The final pitches from Yes and No

Sam Hawley: Hi, I’m Sam Hawley, coming to you from Gadigal Land. This is ABC News Daily. It was the referendum Anthony Albanese promised to hold at the last election. But pretty much all the opinion polls suggest that when Australians vote it will be a resounding No to a Voice to Parliament. The Voice would act as an independent advisory body to the government for First Nations people. But the proposed change to the Constitution has led to a divisive and heated debate. Today, ABC reporter Isabella Higgins on why Yes campaigners still see a glimmer of hope, and what to expect when you wake up the morning after the vote.

Isabella, tell me where are you right now?

Isabella Higgins: Sam, I’m in Australia’s spectacular red centre at the Uluru National Park, a place that obviously is important to all Australians, but highly symbolic in this national referendum campaign. It was here about six years ago that the idea of the Voice to Parliament was first born, was first put forward to the Australian public after hundreds of Indigenous delegates came together on this sacred country and wrote the Uluru Statement from the Heart. So we’ve seen the prime minister return here. It was a very symbolic trip in the final days of the referendum campaign, and I’ve been out talking with Anangu elders and leaders who were involved in that process.

Sam Hawley: And what’s the feeling like among them?

Isabella Higgins: One elder said to me, it’s almost unbearable to think about what a No vote would look like. For them, it’s quite horrifying to imagine that the rest of Australia thinks they know what’s best for them. That’s not a nice feeling to think that that might be the result.

Josie Douglas, general manager of the Central Land Council: People overwhelmingly want change and the opportunity for that change is right before us now. People are desperate for change.

Sam Hawley: So, Isabella, tell me, what have the final messages from the Yes and No camps been? Have they refined anything that they’ve been telling voters at all? Let’s start with Yes. What have they been saying in these final days?

Isabella Higgins: I think Yes campaigners, particularly in coming back to Uluru, have tried to remind Australians where the Voice to Parliament came from and who it’s for. The whole time we’ve heard them talking about this being a model that was designed by First Nations people for First Nations people, to empower them, that this will bring our country together, that this is about practical solutions. A long time activist, one of the key architects of The Voice, Marcia Langton, said the voice is a chance for change. And that’s something we’ve heard over and over from the Yes campaign.

Marcia Langton, Yes campaigner: This proposition is the barest measure imaginable that would give Indigenous Australians a formal say in policies and legislation that affect us.

Isabella Higgins: And over and over from the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, who has said if not now, then when? So I think in the final days we saw them trying to push that home a bit more. But I think also in the final days you did start to hear some deflation from those Yes campaigners starting to imagine what a No vote might look like.

Sam Hawley: Hmm. Alright. What about the No campaign? What’s its final pitch revolved around?

Isabella Higgins: It’s interesting, Sam, because No, their campaigners has haven’t been out and about as much as Yes campaigners have. Yes have been really active. A lot of media events every day. But from No, there’s really two main campaigners. There’s Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, and then there’s Indigenous businessman Warren Mundine. And really through the entire campaign they have pushed just a few messages.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, No campaigner: It is built on lies and an aggressive attempt to fracture our nation’s founding document and divide the country built upon it.

Warren Mundine, No campaigner: Now the Albanese government wants to put racial segregation back into our Constitution. Only one race of people will be treated in this way.

Isabella Higgins: That this is divisive, that it will divide our country, that this could be legally risky, that it’s permanent, and that we don’t have enough details. And also from the No side, we very much heard, if you don’t know, vote no.

Peter Dutton, opposition leader: If you don’t understand. If you don’t know the detail, if you don’t really have your questions answered in relation to the Voice. If you don’t know, vote No.

Isabella Higgins: And I think that can be a really potent and powerful message with Australians. Interestingly, that was also one of the key campaign messages during the 1999 republic referendum campaign.

Sam Hawley: And the Opposition doesn’t support it. And even former leaders like Tony Abbott have been heavily campaigning against it.

Tony Abbott, former prime minister: We should end the separatism, which has bedevilled Indigenous policy for many decades now. As I’ve been saying from the beginning, this Voice is wrong in principle and it will be bad in practice.

Sam Hawley: So how big an impact has that had that there hasn’t been bipartisan support for this?

Isabella Higgins: I think huge. I mean, we know if we look back at all past referenda, any that don’t have bipartisan support have failed. And this referendum campaign debate felt like at times an election campaign because it was so partisan. The message from Peter Dutton every day was talking this down. And it’s interesting because it was the Coalition government who actually encouraged Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elders to think about the best model for constitutional change. But I think when you have a huge part of our political conversation that’s dedicated to talking it down day in, day out, I mean that had really detrimental effects on how the public perceived this, I think.

Sam Hawley: What do you think? Is it a fait accompli that it’s going to be a No result come Saturday night?

Isabella Higgins: I mean, if we’re to believe the polls, then it certainly looks like this referendum is likely to fail. When you talk to people in communities here out in Uluru, I think they would say they’re still hoping for a miracle that the people they talk to are changing their minds at the last moment. And we’ve seen this huge plea to the undecided voter this week. At the beginning of the week, Anthony Albanese said he suspected it could be as many as 1 in 4 Australians were still yet to make up their mind. So I think when you talk to people in these communities, Yes campaigners, they are just hoping in the last week that people change their mind, they get to the ballot box and perhaps they do decide to write Yes.

Noel Pearson, Yes campaigner: There is just too much evidence of Australians coming out in very quiet ways and giving us the thumbs up that they’re voting Yes.

Sam Hawley: Prominent Yes campaigner Noel Pearson, he’s still confident that Yes will get up.

Noel Pearson, Yes campaigner: We have every chance still left to win this referendum.

Sam Hawley: And if it does get up, what happens then, Isabella? What’s the next step if we actually do vote Yes on Saturday?

Isabella Higgins: Well, Sam, I think then the real work starts. We’ve heard from the Indigenous Affairs Minister, Linda Burney, who has said that she would set up a parliamentary committee and that’s when the work would really start on designing what this thing looks like. It could be some time before we get this thing up and running. If we were to vote Yes, the government, of course, has to legislate the model, what that’s going to look like. Because this vote is just about do Indigenous Australians have the right to have an enshrined voice? We’re not voting on the model. That’s not going to be put in the constitution that will be legislated by the government afterwards.

Sam Hawley: If we vote No, what will Anthony Albanese do, do you think? Because he has a lot riding on this, doesn’t he?

Isabella Higgins: And he hasn’t wanted to go there to talk about what it’s going to look like if it fails. But in the last couple of days I think we’ve seen him starting to contemplate what that looks like. He has said that he will not just go ahead and legislate a Voice to Parliament, which has been something that’s been floated around that the coalition government was considering doing as well. He said he wouldn’t have a mandate from the Australian public to go ahead and legislate that.

Anthony Albanese, prime minister: What we’ve done is respect the request for Indigenous Australians for recognition in the form that they have asked for it. But we will also respect the response of Australians next Saturday.

Interviewer: What does that mean?

Anthony Albanese, prime minister: It means that if Australians vote no, I don’t believe that it would be appropriate to then go and say, oh well, you’ve had your say, but we’re going to legislate anyway.

Isabella Higgins: And there’s also a view within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community that to go ahead and legislate it when they ask for constitutional enshrinement, that’s another example of the government saying this is what we’re going to do for you, even though this is what you asked for.

Sam Hawley: The prominent No campaigner, Warren Mundine, he’s also had some thoughts, hasn’t he, on what could happen if it’s a No vote to try and improve the health and education outcomes for Indigenous people?

Warren Mundine, No campaigner: We’ve been working on a plan for if the No campaign get up and also if the Yes get up, we’ll submit it to the government and that is about, you know, accountability. We’re spending a lot of money in this area, billions of dollars every year, for very little outcomes on this.

Isabella Higgins: It’s a tricky one. We know that the opposition leader Peter Dutton has said that if the Coalition got into power they could potentially have a second referendum that would Australians would be asked to vote on just constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and they would potentially legislate regional or local bodies. But also when you talk to some of those prominent Yes campaigners like Noel Pearson, they say if this is voted down, this is the end of their leadership, that they will retire from public life. There is a generation of Aboriginal leaders who have pushed and fought for this model of constitutional change. If this is voted down, I think we will see a lot of them pull back, retire from public life. Some people in the community have described October 15th as a day of mourning if there’s a No vote. So emotions are really running high at this point.

Sam Hawley: Yeah. And it’s been a really heated few weeks. And you’ve been living and breathing this, Isabella. What’s the lasting impact of this whole process, do you think, particularly for Indigenous people?

Isabella Higgins: I think it’s been a very uncomfortable process for Indigenous people. I know a lot of people who have suffered from racial harassment during this campaign, people who said they had heard racism that they hadn’t heard since their schoolyard days. But I think if this fails, it almost provides a mandate to governments to continue to just keep kicking the can down the road. That’s probably what we’re going to see for constitutional change and other big models that are proposed to try and close those persistent and enduring health, employment, education gaps that are experienced in indigenous communities.

Sam Hawley: Isabella Higgins is an ABC reporter covering the referendum. And if you want to follow all the results live on referendum night, then tune into News radio from 6 p.m. Eastern Daylight Saving Time. You can find it on the ABC Listen app. This episode was produced by Bridget Fitzgerald, Nell Whitehead, Laura Corrigan and Anna John, who also did the mix. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I’m Sam Hawley. ABC News Daily will be back again with a special edition on Sunday afternoon to bring you analysis on the referendum result. Thanks for listening.