What is the Voice?

Welcome to our brief guide to help you understand the vote.

The federal government has announced that a referendum will occur later this year for whether an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander body - shorthanded to "The Voice" - should be included in Australia's constitution. This article does not look at the political issues, or the Yes or No arguments, but simply the factual background of the vote.

Not the First Time

This is not the first time that Aboriginal populations will be referred to in Australia's constitution. Previously, for the purposes of counting Australia's population in the census, First Nations people were explicitly not to be counted under the original Constitution. Power to make laws over Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs were left as a "residual" power to the states, not applying nationwide. Both changed under the 1967 Referendum, which removed section 127 of the Constitution (the population count) and introducing federal control over Aboriginal affairs.

... But That's Where Another Problem Started...

The federal control over Aboriginal affairs has meant that there have been repeated attempts at national bodies to speak on behalf of First Nations people. One of the main examples of the late 20th / early 21st centuries was ATSIC - the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.

Created in 1990 and the direct descendent of the Aboriginal Development Commission (created by the Fraser Government in the late 1970s), it was a body with its leaders elected by First Nations people, and existed as both a public voice and a financial body directing economic aid and development. Its role was split in the late 1990s, with a separate Torres Strait Islander Commission created to better direct and target their affairs and funding.

However, as with a number of earlier bodies, this only existed under legislation and it was the Howard Government who sought (and succeeded) to abolish ATSIC, which became subject to political controversy after then leader Geoff Clarke was alleged to have been involved in a number of rapes in the 1970s and 1980s, and the Howard Government first took away the financial controls held by the organisation, and then cancelled the organisation as a whole.

Calls for a New Voice

In 2017, a 16-member Referendum Council (made up of First Nations members appointed by then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and opposition leader Bill Shorten) travelled Australia to speak with more than 1200 people in communities around Australia. The group produced a document outlining the fundamentals of their views after speaking with the communities - the Uluru Statement of the Heart.

The presented summary of the statement is copied below in its entirety - it is actually short and we encourage you read it. Amongst other things, it calls for two things: a Constitutionally-enshrined voice for First Nations people, and the Makarrata Commission (a truth-telling, peace and justice commission, similar but not identical to the Truth-Telling Commissions in South Africa.)

Later in 2017, at the First Nations Constitutional Convention, the 250 delegates adopted the Statement of the Heart. However, shortly after, Prime Minister Turnbull, Attorney-General George Brandis and the federal government indicated that they were not willing to agree to such "radical" constitutional changes. The matter would remain on the back-burner for the next 5 years until adoption of the changes became part of the Labor Party platform, and they were elected in to office in 2022 under Anthony Albanese.

So What are We Voting On?

The referendum will be on the creation of a new Chapter 9 of the Constitution, providing for the existence of a National First Nations body. Detail about how people will be elected/appointed are not provided for in the Constitution, and will be left to the parliament to decide.

The body will not have veto power, or control over legislation, or the power to approve/disapprove laws. It will be a consultative body and will be able to choose which laws it is heard on, and does not need to speak on every law. What the government and parliament does with the views will be a matter for them.

Constitutional Referenda: Here We Go Again

Requests to change the Constitution are hardly new in Australia - this is the 45th referendum, meaning we averaging 1 every 3 years. No amendment to the Constitution has passed where it did not have bipartisan support.

The Australian people are generally reluctant to give more power to Canberra - of 44 referenda, only 2 have done this. The first was the social security powers vote in 1946. Before this, the Commonwealth could only provide benefits to war widows and invalid pensions. The changed wording opened the door to Australia's social security system, including unemployment, disability support, carer and other support.

The second was when Aboriginal Affairs powers were given to the Commonwealth, mentioned above.

Of the 44 referenda, only 8 have passed - 36 have been rejected. There have also been 4 plebiscites - where Australians have been asked to vote on an issue, rather than a change to the Constitution. Two of these (national service) failed in the 1910s; two of these (Marriage Equality, and choosing Advance Australia Fair as the national song in 1977) have succeeded.

For a constitutional change to happen there must be (a) a majority of Australians vote for it, and (b) a majority of states must vote for it. In some cases a majority of Australians have voted for a change but not a majority of states - in 1984, a majority of Australians voted to require that House and Senate elections must happen at the same time. However, this national majority was led by the populations of the two biggest states: Victoria and New South Wales. Voters in the other four states voted against the change by a slim margin. Overall, a majority of Australians voted yes, but only 2 out of 6 states supported it - so the referendum failed.

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Uluru Statement from The Heart

"We, gathered at the 2017 National Constitutional Convention, coming from all points of the southern sky, make this statement from the heart:

Our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first sovereign Nations of the Australian continent and its adjacent islands, and possessed it under our own laws and customs. This our ancestors did, according to the reckoning of our culture, from the Creation, according to the common law from 'time immemorial', and according to science more than 60,000 years ago.

This sovereignty is a spiritual notion: the ancestral tie between the land, or 'mother nature', and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who were born therefrom, remain attached thereto, and must one day return thither to be united with our ancestors. This link is the basis of the ownership of the soil, or better, of sovereignty. It has never been ceded or extinguished, and co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown.How could it be otherwise? That peoples possessed a land for sixty millennia and this sacred link disappears from world history in merely the last two hundred years?

With substantive constitutional change and structural reform, we believe this ancient sovereignty can shine through as a fuller expression of Australia’s nationhood.

Proportionally, we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately criminal people. Our children are aliened from their families at unprecedented rates. This cannot be because we have no love for them. And our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be our hope for the future.

These dimensions of our crisis tell plainly the structural nature of our problem. This is the torment of our powerlessness.

We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country.

We call for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution.Makarrata is the culmination of our agenda: the coming together after a struggle. It captures our aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia and a better future for our children based on justice and self-determination.

We seek a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history.

In 1967 we were counted, in 2017 we seek to be heard. We leave base camp and start our trek across this vast country. We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future."

Note on Makarrata

Makarrata is a Yolngu word "describing a process of conflict resolution, peacemaking and justice", or "a coming together after a struggle", and members said Makarrata "captures our aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia", and the Makarrata Commission would "supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations".