If Australians knew the whole truth about Indigenous history, Lidia Thorpe’s royal outburst would not have been a shock | Celeste Liddle (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by NaevaTheRat@vegantheoryclub.org to c/australianpolitics@aussie.zone

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[-] Tau@aussie.zone 19 points 2 weeks ago

Last year, Australia showed how unengaged and racist this country remains by refusing to insert an Indigenous advisory voice

Convenient that the author forgot to mention that the very person they're writing about was a vocal No voter. You can say many things about Lydia Thorpe but politically unengaged is not one of them, and while she might be a little bit racist it's definitely not against Indigenous people.

I'll also note that the Tent Embassy had a giant banner hung up urging people to vote No, guess they're all politically unengaged and racist...

[-] yistdaj@pawb.social 6 points 2 weeks ago

Lidia Thorpe has also believed before the vote that a No vote would prove Australia is racist, just as a yes vote would prove Australia is racist. Given that, I think Lidia would agree with the author here.

[-] yistdaj@pawb.social 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

To clarify, Lidia claimed that both the racist no campaign and the yes campaign drowned out the progressive no campaign.

[-] metaStatic@kbin.earth -2 points 2 weeks ago

I had zero clue there was even a progressive no campaign until after I voted no.

[-] goodthanks@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

Then why didn't you do some research to inform your position? I don't understand people who form political opinions without backing them up with research. A lot of people in Australia are borderline illiterate, and are at the mercy of the media. But the educated ones should at least exercise their privilege and read before making decisions. My dad is a lawyer, but wouldn't even read the uluru statement from the heart. Voted no based on spite, which is shameful. Couldn't even justify his own position intelligently.

[-] yistdaj@pawb.social 2 points 1 week ago

As someone who voted yes in a very no place, I was actually a bit frustrated by how poorly the yes campaign communicated with people - right up until those pamphlets came out, most of the people I was talking to had never heard of the referendum, and only after that most people started looking up what it was about.

I would argue the no campaign had a huge head start on the yes campaign, there was negative speculation going on a year before the referendum, and it gradually snowballed into misinformation before the yes campaign even started. So the stuff people found was all negative. For the people I was talking to, I was the only person they knew who thought a voice was a good idea.

One of the people I was talking to mentioned how they hadn't even encountered a single ad promoting a voice to parliament until a week before, and it didn't bother talking about how it would work or why it's a good idea. They did eventually vote yes, but only after I talked to them about what I understood about it. In fact, my experience is that most people leaning no were willing to vote yes after hearing enough about it.

I think a huge issue is that the yes campaign either failed to reach here somehow, or just relied on the media and self-research for informing people. And the media was very insistent on platforming no campaigners while almost never platforming yes.

One of the most confusing things to hear was how people in the capital cities had heard so much about it when people here had barely heard of it. Some people missed the referendum date entirely.

[-] goodthanks@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

I agree the yes campaign was a poor one. Also, there were 2 opposing messages being put forward simultaneously:

The voice is a big leap forward and will improve the lives of indigenous people.
The voice is just an advisory body with no real power.

I voted yes, but didn't think the voice was an impressive proposal. I just thought the outcome of a no vote would be worse. The fact that so many people didn't understand what was proposed is partly a media issue, and partly a government incompetence issue. But it also raises the question of why so many people will feel passionately about a position they haven't even fucking bothered to research. We can't have democracy unless citizens put in a bit of fucking effort to understand the society they live in, which includes political proposals.