I should have specified “some NO people” or better still the NO organisers
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If we continue like we are then nothing will change.
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It’s been a clear lie since it was first published and Dutton and Ley ran with it in parliament. Dirty business, well established
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I dont think so. Anything the voice recommends on indigenous affairs it would be foolish for either the government or opposition to be against it.
I think it will help ensure decisions are above party politics and not election issues.
Ie there will be a wave of bipartisan support and a lot more change will happen for the better for indigenous folks
Ok my answers were too long and got lost. Here’s a shorter version:
Occasionally that once happened. This time:
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Noel Pearson, Marcia Langton and others reasonably evaluated the risks and thought that having got bipartisan support from constitutional experts would not result in what actually happened. They underestimated the real risk of the two parties turning it into another electoral campaign.
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The ALP evaluated the risks of trying to make it a Labor government achievement instead of a routine matter and estimated that even if the opposition won that would reinforce ALP voters hatred of Coalition, which is currently the only thing they have going for them. They were oblivious to the danger that they could be thumped so badly that only the sort of total zealots that have dominated this thread until lately would be able to pretend that it was lost because there are so many racists in Australia instead of so many unimpressed by how little they cared about actually doing anything and how obviously they attached greater importance to posturing.
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The coalition evaluated the risks of being isolated as racists in the way the ALP intended and estimated that they could do more damage to the ALP than the ALP could do to them.
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Only the first lot gave any thought whatever to any risk to Aboriginal policy. The two parties were entirely focussed on risks to themselves and one of them got it wrong.
So none of them wanted to be humiliated, including the sitting government. The government were just so out of touch and uninterested in what actually gets done about failures in Aboriginal policy that they did get defeated by an opposition campaign that had no substance whatever and relied instead on a combination of fear mongering and the sheer emptiness of the government’s posturing.
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At dinner tonight and a QLD doctor called me a “leftie” when I said I was voting Yes when it came up in conversation. 
First time for everything I guess as anyone who knows me that I’m anything but left on most topics.
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That’s a ripper!
You’re one of us now. Your copy of Das Kapital is already in the mail
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I did remind him that all that Queensland sun fries their brains and turns their necks red
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This is far from over ……the huge advertising $$$$ will turn votes back to YES
that’s what you get for hanging around with us degenerate scum
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Pretty sure other states call them Vets.
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Indigenous vs whites generally, or only anglos, or do you mean Asians, Indians, Africans, middle easterners, Pacific Islanders, et al?
Please explain.
True I am prematurely assuming that it won’t be turned around. Depends on whether they can change course very rapidly.
If the amount of cash available for YES was put into WHY I think it could beat both camps (but I’m prejudiced).
I don’t have a good feel for mainstream politics but my impression is that they don’t learn quickly enough to stop digging the hole they are in. We’ll see.
All of the above.
The Age
“ One of the calculated myths in the campaign against the Indigenous Voice is the argument that the referendum is a contest between elite insiders and ordinary folk because the case for change is powered by the wealthy and the well-connected.
The No campaign thrives on the “outsider” status it claims for itself as a movement that speaks for those without money or power, leading a cause that challenges the establishment by mobilising voters who lack the advantages enjoyed by others.
Illustration: Simon LetchCREDIT:
But the No campaign has an establishment of its own, full of people with money, influence and connections as well as harbourside views. It turns out that a transport company boss and a building materials millionaire are among the donors behind Advance Australia, although their names do not show up in the disclosures at the Australian Electoral Commission.
This is important when so little is known about the peak group behind the No campaign, Advance Australia, and the activist group it has set up, Fair Australia. These groups are secretive by design, but key facts about the tactics adopted by some of their members emerged in news reports by this masthead this week about the way they coached volunteers to use fear and doubt rather than facts to defeat the Voice at the October 14 referendum. It is not suggested that any of the donors identified below endorsed the controversial tactics revealed in the news reports.
Advance is a force to be watched in federal politics. If it succeeds in halting the Voice, it could unleash its conservative activism on other fronts even when critics accuse it of peddling falsehoods.
Election laws make it challenging to find out who puts money into groups like Advance, a conservative group that is turning out to be far more active than the progressive group, GetUp, which set an earlier template for this sort of advocacy. While GetUp posts regular updates about financial support on its website – it has raised $6.5 million over the past 365 days – Advance takes the approach of most political parties, with a bare minimum of disclosure.
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Some Advance donors are known because they are named in the group’s annual returns to the Australian Electoral Commission, or they lodge their own returns about their donations, and some have declared their support publicly, but that is not the case with all of them. Some of the payments are made through private companies, so we searched company records to find out who was behind the donations. This is not the sort of disclosure that is readily available to the ordinary voter.
So who are its donors? The transport company chief is Brett Ralph, the founder and managing director of Jet Couriers and a director of the Melbourne Storm football club as well as other sporting clubs. His company, JMR Management Consultancy Services, put $75,000 into Advance last financial year. He did not reply to an email about his donations.
The Sydney millionaire is Rodney O’Neil, a member of a family that made its money in building materials with companies like Australian Blue Metal and Hymix, which was run by his brother, Colin. The family is well known in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, to the point of featuring in a recent article on society weddings. Companies linked to Rodney O’Neil, with names like Nedigi and Sixmilebridge and based in Double Bay, contributed $85,000 to Advance last year. He did not respond to a request for comment.
Sam Kennard, head of storage company Kennards, donated $20,000 to Advance last year and $20,000 the year before.CREDIT: RODGER CUMMINS
Another donor is Sam Kennard, head of storage company Kennards, who has helped Advance over several years. His company, Siesta Holdings, gave $20,000 last year and $20,000 the year before. There was no response from Kennards about this donation.
These donors join some who have already been in the headlines for their help for Advance – such as former health company chief Marcus Blackmore, who donated $20,000 last year.
Blackmore, who emerged with about $334 million from the takeover bid for Blackmores earlier this year, is a public supporter of the No campaign.
One of the best-known donors to Advance is a former fund manager, Simon Fenwick, who has backed the conservative group for years. He and his wife, Elizabeth, donated $650,000 and $350,000 before the last election. The Fenwick family trust also donated $50,000 last year.
Marcus Blackmore, the former health company chief, gave $20,000 to Advance.CREDIT: CAROLINE FURLONG
Fenwick worked in stockbroking and funds management in London and New York before returning to Sydney. Earlier this year, he promised to match donations worth up to $250,000 to Advance to help stop the Voice.
There is serious money on both sides of this referendum. The Business Council of Australia has publicly backed the Voice and member companies such as BHP, Rio Tinto and Wesfarmers have donated $2 million each to the Yes campaign, while Qantas has put the logo on its aircraft and promised $500,000 in free travel for Yes campaigners.
But the full amount being donated to each campaign will not be known until several months after votes are cast on October 14, under federal rules that delay the disclosure until April 1. This is another example of the weakness of Australian donations law. The payments being made on both sides of this referendum should be revealed now, so Australians can know who is funding the arguments before they cast their votes.
The “outsider” myth is important to the way Advance presents itself and central to the No campaign. When No campaigner Jacinta Nampijinpa Price addressed the National Press Club on Thursday, she framed the Voice as a vehicle for the “elite few” rather than all Australians.
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This referendum is about many things: recognition for Indigenous people in the Constitution, whether to have the Voice enshrined in the Constitution and whether either of these things can really make a difference to the entrenched disadvantage for so many First Australians. People of good faith can argue their case.
But one thing this is not about is a contest between the battlers against the blue-bloods. It is not about outsiders versus insiders – and anyone who follows the money can see why. There’s a word for the money behind the No campaign, and it’s a word the No campaign likes to use a lot: elite.
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Tony Wright with a typically thought-provoking piece in today’s Age.
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good interview/article with one of the blokes from the first peoples assembly of vic addressing most of the common questions asked about the voice
worth a couple of minutes of your time if you’re interested in what indigenous people think of it
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you know a certain group dont.
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Adopting the usual playbook of right-wing fascism of recent years - appropriating the hardships of genuinely challenged minorities. It’s so soon after the “oppression” middle class white folk felt having to stay home and wear a mask, now something else from “the left” wants to impinge on their lives.
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