Letter from the Editor: It's time to leave the fear and anger behind. History is calling us

My heart said YES loudly. My head said more quietly: “listen to Jacinta Nampijinpa Price”.

So I’ve taken the advice so helpfully proffered in this article and voted with my head.

If only the Yes campaign hadn’t been so comprehensively botched, maybe my heart would have prevailed.

Genevieve,
Salve that troubled mind by giving one of your farms……The farm I grew up on has been in my family’s hands for 130 years. The farm I live on now was acquired by my husband’s family in 1842…….back to the traditional owners. No one is stopping you.

I was brought up in an environment where people kept their voting preferences to themselves. My mum used to say that she voted for “all of the candidates”; but she never declared what order she put them in.

Today I voted No. That was my personal decision, based on the view that No is always the best decision where there isn’t bipartisan support.

Today, when a Yes campaigner offered a phamphlet, I politely declined and said that I was intending to vote No. He gave me a horrified look.

Later, I witnessed No volunteer in tears. She had been abused by a voter.

I have doubts that there have been incidents of Yes voters feeling intimidated as well in places, although I didn’t witness that today.

How have we become a society where if we vote different to the expectations of others, we automatically become “haters” or “racists” or are labelled with some other degrogatory term?

What an article. All the old no argument YES Campaign falsehoods with a few others thrown in. The basic reason to vote NO is this and it has NOT changed since Albo announced this devisive horrible idea. No group of Australian citizens should have greater citizenship rights than others, that especially applies to a group that is chosen solely on their race. In one thing you are right ” it’s time to leave all the fear and anger behind” and you do that by voting NO. In fact hell NO!

Thanks Genevieve – For speaking out. This morning I walked and played John Farnham’s The Voice to myself and sang and danced along with it out of support for the Voice and out of sadness and frustration at the politicisation of such a an issue, I know it seems like it won’t get up and if it doesn’t, our indigenous brothers and sisters will be deeply hurt by the rejection. I want my grandkids to grow up with their indigenous friends as equals who have equal opportunities. I want a United and fair Australia for the future. Vote YES.

Thanks for sharing your views, Genevieve. I can respect your desire to uphold social justice as you see it. I also agree there is much that needs to change within Australia in how the indigenous people are incorporated in the national life.
I don’t agree with a “Yes” on this referendum is the right way to address these issues simply because it is a massive and far-reaching change to the Constitution, yet it is vague and thus opens the door to endless judicial actions and challenges as the nation would try to work out what the “Voice” clause actually means. It is giving the “Voice” the same status as the legislative branch or the judiciary in the constitution – that is why it is dangerous and poorly designed. Frankly, it looks like a power-grab or at least, opens the door for a power grab of monumental proportions – and it won’t help the indigenous peoples in actuality – it will be the elites who use it for their own ends. Vote No not Yes on this one, and encourage our leaders to come up with something better.

For fear and anger to be left behind, there must be repentance and acknowledgement on behalf of those who caused it. There was the apology by Rudd 15 years ago. There has been known for the worst rights violation in Australia’s history over the last four years. Government must rebuild the trust it destroyed and not white wash it with a fake inquiry. Until then, government cannot be trusted to run a chook raffle, let alone something of this scale and importance.

I don’t think anyone who reads this site was under any misapprehension as to where the author and editorial team’s votes were going.

This is twaddle written by a preachy know-nothing: leaning on straw-manning, guilt tripping and garbled mis-comprehension.

It’s representative of the view the sanctimonious middle classes have been pushing for decades, which the devil couldn’t better have designed himself. All the pious references to racism to drown out policy alternatives (because everything that challenges the white-centric dogma is “racist”), virtually guarantees a policy of pushing welfare pills, not to make things better for Aborigines (it isn’t working) but to insert the insatiable do-gooder need for redemption — that’s after inserting themselves front and centre in the picture along with their self-satisfied promise to “do better”. And of course, to measure themselves favourably against the vulgar, ignorant classes: for how else would the self-righteous bourgeosie better congratulate themselves on their superiority in taste, fashionable dogma, and morality?

But at the same time as they’re claiming their own superior agency, they insist that real agency — personal drive, responsibility and dignity — are racist tropes when applied to Aboriginal people. Just look at how they react to Jacinta Price! “Victim blaming”, they shriek. No, they want an “advisory body” to continue pushing the welfare pills onto the “victims”, so that the welfare can be signed off as “but first nations people said that’s what they want”. (Actually, there’s far better starting points than another elitist body)

But at the same time they’re pushing top down passivity dressed in “advice”, they’re blithely unaware of toxic power structures within disadvantaged communities that they actively end up reinforcing. They’re convinced Aborigines are a separate species (though under no circumstances would they introspect to the point they realise it), who were innocent of power and greed, incapable of doing harm, until Bad White People made them do it. As in, they’re convinced, actually, Aboriginal people had less than the full range of human characteristics (until White People showed them). But they’re not racist! It’s the vulgar plebs, they’re the racists! It’s “Australia”, full of racism! Luckily the self-righteous Guardian reading, ABC-viewing bourgeoisie can ride in and fix it, but whew, what a struggle, against the dark forces of dumbness and vulgarity! This delusion is just so excruciatingly self centred; and so actually, definitionally, racist — and classist.

Price says it best, and she’s met by shrieking and howling from inner city Melbourne and Sydney that “she doesn’t know what she’s talking about”, “she’s a puppet for shadowy far extreme right wing extremist far right conspiracies” (shove a few more “fars” in there to underscore the reprehensibility). No, they say, the angry, bitter, twisted inner city activists have the answer, which is to point at “white people” every time, all the time (with nothing else to say). And with that, we’re right back to the self righteous bourgeois conceit “I love that this issue is all about me”. It’s a farce.

History is calling, yes.

In the aftermath, I hope that people are able to assist first nations without the bluster.

If the issue is so important why not actually look into the so called “racist laws”. They don’t exist.
If you are all for equality, why are you pushing for an apartheid solution? This makes no sense.

Most Yes supporters are voting yes because they want to score social justice points with others playing the social justice points game. The referendum is a waste of several hundred million dollars that could have actually done something.

There is no limit to the ‘voice’ being granted the power to make laws. Its certainly an open interpretation of what the powers that are being proposed can do.

Lets see if this post gets censored too.

Vote No, we are all equal in the eyes of God, and in the eyes of the Constitution.

Genevieve: the T&C of Riotact state:
“Region Media expects and welcomes contributions that stimulate debate and discussion and we aim to provide balanced coverage of issues.”
I enjoy Riotact and it’s local content. Unfortunately the coverage of the referendum by Riotact has not been balanced.
As editor you selected authors to write articles that have exclusively promoted the Yes side. These articles were clearly unbalanced, contained provocative statements and language designed to be inflammatory. Where were the authors and articles articulating the No side? It appears you have allowed your personal views in support of the Yes campaign to override your obligations as a journalist and editor to “provide balanced coverage of issues”.