History, Context, Predictions: The Voice to Parliament, Summarised

On October 14, Australians will vote ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament and whether to change the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing a body called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

If passed, the Voice would make representations to the parliament and the executive government on issues relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The Voice would be able to advise on improving programs and services for First Nations people, but it won’t be in charge of managing money or delivering those services. That power still rests with the government. 

Enshrining the Voice in the constitution effectively makes it a permanent fixture, meaning future governments will not be able to retract it the way they have done to other advisory bodies in the past.

So how did we get here? How will the Voice work? And what will happen if it passes, or fails? This is VICE Australia’s one-stop shop.

Since Anthony Albanese committed to fully implementing the Uluru Statement from the Heart in his election victory speech in 2022, the vote has come around quickly. But it’s been a long time coming for Australia – and for Labor. 

Albanese’s connection to the Uluru Statement from the Heart is part of a desire to position his leadership at the forefront of a broader decades-long movement. The language may have changed over several Labor governments – from ‘acknowledgment’ (Paul Keating) to ‘apology’ (Kevin Rudd) to ‘agency’ (Albanese) – but the Voice would be a culmination of years of progression.

The road to the Voice began arguable with the 1967 referendum when Australians voted to change the Constitution to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as part of the population. 90.77 per cent of Australian voters voted ‘Yes’.

See VICE’s timeline of events since then that have led to this month’s referendum.

A range of different Indigenous advisory bodies have previously existed at both state and federal levels – and some still do.

The proposed Voice to Parliament wouldn’t be the first Indigenous advisory body to exist, but, it is fundamentally different to those of the past. 

Since it would be constitutionally enshrined, the Voice would not be able to be removed at the whims of the next elected government – an issue that has limited Indigenous advisory groups of the past. 

Here’s a look at what the previous and current Indigenous government advisory bodies have achieved, how they operated, and how the voice is different.

Whatever the result, referendum day will be a revealing moment for Australia’s national identity. it will have long-lasting implications for First Nations peoples and the Federal Government.

What will happen following the referendum result? Here’s a breakdown of what either Yes or No scenario could look like. 

A few different polls have been collecting voter survey data on the voice and it should be noted that they’re not always right, have wrongly predicted election outcomes in the past and most of them have pretty small sample sizes, this time they range from a few hundred to almost 5000 people. 

All of them however found No was well ahead of Yes. The most recent and the biggest poll was from the Resolve Political Monitor, which surveyed 4728 people Australia-wide between September 22 and October 4 and 56% said they were against the constitutional change and 44% said they for for it.

The ABC averaged all the poll results and found Yes support was at 41.2% while No was 58.8%. To put that in context, the Yes support is worse now than it was for the last referendum in 1999, which failed with about 45 per cent support. 

Read more about the Voice to Parliament referendum predictions here.

For the referendum to pass, a double majority is required, which means that at least four out of the six states must vote yes. The territories – ACT and NT – are not included in this, only the Australian majority, so it could be argued votes from the states carry more weight.

Following that, there will be a process with Indigenous communities alongside Parliament and the broader public to settle the Voice design. The legislation will then have to go through the regular parliamentary processes, which will ensure adequate scrutiny by elective representatives in the lower and upper houses. 

Anthony Albanese said on Monday he wasn’t ruling anything out, and we’d have to wait and see what the vote brings.

“Some arrogance has crept into the No side,” he said, “but it’s a campaign based upon fear and it’s similar to the sort of arguments that were put prior to the apology to the stolen generations. And if people think about that … there weren’t any negative consequences for anyone.

“Giving people some extra say and some rights, that doesn’t take away from anyone else [and that] is what is proposed here.”

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