Australians have resoundingly rejected a proposal to recognise Aboriginal people in its constitution and establish a body to advise parliament on Indigenous issues.
Saturday’s voice to parliament referendum failed, with the defeat clear shortly after polls closed.
So the No side’s campaign was one of deliberately not educating people? To me that just says that people educated on the subject are voting Yes.
While that may be an absurdly simple slogan, it is also absurdly stupid.
Also, the Yes slogan eventually became “if you don’t know - find out” and “just Google it”.
Just Google it, the advice you always hear when the other person is shutting down any more conversation. What an unfortunate result
“Google it” vs “no”. The point of the slogan was to highlight a) how the other side was shutting down the conversation and b) that their premise of ignorance was stupid, in a short pithy way.
It wasn’t saying “go find out”, so much as “you CAN find out if you care, there is no reason to not know”
That said, without question, the Yes campaign’s official messages were pretty poor. Supporters have been far more eloquent.
On the “just google it” topic, this short video was brilliantly well done: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SAqIypjk-5A
Which isn’t in any way how it works. You’re making the claim, you sell it. I’m not going digging to make someone’s claim on their behalf.
So the No side’s campaign was one of deliberately not educating people?
No, but that’s what people are trying to pretend. The “if you don’t know, vote no” slogan is also about when people are trying to find details on what this advisory body would look like and are being told “oh we’re not going to tell you that, don’t worry about it, just trust us”. If you don’t know what the body will look like because they won’t tell you, why would you vote yes?
It sounds like that was something that would need to have been fleshed out in legislation since the amendment only specified that an advisory body would be created. It’s only advisory and has no legislative power. Does it matter much what it might be made up of? From reading it sounds like it would be less than 100 people nationally. Seems a bit ridiculous to vote no on something like that.
The ‘No’ campaign was largely nonexistent. The ‘Yes’ campaign was enough reason to vote ‘No’. And the ‘No’ voters are just as educated as ‘Yes’ voters. It’s just that some people can’t understand why other people would disagree with them.
