“I am a psychologist with a 100% Indigenous client base. I can tell you with 25 years of authority & expertise that the narrative that colonialism brought only “positive changes” for Aboriginal people isn’t misguided, it is DANGEROUS.” Dr Tracy Westerman AM #auspol#australia#indigenous#yes23
Feeling disgusted. Horrifying not one state majority for yes. It was such a simple risk-free opportunity for a modicum of fairness and acknowledgement. It’s very depressing that the electorate is so easily manipulated. I can’t imagine what it’s like for the activists who have been working for this for 20+ years. Expect even more suicide & trauma. Little consolation that in our area >80% of people voted yes. We live in a bubble inside an ugly #Australia #auspol#humanrights#yes23
There's been a lot of hard news in recent days. Sometimes it can seem like our community, and our world, isn't a safe or respectful place. That can take a toll on your mental wellbeing.
Self-care is important during challenging times. Eating well, getting enough sleep, and being physically active - especially out in our beautiful natural environment - are all helpful.
@eniko I agree to a point. However, Aboriginal people, through their representatives, advised our PM, Albanese, that this was the way they wished to do it: ask non-Aboriginal people to accept them as the First Nations people via embedding that fact into our Constitution and giving them an "official" voice. Our PM took the ethical & moral path by respecting this request. Meanwhile, the far right Opposition leader, Dutton pulled out of his original bi-partisan agreement to support #yes23.
A pair of elderly couples at the polling place. Wouldn’t give me space, almost standing on my feet as we waiting. They castigated anyone describing how to use the vote cards and yelled a bunch of times to use your own pen or your no vote will be converted to yes.
Funny how the opinions of these obvious sky news viewers mirrors that of fox viewers in the states.
Just voted. Didn't need a htv but chatted with the Yes hander-outer. She found out from some Libs she knows that Dutton doesn't need those glasses, they're just plain glass. He was advised they would soften his image #auspol#yes23
Went to vote. There was democracy sausage. There were also lots (and lots) of bright cheery yes banners and signs, two friendly yes people with details of how to vote, and only two dark menacing signs from the racists and bigots who would deny others their say. Here's hoping that the electorate of Ryan can hold our heads up high. #auspol#yes23#brisbane
Just voted YES at North Melbourne Primary School. Also purchased the veggie burger from the sausage sizzle stall. No queues here, if you're looking for somewhere to vote within the seat of Melbourne.
I've voted YES!
This referendum is about straightforward ideas and practical solutions:
Recognising and respecting 65,000 years of Indigenous culture for the first time in Australia’s 122-year-old constitution.
Listening to a diverse group of Indigenous Australians about the policies and challenges that affect them
Protecting the Voice from politics and bureaucrats by putting it in the constitution, giving it the security it needs to provide meaningful and honest advice. #yes23 3#Australia #recognition#Recognise@yes23au
If you don't know, look at the company you'll be keeping. Even if you yourself are not one of them.
#No23#VoteNo has all the racists, cookers, white nationalists, and conspiracy theorists. They outright lied time and time again. They quoted (and selectively misquoted) people repeatedly without that persons authorisation for their statement to be used by their campaign.
#Yes23#VoteYes has 80% of the Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people.
I'll be voting YES! Because I want to live in a country that recognises 65,000 years of Indigenous culture in our constitution. Listening through a Voice means we'll work together to create a better future. #yes23#VoteYes
A few observations from a week on pre-poll, before I go to hand out today.
All week, people voting yes walked in with smiles and a spring in their step.
All week, people voting no walked by with scowls, snarls, frowns, hunched over, some yelling abuse, others screaming abuse from car windows. Such is not the behaviour of people who have a clear conscience, or a healthy mindset.
I know which group I’d rather be part of. #auspol#yes23
It’s all part of a global playbook from the U.S.-based #AtlasNetwork to protect the profits of #FossilFuel and #mining companies, argues a Sydney researcher.
By Geoff Dembicki
Oct 10, 2023
"A campaign to deny #IndigenousPeoples a voice in Australia’s national Parliament is using tactics similar to an earlier conservative legal battle against #FirstNations communities in Canada, a new research paper argues.
"That’s no coincidence, according to the paper’s author Jeremy Walker, because think tanks linked to these efforts in Canada and Australia belong to a secretive U.S. organization called the Atlas Network that’s received support from #oil, #gas and #coal companies and operates in nearly 100 countries.
"'The coordinated opposition to Indigenous constitutional recognition by the Australian arm of the Atlas Network we can assume is motivated by the same intentions underlying the permanent Atlas campaign against climate policy [globally],' writes Walker, a senior lecturer in social and political sciences at the University of Technology Sydney in Australia.
'That is, to minimise the possibility of democratic government challenging the ever-expanding frontier of fossil fuel extraction,' he argues, a charge one conservative Australian advocacy group strongly denies.
"On #October14, Australians will vote 'yes' or 'no' in a referendum that would amend the country’s constitution to create a permanent First Nations advisory body in the country’s Parliament.
"'Most Australians understand that generations of Australian government policy have failed First Nations peoples,' UNSW Sydney professor Megan Davis, who is a Cobble Cobble woman of the Barunggam Nation, told the Guardian earlier this year. 'The voice referendum is an opportunity for all of us Australians to make the difference.'
"Earlier this spring national support for the 'yes' position was over 60 percent but by September it had collapsed to 40 percent or less, polling cited by Walker suggests.
Walker attributes that largely to the efforts of a #conservative advocacy group called #Advance, which has led an extensive media campaign urging people to vote 'No' in the referendum. 'The ‘Indigenous Voice to Parliament’ will wreck our Constitution, rewire our democracy, and divide Australians by race. It’s divisive, it’s dangerous, it’s expensive and it’s not fair,' reads a website created by Advance.
The campaign’s main spokespeople are Indigenous – Warren Mundine and Australian Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price – and they have been interviewed frequently in the country’s mainstream media. Yet few Australians are aware of Mundine and Price’s connections to the wider Atlas Network, Walker argues.
"Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price is another ‘No’ campaigner with Atlas ties.
Both 'No' campaigners are long-time contributors to the Centre for Independent Studies, Walker’s paper explains, a conservative think tank founded in 1976 with grants from resource extraction companies such as #Shell, #RioTinto and #WesternMiningCorporation.
The Center for Independent Studies is in turn a member of the Atlas Network, a Virginia-based organization whose members include hundreds of conservative think tanks and organizations across the world, many of whom are active spreaders of doubt about the severity of climate change.
One of the Center for Independent Studies’ first board members, Maurice Newman, was revealed as an early backer of the organization Advance in 2018, which is now leading efforts against the Indigenous referendum. And Advance’s lead 'No' campaigner Mundine is chairman of LibertyWorks, a conservative group also associated with the Atlas Network.
"Despite these connections, Advance strongly disputes any association with Atlas.
'We have never heard of the Atlas Network and absolutely reject the incorrect assertion we have any connection to them at all,' a spokesperson for Advance wrote in an email to DeSmog. 'The idea that our referendum campaign is being conducted or coordinated by ‘fossil-fuel corporations and their allies’ or the Atlas Network is wrong and frankly bizarre.'
"In addition to Australia and dozens of other countries, several Atlas Network members are based in Canada. And they too have led efforts attempting to undermine greater recognition of Indigenous legal rights. An Ottawa-based think tank and Atlas member called the MacDonald Laurier Institute spent years advocating against Canada’s federal government adopting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, otherwise known as #UNDRIP.
"That’s because UNDRIP contained clauses that could potentially give Canada’s Indigenous peoples greater say over fossil fuel and natural resource projects on their territories. 'It is difficult to overstate the legal and economic disruptions that may have followed from such a step,' read documents produced by the Atlas Network and the Macdonald Laurier Institute that were obtained by DeSmog.
"The think tank has actively cultivated #ProIndustry Indigenous representatives as the face of its advocacy efforts on this and other natural resources issues in order to provide 'a shield against opponents that is hard to undermine,' according to the documents. First Nations critics refer to such strategies as '#redwashing.'
"'It’s a way of [industry] making their claims about their relationship with Indigenous peoples sound better than they actually are in reality,' Kris Statnyk, a #Gwichin First Nation lawyer based in British Columbia, told Drilled this summer.
"Walker sees a parallel between those tactics, and the current effort in Australia to prevent First Nations from having greater representation in that country’s Parliament. The 'No' campaign led by the group Advance prominently features Indigenous Australians arguing against the referendum, despite polling commissioned by advocates suggesting that 80 percent or more of First Nations people in the country support the initiative.
Like in Canada, some Australian fossil fuel and mining projects are located in or adjacent to the traditional territories of First Nations.
"Several Indigenous communities have led legal challenges against gas and coal expansion. 'Should an Indigenous Voice be constitutionalised in Parliament, First Nations representatives might raise objections to such fossil and mining projects,' Walker writes.
He argues that this is what’s at stake in the upcoming referendum vote.
"'The effort to deny Aboriginal Australians a voice is part of a global playbook from Atlas and its allies,' Walker told DeSmog. 'They’ve also used it in Canada and likely anywhere else that greater Indigenous rights could impact fossil fuel and mining profits.'"
And with that, Laura Tingle stabs Spud fair in the eyes with a blunt spoon, trashing his blatantly politicised stance on the referendum. She predicts this has set the precedent for more of the same, and will leave our democracy a shadow of its former self. #730report#yes23
“We will find the inner life of our nation with this vote.
“All of the love and the hope that the yes campaign are drawing on, and all the fear and rage which the no campaign are trying to tap, we collectively hold in our souls.
“And this accounting will bring penetrating insight for all of us … as Australians.”
He urged people to vote with the hearts and “a sense of hope” on Saturday.
People that call themselves conservative tend to glorify and pretend to live in a past that never existed. I will never go there. No matter how painful it is to reflect on the realities of my own past. My privileges. Listen, learn, reflect, do better. Every day. That's my mantra.
@jwildeboer I have bookmarked Jan’s post because I find it helpful when the society living in fails (dramatically) to live up to my values and hopes. #Yes23