Stand up and be counted: Don’t let polls tell the Voice story

Steve Brennan writes: I don’t believe any poll delivers the whole story, ever. But nevertheless I commend the writer of “In targeting ‘soft No’ and undecided Voice voters, the Yes camp faces a daunting task”. One aspect where I think the polls are accurate is that many people in this country still harbour racist sentiments. And the percentage of No voters reflects that, I have little doubt.

Professor Marcia Langton was absolutely correct in what she said about the No campaign being founded on racism and stupidity. The problem is, there are many people influenced by its pitch because of ignorance and apathy. And that makes them easy to frighten. 

Ric Techow writes: The claim that there is no need for conservative people to be shy with pollsters is not really accurate (“Yes voters need to snap out of polling denial — the numbers are real”). One of the divides between left and right is that the left embraces insulting and most on the right prefer to be conservatively polite.

Sure, pollsters are not going to denigrate someone they are interviewing, but conservatives have observed the ease with which you have people yelling “Racist!!” so a percentage will be careful not to say anything controversial to a degree it becomes an embedded habit. And just as they might agree with the left outwardly but privately think something else, they could just as well be indicating their voting intent falsely.

Richard Crofts writes: Just the news is what we want and should expect from all the media, print, press, electronic (“Australian media’s failure on the Voice is becoming too big to ignore”). Just the news. A substantial part of the media has decided that this maxim doesn’t apply to them — they publish opinion as news and fake news as news. This group includes Nine media in all its forms, Sky, Fox and all the Murdoch media — just disgraceful misinformation, opinion instead of fact, outright lies as a regular occurrence.

Professor Marcia Langton was absolutely correct in her statement and it is a further example of the misrepresentation of the “fake” news group to misreport what she said. But it’s there for all to hear.

If the media just did their job, reported the news, forgot the bias, the referendum’s prospects would be completely different. We can only hope that the inherent decency of the majority of all Australians will outweigh the deceit of the No campaign and that the referendum will get an overwhelming Yes.

Dale Wilton writes: Journalists should report the news. I don’t care what your opinion is. I just want the news.

Roger Noakes writes: I’ve been saying this (“Price’s denialism takes the Coalition to a new Indigenous Affairs policy: erasure of First Peoples”) for quite a while now in many No Voter posts I’ve responded to on social media forums, that assimilation — the discredited policy of the 1950s and 1960s which was “to be like white Australians in every manner of living (“act white, speak white, be white”) — is the prism through which Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Nyunggai Warren Mundine and many No voters view Indigenous Aussies.

Price does assimilation because she has been wooed and beguiled by the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) and assimilation is in its script for living. Mundine aligns with it because it is the opposite view of the majority of Indigenous Aussies who want to progress their future while retaining their racial identity, their language, their traditions and beliefs. Indigenous Voice supporters I believe want to be allowed self-determination through consultation, which the Voice will help to facilitate.

Langton says the No vote arguments always tend to break down to misrepresentation of facts, lies, racial slurs, innuendo and I would add No voters also have a view that all Indigenous Aussies should assimilate. Assimilation philosophy does have racist connotations.

Julie Gorman writes: This article is a perfect analysis of what is happening. I despair for the future of our country if we are so selfish and uninterested in the welfare of First Nations peoples that the simple and humble request for a say in policies that directly affect them is too much to ask. 

I am exhausted from trying to counter the misinformation disseminated by the No campaign. The fact most would not have bothered to read the proposal and yet argue so feverishly at how it will mean a divisive country describes exactly a people who do not care. Let’s be blunt. Most people do not care, which is exactly why Indigenous peoples need a Voice.

I am just a whitey schoolteacher but this is all so sad. I would like to live in a country where First Nations peoples don’t need to ask for a voice. I would like to live in a country where the dominant and powerful group offers it graciously. Offers it with heartfelt sadness that this country as successful as it is has a history of dispossession and damage to the people who already lived here. 

Margaret Hinchey writes: Thank you for this excellent article pointing out the absurdity of Price’s claim that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples don’t suffer intergenerational trauma as a result of the brutal dispossession of their ancestral lands. 

As an non-Indigenous octogenarian and former teacher, I feel some despair that all the education that has happened over the years somehow leaves so many unable to understand, supposedly, what is really a modest, simple and fair proposal. I also have Irish ancestry. There is no comparison with what my ancestors suffered when they arrived because they eventually were freed and prospered as full citizens of our great nation — unlike Indigenous peoples who were here for at least 65,000 years and deprived of real recognition.

Paula Miller writes: Bernard Keane defines the issue precisely, something which needs to be articulated more often. If voters were not choosing to reject the possibilities contained in the referendum, they would not be so easily manipulated by the lies and distractions promoted by the No campaign. My heart breaks over the passionate malice of so many Australians and of their total ignorance of history, including the role of public policy in pushing First Nations peoples to the fringes and devaluing them as humans.

Let’s not be reluctant to acknowledge the inherent inhumanity in choosing to vote No. If the cause is lost, I can barely imagine what it would be like to confront the reality that one belongs to a sector of society whose rights and dignity are dismissed by the majority of Australians. Those who oppose the proposition have a particular view of their own significance and superiority, and they assert that view quite deliberately, not as some casual wave of a pencil.   

Don Francis writes: It is hard to think how much lower the No campaign can go after Price’s National Press Club speech. Inequality and difference are still there despite this purist folly of claiming equality among all of us.

I would love to ask Price whether she would confront the masses of First Nations peoples who are desperately keen for the Voice to be enshrined. She seems to speak only to a certain cohort, ignoring the marvellous people who instigated this journey. Does she consider the hurt her campaign is inflicting?

Russell Allardice writes: The claim by Price that the trauma passed on from generation to generation since colonisation and experienced by First Peoples is no greater than that applying to convicts transported from England is absurd, and a basic denial f history as recorded by numerous historians. Convicts did not lose their land, were not rounded up and slaughtered, were not treated as non-citizens and unable to vote, and did not have their children removed. Indeed, many convicts did very well, obtained land and prospered in the new colony.

John Peel writes: Wonderful to see The Australian relying on The Bunbury Herald for its headline and story demolishing Langton (“Anatomy of a media pile-on: the crucifixion of Marcia Langton”). It could as easily have gone to the Jamberoo Bugle (if only it existed) because obviously it was not about to do anything as rigorous as fact-checking. A pity Price’s remarks about the immeasurable benefits of colonialism for Indigenous peoples were not first reported in the Brewarrina Argus (if only it existed) because that, too, would have saved so much time and effort.

Geoff Davies writes: Re “Polarisation, political campaigning and the stories the media tells itself about a Voice”. It is not about a simplistic dichotomy, media or people. Our present divided, ignorant, fearful state is substantially the result of a long-running feedback loop between a minority that started ignorant and bigoted and the media that chose to cultivate and exploit it. The ignorant, fearful cohort has grown, and more politicians have joined the party (Pauline Hanson, and by now most of the Coalition).

It drowns out the (still large) cohort of tolerant, progressive Australians and it will continue to do so until we decide that industrial-scale lies and distortion need to be outlawed and policed. That’s not a threat to the semi-mythical free media; it is a threat to the all-too-real media barons who are taking our country down.