Remember these slogans from the months leading up to October 14, 2023?
“Don’t vote for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament – it’s racist!”
“Vote No on the Voice because it divides Australians!”
“Vote No on the Voice because we should have a treaty first!”
“Vote No because we can always go back later and do it better!”
Every one of those slogans was based on a lie, or at least a wilful twisting of the facts almost to breaking point. Over at Something for Cate, I wrote back then that the No case amounted to baseless fear-mongering, bad faith arguments, appeals to our worst selves, and outright lies. The objections to the Voice were thoroughly debunked, over and over again, by Yes campaigners who faced a barrage of hate and threats delivered to them via social media, their phones, and even face-to-face confrontations. Those campaigners warned of the dangers of rejecting the Voice, how it would send a message to racists that bigotry was back on the menu, boys. Nonetheless, Australians overwhelmingly voted to deny our Indigenous people the right to have even as much representation to Parliament as multi-million dollar evangelical church groups and crazy conspiracy theorists.
It was a shameful moment for us. But hey, not to worry, said the big movers and shakers from the No campaign as they merrily moved on to their next cause. It’s not a slippery slope or anything. There won’t be any knock-on effects, the status quo prevails, so we should all just chill out a bit and think about the “really” important things in life. You know, crucial issues such as why the Labor government must keep the former Coalition government’s promise to reward rich people for being rich by giving them massive tax cuts, or why it’s really important to pander to hateful bigots who want to erase queer people, especially trans folk, from existence.
And – shamefully – we did move on. Whether we voted Yes or No, we either expressed regret or celebrated, and then we let it fade into the background. Oh, we commiserated with Indigenous people who expressed their utter heartbreak, if we happened to see them giving an interview. We made vague noises about how we had to do something to help. We swore to ourselves and to each other that we’d continue to support Indigenous people. But, for the most part, we let ourselves be comforted by the notion that the status quo was – if not acceptable, at least endurable. After all, we could always do something about it later, right? It won’t get any worse.
Well, here we are in 2024, and it’s already worse.
Even before the dust had settled on the Voice referendum, organisations started doing away with Acknowledgement of Country speeches. (Some, like the Presbyterian Church of Australia, apparently saw the writing on the Referendum wall and acted to do this pre-emptively.) South Australia’s Northern Areas Council was one of these, not only doing away with the speech but also removing any mention of it from official correspondence templates. Then came the City of Playford, and Kangaroo Island Mayor Michael Pengilly. They haven’t quite managed it yet in the West Australian Shire of Harvey, or New South Wales’ City of Cumberland, but they’re certainly giving it a red hot go.
And why? According to Cumberland City Councillor Steve Christou, Acknowledgement of Country is … wait for it … divisive. It’s pandering to a “minority”. “Its (sic) time to stop dividing the community in order to represent a minority of 3 per cent.”
Does that sound familiar? It should. Christou is following the No campaign playbook, designed to give people the idea that if Indigenous people are acknowledged as the traditional inhabitants of Australia, it might in some way hurt “us”. And by “us”, the No campaign meant the people who have enjoyed systemic advantage since the moment our ancestors tramped up onto the beach at Port Jackson and said to the people who’d lived there for tens of thousands of years, “This is ours now, you lot can piss off.”
There’s also a new pushback against the idea of renaming things (or restoring their Indigenous names). When Moreland Council voted to change its name to Merri-bek, there was a predictable uproar- because, hey, who wouldn’t want to be part of a local government named after a slave plantation? The ABC was accused of going “woke” when it referred to capital cities by Indigenous names. Of course, this started before the Voice Referendum was even officially called, but No campaigners were quick to jump on the idea that Australian history was being “erased”, and claim that this was just the tip of the iceberg. Never mind that this was fact-checked into oblivion: it’s still popping up on social media every time someone brings up the idea of having an Indigenous name.1Here’s a fun exercise – try to work out how many councils, streets, and suburbs already bear Indigenous names, and have done so without anyone objecting. It’s more than you think.
Then there’s the ridiculous, confected furor about whether a supermarket should be compelled to stock Australia Day merchandise. How dare Woolworths – a private company – make commercial decisions, thundered the outrage merchants in the Murdoch news organisation. It’s “woke”! It’s un-Australian! They must not be allowed to do such an un-patriotic thing! Why, these people should be forced to stock paper cups with Australian flag designs printed on them!
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton – no doubt just itching to get his teeth into a new way to display some truly hateful behaviour – was quick to jump on that bandwagon. He called for Australians to boycott Woolworths, because how dare they not sell Australia Day flip-flops? Their business is not to tell us whether we believe in Australia Day or not,” he told sympathetic ear Kyle Sandilands. Woolworths are planning to sell merchandise for Chinese New Year and Diwali, he said, so of course they should also sell Australia Day stuff.
Never one to shirk an opportunity to swerve to the right of the Liberal Party, One Nation MP Pauline Hanson said that Woolworths should “pay a price”, not only for not stocking cheap flag-and-kangaroo-branded future landfill items, but also for – you guessed it – backing the Yes campaign for an Indigenous Voice. She also took a swipe at Bunnings, claiming the hardware company had instructed its employees not to wear any Australia Day items in case a customer got offended.
This isn’t just some hard right let’s-own-the-left nonsense, mind you. When you get right down to it, all these objections revolve around the idea that Australia Day is a precious and wonderful patriotic thing and always has been. Who cares if, for an increasing number of Australians, January 26th is a day emblematic not of patriotism, but of invasion and sustained, brutal oppression? That’s in the past, and besides, colonialism was good for Indigenous people. We taught them that their way of living was wrong, that their spirituality was false, that they were less than human because of the colour of their skins – and we showed them how to live “properly”. Why, they should be grateful that we took away their families and their culture and turned them into outcasts and servants with the stroke of a pen or the firing of a gun!
You won’t hear Peter Dutton or Pauline Hanson acknowledge that Australia Day is a recent invention. You won’t see the Murdoch media publish stories about how the first time it was celebrated – on July 30th – it was as a fundraiser for the WWI Australian war effort. You’ll likely never read about the fact that, as far back as 1938, Indigenous people declared January 26th a Day of Mourning. Facts? Who needs facts?
Indigenous Australians gather in protest on January 26th, 1938, in front of a blackboard proclaiming a National Day of Mourning. Source: Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
And, just yesterday, the Victorian Liberal party formally withdrew its support for a treaty with Indigenous people. Back in 2022, the party had voted in favour of establishing a treaty, and talks with the First Peoples Assembly are due to begin later this year. It’s one hell of a backflip, so they must have good reasons for it, right?
Wrong.
The major reason being thrown around to justify this is that state laws requiring that development sites be assessed for cultural and heritage content (including, but not limited to, sites of Indigenous significance) are just too darn cumbersome. People shouldn’t have to care about whether they’re destroying history or desecrating sacred ground, according to the Victorian Liberals. The Shadow Aboriginal Affairs Minister Peter Walsh (who, in news that I’m sure will astonish you, isn’t Indigenous) wants to stand up for those poor oppressed developers who are faced with terrible bureaucracy and delays. They should be allowed to just build, baby, build!
Let’s just leave aside for the moment the utterly facile implication that a treaty would somehow make organisational problems within cultural heritage assessments worse. Walsh offered nothing to show this would be the case; we’re supposed to just take his word for it. And what he’s not saying is that much of the delay problem in cultural heritage assessment stems from under-resourcing, not the process itself. First Peoples Assembly co-chair and Gunditjmara man Reuben Berg even pointed out that a treaty could actually help address this situation.
That’s all beside the point, though, because what’s really going on here has nothing to do with “costs and delays”.
Victorian Liberal leader John Pesutto spilled the beans. You see, according to him, Victorians don’t want a treaty. How does he know? Simple. The Voice Referendum failed, and – obviously – that means that treaty is off the table. Besides, a treaty – like the Voice – would “make people feel divided”.
Gosh, who saw that coming?
What we’re seeing is exactly what Yes campaigners warned us about. Sustained, hateful attacks all justified by hand-on-heart “restore the real Australia” rhetoric. A call to bring back that whitewashed, colonial paradise where men were men, women were in the kitchen, and dark-skinned people knew their place. A paradise that doesn’t allow anyone to bring up uncomfortable, unpleasant truths, or point out how our privilege is gained at the expense of others’ suffering. A fairy story in which we – the “real” Australians – took up the white man’s burden and brought civilisation to the savages, so strike up the band, salute the flag, and let’s all pretend that history is what we say it is.
And to do that, the Liberal Party and One Nation and all those racists disguised as “concerned citizens” have to make sure that Australians don’t hear the truth. They utter vague threats about “divisiveness” in the hope that we will react without thinking and rush to assure each other that we’re all equal. They remove what little acknowledgement of Indigenous history we have permitted to be shown and justify it by saying “let’s not make migrants feel unwelcome”. They tut-tut about government buildings flying the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island flags alongside the blue ensign. They ask plaintively why we can’t all just get along and forget about those pesky invasions and massacres – which never happened anyway, they hasten to add. They hide behind completely fabricated nonsense to provide excuses for turning their backs on Indigenous people.
This is the definition of the slippery slope. From the moment the Voice Referendum looked like becoming a reality, racists – both in and outside our Parliaments – started marshalling their misinformation and vitriol. Every time someone spoke up to counter them, they lied, changed the goalposts, and engaged in disgusting personal attacks. They appealed to the basest, most selfish parts of ourselves, and they won. Australia told Indigenous folk they couldn’t have a Voice to Parliament, and that was the boot that sent us all careering downwards.
Oh, it’s just a few names, some might say. It’s just a speech here and there. It’s just a flag. It’s far, far more than that. What we’re seeing is a sustained attack on Indigenous Australians, dressed up in pretty words like “unity” and “equality”. Bit by bit, racists are going after Indigenous representation and Indigenous visibility in Australian society. And, for the most part, we are letting them do it.
It won’t stop with this. The idea of a Victorian treaty will be undermined and lied about, just like the Voice was. Should the idea of a national treaty ever become more than a vague “real soon now” promise, it will come under fire, too. If they fail, forget about truth-telling and reconciliation. And once that’s gone, it will be much harder for people to champion a school curriculum already under fire for daring to teach that Australia didn’t begin when the white saviours arrived. Indigenous folks, already marginalised and systemically disadvantaged, can look forward to living in a society that doesn’t want to acknowledge they exist.
The Yes campaign tried to tell us that this would happen. We didn’t listen, and now we’re just beginning to see the consequences. There is still time to stop our slide, but the longer we wait, the harder it’s going to be to climb back up.
What’s happening now is our second warning. I don’t think there’ll be a third.
