‘Disappointed by landslide’: WA follows emphatic national no vote
By Hamish Hastie and Jesinta Burton
The emphatic No vote from the east has left Yes volunteers at the campaign’s official post-referendum function in a deflated state.
By 6pm about 50 Yes volunteers had trickled into the Rechabite Hall in Northbridge from voting booths across the city. They were greeted with an enormous screen streaming the ABC news feed displaying the torrent of No votes nationwide.
Punters at the Yes23 event in Perth on Saturday evening.Credit: Hamish Hastie
By 6.55pm (AWST) with 200,000 votes counted, WA was trending significantly toward no with 59 per cent to the yes vote of 41 per cent. This masthead called the Yes campaign’s defeat just after 7pm.
The crowd listened intently during Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s national address and only applauded as he finished taking questions from the press.
Labor MP for Perth Patrick Gorman addressed the crowd and said losing was tough but losing a referendum that doesn’t come around often was tougher.
“It is the start of a different journey,” he said.
“We have said the status quo is not acceptable, whether people voted yes or voted no there is a broad acceptance that that is not acceptable.”
Whadjuk Noongar elder Aunty Robyn Collard delivered an impassioned Welcome to Country where she told the crowd she had lived the first 10 years of her life as a subject of the Flora and Fauna Act.
“I’m sorry to say but my heart is feeling very sad at this result,” she said.
“Tonight I need to go home and tell my 11 grandchildren that I live with about this result because Australia as a nation has revealed itself to the rest of the world.”
Yes23 volunteer Callan, 25, said he was disappointed at the “landslide” of no votes.
“It is disappointing that it looks like that it’s the most disadvantaged Australians that are the ones voting no, by and large.”
The official Fair Australia No campaign is not holding a post-referendum function in WA.
WA voters served up some democracy
The mood at polling booths was far more buoyant during the day in WA.
As leading No advocate and WA Liberal Senator Michaelia Cash and the waiting press pack left through the gates of Doubleview Primary School on Saturday morning, Perth father Ian Richardson arrived to place his vote alongside his young family.
Ian Richardson and his young son at Doubleview Primary School in Perth’s north.Credit: Jesinta Burton
Wearing a T-shirt brandishing the words “Vote Yes”, Richardson told this masthead he was steadfast in his position and passionate about giving Indigenous Australians a Voice.
“You only need to look at the statistics to know what we’re doing isn’t working well for them, particularly our high incarceration rates,” he said.
“I spend a lot of time in Indigenous communities and have a lot of friends in those communities, and it’s clear they need a lot more help than we are giving them.
“It’s time for things to change for the better.”
He conceded the perceived lack of detail had left a number of voters torn, which Cash said was evidenced by the conversations she’d had in the lengthy queue to the ballot box.
Yes campaigners and signage outnumbered No advocates two-to-one in the inner-city booth at East Victoria Park Primary School, but the two camps mingled cordially as voters streamed into the school.
No campaigner Joe Bryant said he believed the Voice would divide the country.
“It used to be one rule for all one vote for everyone, now there’s a group who are going to get special treatment, and they’re going to tie it up to government, and it’s wrong,” he said.
Joe Bryant, a No campaigner at East Victoria Park Primary School in Perth.Credit: Hamish Hastie
Bryant said he supported Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s call for an audit of federal government spending to find out where money was being wasted in Indigenous affairs, so it could be better spent to address issues in Indigenous communities.
Yes campaigner Jethro Sercombe said he had never volunteered for a campaign like this in his life.
“I’m here volunteering because Aboriginal people have asked us and given us an invitation to support the Voice,” he said.
“I work in consultation and codesign for a living and I know that when we listen we get better results and better services and better outcomes.”
Final pitches
The highest profile Yes and No campaigners like Noel Pearson or Price chose to spend the final hours of the campaign across the Nullabor, and in their absence the last-ditch pitches were left to WA politicians.
Speaking outside Doubleview Primary School just after voting opened, Cash levelled a scathing attack on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and accused him of playing politics over good policy.
She urged Albanese to turn his attention to uniting the country and addressing the issues affecting all Australians, with the cost of living crisis chief among them.
“If the Voice does get up, it’s risky, it’s unknown, it’s permanent, but more than that, regardless of the outcome tonight, the one thing Mr Albanese has done is divide this nation – and it’s a great shame that he has done this as a leader,” she said.
Liberal Senator Michaelia Cash in Perth on Saturday.Credit: Jesinta Burton
“If the Yes case does not get up, that lies squarely at the feet of our prime minister, because he chose to walk down this divisive path and threw away the opportunity for bipartisan support.”
Asked how the Opposition would work to achieve better outcomes for Indigenous Australians, Cash backed Price’s calls for an audit of wasteful spending.
Twenty kilometres south-east at the East Victoria Park Primary School booth, state and federal Labor MPs and former WA governor Kim Beazley formed a united front with Greens senator and Yamatji-Noongar woman Dorinda Cox to spruik the Yes case.
Labor’s Swan MP Zaneta Mascarenhas said the referendum was an opportunity to right the wrongs of the past and help Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders reach their full potential.
“I’m the child of migrants, I am so grateful for the opportunities that Australia has given me, but it seems so unfair that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders don’t have the same opportunities, as I do,” she said.
Kurin Minang woman and globally respected human rights academic Hannah McGlade said Australia would be joining many other countries in the world by recognising Indigenous Australians with a Yes vote.
“As a member of the UN Permanent Forum for Indigenous issues I know that recognising indigenous peoples and constitutions is the best practice of many countries around the world,” she said.
“All of these countries have made these commitments so long ago, we made a great commitment in 1967, come on Australia, we could do this again.”
WA Labor MP Hannah Beazley, WA Greens Senator Dorinda Cox, Swan MP Zaneta Mascarenhas, state upper house MP Kate Doust and former WA governor Kim Beazley at East Victoria Park Primary School.Credit: Hamish Hastie
Beazley, famed for his extroverted public speaking, delivered another impassioned plea for West Australians to vote Yes by saying the Voice was not about race, and that every single person had black ancestry at some point.
“People need to understand that it is not about race, it’s about originality, that’s what it’s about ... this Voice is before us because the Aboriginal people of this country were here 70,000 years before us,” he said.
“If this passes, it will strengthen Australian resilience, it will make us more whole as a nation, it will give us the essential equipment to survive in what is going to be for this country an awfully difficult world as the years go by.
“The only one thing I know about my ancestors then, and it applies to pretty well, everybody who’s standing around me, is they were black.
“The simple fact of the matter is, our white pigmentation is a product of the last 20-30,000 years, which is something to consider.”
An opportunity not to be missed
Cox agreed with her former Greens colleague, Victorian independent senator Lidia Thorpe, that the mental health of Indigenous Australians has been impacted during the referendum debate, but said that was unavoidable in the fight for recognition.
Cox said the referendum had impacted an already vulnerable population but the nation needed to take this opportunity.
“What we have seen is a very steep decline on the mental health and [increase in] suicide rates of our people for nearly a decade now,” she said.
WA Greens Senator Dorinda Cox at East Victoria Park Primary School.Credit: Hamish Hastie
“There has been a heightened risk in this to our people … absolutely, I totally agree with that substance.
“But I don’t think that this situation, in a political context, was avoidable.
“We have fought too hard and too long to miss this opportunity and the opportunity for us to have a constitutionally enshrined body. It has been something that has been asked for since 1938.”
Cox said her people had been on a rollercoaster for a long time, and it was time to stabilise that through a Voice.
“We want to stabilise the investment. We want to stabilise the conversation, and we want to build a plan that goes into the future,” she said.
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