Voice referendum normalised racism towards Indigenous Australians, report finds
A report examining racism towards Indigenous Australians found one fifth of all complaints contained reference to the failed voice to parliament referendum, in what authors say was one of the nation’s “darker moments”.
The report, titled If You Don’t Think Racism Exists Come Take a Walk With Us, was released on Thursday. Undertaken by the University of Technology Sydney’s Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research and the National Justice Project, it is the second annual report about racism targeting First Nations people and is based on 453 validated reports of racism made to the Call it Out register in the 12 months to 20 March 2024.
It examined the ways in which racism and discrimination exist in Australia, as well as the impact of the October 2023 referendum – where 60% of Australians voted against the proposed Indigenous voice to parliament.
Prof Lindon Coombes, the guest author of the report, said racist views were“emboldened” during the referendum, with racist abuse and harmful and derogatory language being spread online and in person.
“One of our darker moments in this regard was the 2023 referendum. There can be no genuine discussion on the voice referendum without discussing the impact of racism, both throughout the campaign and in its aftermath,” Coombes wrote.
The report said that many noted “the lead-up to the Referendum and the outcome of the vote had facilitated the normalisation of racism”.
“The filters are off – it almost feels like it is okay to be racist.”
I made a bunch of posts about the Voice way back when; I thought there was no real reason to vote against the thing unless you were, you know, a racist. And so many of us are, and I’ve no doubt many of us felt… enabled, let’s say, by Peter Dutton’s opposition to the Voice (and his ultimately spurious “commitment” to Constitutional recognition instead). Plus, as the article further notes, about a third of the reports were related to online abuse, and we’ve had enough decades of observation to see how much the Internet enables this sort of shit too. The only surprising thing here is that the Voice only accounted for a fifth of racist incidents, but I suppose racists don’t really need special reasons… sigh.
