‘Everything you need to know about The Voice’ by Megan Davis and George Williams

I started reading this before the referendum, and then after the referendum I was too discouraged and flat to finish it. By the time that I broached it again, it was already history – and a history that I believe we will come to regret.

I thought that I was relatively well-informed about the constitution, referendums and The Voice, but I certainly learned things that I didn’t know before. Chapter 1 ‘Making the Constitution’ starts back with the 1901 constitution and the constitutional process that produced it. It explains that Section 127 about counting aboriginal natives (repealed in 1967) was inserted to stop Western Australia and Queensland from using their large Aboriginal populations to gain extra seats in Parliament and higher funding from federal tax revenue. I was aware that the Constitution is silent about many things that we assume would be constitutional e.g. electoral systems, Prime Ministers, parties- in fact, the preamble doesn’t even mention Western Australia because they weren’t sure to join in Federation! But I hadn’t realized that women’s suffrage was not part of the Constitution but was instead legislated under The Commonwealth Franchise Act of 1902 (does that mean that it could be legislated away in a Handmaid’s Tale scenario, I wonder?) Although unable to vote on the Constitution except in South Australia and Western Australia, the womens suffrage movement at the time trusted the promises that female suffrage would be legislated after the Constitution had been passed. As has been pointed out since, had voters demanded the same level of detail in 1901 as they did in 2023, the federal constitution would not have been passed.

Chapter 2 ‘The 1967 Referendum’ looks more closely at the Referendum which white Australians have basked in ever since. It reminds the reader that there was a second referendum held on that day that proposed to break the numerical 2:1 nexus of members in the House of Representatives to the numbers of Senators. It was this second proposal that attracted the most debate. There was overwhelming support for the Aboriginal question, with the ‘for and against’ compulsory booklet containing only arguments for change. Federal law required the ‘against’ case to be written by the parliamentarians who had voted against the change- and not one parliamentarian did so. But the electoral question was soundly defeated; the aboriginal question passed strongly. When Prime Minister Holt left to travel overseas the following day (shades of Albanese heading off OS straight away too?), instead of celebrating the victory on the indigenous question, he labelled it a “victory for prejudice and misrepresentation”. The Sunday Herald recorded the Yes vote on Aboriginals in small type, with a huge headline ‘AUSTRALIA SAYS NO ON NEXUS’.

Chapter 3 ‘A New Era?’ is a rather depressing rundown of events after the high point of the 1967 referendum, and the string of bodies that have been created by governments to consider a treaty or legislation for national land rights. The ‘decade of reconciliation’ commenced in 1991 but after the Native Title Act of 1993, the Indigenous Land Corporation and a Social Justice package created by the Keating government in the wake of Mabo, things stalled. The Howard Government responded to the Wik Decision by the Native Title Amendment Act of 1998 that would pour ‘bucket-loads of extinguishment’ on native title while the Hindmarsh Island Bridge Act 1997 ruled that the Heritage Protection Act applied everywhere except the Hindmarsh Island bridge area- the area in contention. The chapter reproduces the Howard/Les Murray preamble to the Constitution, then the second version written with Democrats Senator Aden Ridgeway that was eventually put a referendum in 1999. The preamble was prefaced by a clause that it had no legal effect, and both versions avoided the term ‘custodianship’ that Indigenous groups wanted. The referendum result was worse for the preamble than for the republic.

Chapter 4 ‘The Journey to Recognition’ looks at the apology, and new attempts to have a preamble – something that indigenous people did not want. Gillard established an Expert Panel to report on options for Indigenous constitutional recognition which made recommendations and wordings but which was put on the backburner because by early 2012 the political environment was not conducive to bipartisan support, and it was feared that a referendum might fail due to low levels of community awareness. At the 2013 federal election, each of the major parties expressed strong support for recognizing Aboriginal people in the Constitution, but when the Indigenous Affairs Strategy led to cuts and disestablishment of programs and activities, there was a backlash to the ‘Recognize’ campaign that specifically rejected a minimalist approach of preambular recognition alone. From the Kirribilli meeting with the Prime Minister and the Opposition leader in July 2015 it was made clear that any reform must involve substantive changes to the Australian constitution and that a preamble would not go far enough and would not be acceptable.

This was reinforced by the Referendum Council, established by Turnbull in late 2015 which asked the question “what is meaningful recognition to you?” The answer, from 12 Regional Dialogues was a constitutionally protected Voice to Parliament. Chapter 5 ‘The Referendum Council and Uluru process’ goes through in detail the consultation carried out, and the resulting Uluru statement. Turnbull’s rapid rejection on receiving the Uluru statement rehearsed the arguments that would later be used in the ‘No’ case (although he himself championed Yes by the time the Referendum came around).

Chapter 6 ‘Voice, Treaty, Truth’ goes through the reasons for the sequence. I must say that I have wondered why Truth-telling came last (although I am less optimistic now that it would make any difference to many white Australians anyway). This chapter points out that there was concern that the energy for grasping the opportunity of constitutional power might be exhausted by a truth-telling process, and that there is no treaty process in the world that required a truth-telling process first. Many communities wanted truth-telling at their pace, at the local level, rather than being compelled to tell your stories without any guarantee of good faith from the listeners.

The chapter ‘The Voice’ brings us up to the election of Anthony Albanese, and his commitment to the Uluru Statement in full (something that I suspect is shakier now). It goes through the Referendum Working Group proposal, which already had the ‘detail’ that the No side called for. The chapter then goes through the myths and misconceptions promulgated by the No case.

The final chapter ‘The Voice Referendum’ has an optimistic tone that – as we now know- was misplaced. It includes a list of the 44 referendums brought before the Australian people and their results. With a final national Yes vote of 39.9% the Voice ended up being one of the least supported proposals ever put forward (although there were 8 that were even less successful). Interestingly, the rejection of the preamble which recognized Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as “the nation’s first people” in 1999 with 39.3% was very close to the Voice result of 39.9%. Does this reflect the hard-baked resistance of white Australia? To be honest, I can’t remember how I voted in that referendum: I suspect that because the preamble was a Howard proposal, I would have opposed it. Nor can I remember how I voted in relation to the Republic: I suspect ‘Yes’ (and today I would even more strongly support the Parliamentary-selected model that was proposed then).

My response to this book was strongly influenced by my sadness at the final result and the misplaced hope that it reflects. Co-written by constitutional experts Megan Davis and George Williams, both were active participants in the campaign, and it needs to be read with that in mind. It is a very clearly written, informative book that gives a clear narrative of the road to the Voice referendum. If only the final destination had been different.