will encourage any of my friends who raise the issue with me to do likewise.
The Voice is not a political question, it's a moral one. To see why, take the Questionnaire.
 I sympathise with the “progressive no” movement as a self-professed progressive. I appreciate that an advisory body afforded little power by the proposed amendment does not go far enough to make the change so desperately needed for our first nations people on the journey to reconciliation.
Based on my experience at a ‘community conversation’ with Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, my advice to Australians who were going to vote YES and are now undecided is to fact check the inconsistencies in the NO campaign before making a final decision.
 Have you discussed the Voice with friends/family/ workmates?
Yes. How did that go? We didn't really discuss the pros and cons, we talked about the escalating political nature of the 'debate' and the immovable, entrenched positions. Our parliamentary institutions have always hopelessly failed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The argument that we already have parliamentary representatives including First Nations politicians is not going to work if they are somehow tied to a party. They will always toe the party’s line, just as Broadbent is now doing. The Voice is the only opportunity First Nations people have been given to actually get their own message across to the federal parliament.
 With all my heart I accept the invitation the Uluru Statement from the Heart extends for recognition of Indigenous people in our constitution through a voice to parliament.
After many discussions I am voting no as it is very divisive and every Australian should get one vote.
At pivotal times like these for societal change I feel pride in my native country’s leadership. Foremost among New Zealand’s global agenda setting was its 1893 act of becoming the first self-governing country to grant the vote to all adult women.
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