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.
The title is hugely misrepresenting the referendum.
Not even our conservative party, the liberals, opposed recognition of aboriginal and Torres islander people as the traditional owners of the land.
The neo liberal progressive party, labor, put in a change to political process. This is what people disagreed with.
I think most people didn’t understand what was being proposed.
The obfuscation was purposeful. The mining / oil industry were backing the no vote, and there’s no onis to be truthful in political advertising. That’s what needs to change.
Just knowing the oil industry doesn’t want something to pass should automatically be a ringing endorsement for it imo
Bhp put their support behind the yes campaign. And Albo voted down the need for truth in advertising
BHP was the one behind the weak messages attributed to the yes campaign. They deliberately played this one to lose.
It wasn’t a change to political process. It was to be another advisory body, of which we have many over several decades.
Agreed, my bad
A bit off topic but, American here, the liberals are your conservative party? Interesting.
American politics are all right wing compared to other socially democratic countries.
Our major political parties are the Australian Labor Party (progressive/socialist), Liberal Party of Australia (capitalist/liberal), The Greens (environmental/progressive), National Party of Australia(authoritarian/regressives).
The Liberals and the Nats have a coalition called the Liberal National Party (LNP) because it’s the only way they can get enough representation to get majority government.
Greens typically vote along Labor lines.
I see. That’s really interesting, thanks for the reply!
Further to this, Labor is Centre-Left, Greens are far-left, Liberal and Nationals are both far-right, with liberals being business interest focoused and the nationals being strongly rural community focused.
It’s worth noting that Australian and American interpretations of liberalism differ quite significantly. The modern Liberal party and its predecessors formed in direct opposition to the Labor party, in direct opposition to the labor movement. They formed as a party against radical social change, against socialism, and for free-market policies and laissez faire capitalism, describing themselves as “classical liberals”. On the other hand, “liberalism” in the US more refers to social liberalism, but it’s actually the exception in that regard.
All that is to say that, when Australians refer to someone as a liberal, we mean a different interpretation of the word closer to classical liberalism.
For an American, that’s so counterintuitive lol.
I think the American definition of Liberal is the one that’s different from the rest of the world.
No, liberals are liberal. The Liberals (capital L) are fiscally liberal (good at wasting money) and socially conservative.
Yep very misleading. There’s recognition, and then there’s the advisory board question. The Yes campaign did a shoking job and alienated everyone by calling people racist who asked questions about the Voice.
No. Asking questions is one thing.
Sealioning is another.
Do you mean ‘concern trolling’ or ‘sealioning’?
‘Concern trolling’ is falsely pretending to agree with an idea but raising concerns, in order to sew discontent. Something like, "I agree with giving them a Voice, but I’m concerned that … ", an insincere astroturfing attempt.
‘Sealioning’ is when someone relentlessly stalks a person asking them for evidence or arguments, in order to ‘just try and have a debate’ when the other person doesn’t want to. The term comes from from this comic, which describes it well. It’s personal harassment pretending to be civil debate.
“sealioning”, in my experience, is also a way to attack someone asking you to back up your claims in any way.