Indigenous Activist and Leader on The Voice to Parliament
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One of the major conversation points around the Voice to Parliament is people not knowing exactly what to vote for.
The big question: am I voting No, or am I voting Yes?
Vanessa Roberts Turnbull via the Wheeler Centre
There is an air of confusion and indecision that is leaving a lot of our nation pressured by the intense debates between both campaigns.
It has become quite clear that even amongst the Indigenous community, there is a divide in what people want to see come from this referendum.
However, some Indigenous activists and leaders are still undecided like many of the population with people not being able to trust in the strength the Government will give the Voice.
Indigenous activist and leader Vanessa Turnbull Roberts spoke to the ABC during a Q + A episode about her caution around both campaigns.
[There are actually three campaigns that we are seeing. The Yes, the genuine No, which is from a community which has extremely valuable opinions and critics when it comes to identifying what works and what doesn’t work with The Voice to Parliament. But then there is also a really strong racist No campaign and that campaign is actually detrimental to every single First Nations person, whether you’re on the Yes, the No and whether you choose I Don’t Know. Because if you choose to be on the I Don’t Know, and you choose not to stand up to the racist violence we are being subjected to, you’re becoming a bystander in that process. So, I am concerned about that. And I am concerned about what we are actually putting in the legal writing when it comes to pushing the referendum question out there?’]
A point that many are making alongside Roberts is the fear of a ‘racial No vote’ that is being pushed around the country.
She urges younger Australians to be wary of ‘No’ campaigns in their reasoning, and Australians to avoid any political discourse that is racist that could interfere with the outcome.
Her questions, like many other Australians, lie around the Australian Government’s ability to prove that this ‘Voice’ will have ‘substantial power’.
Ms Turnbull said she was undecided in the vote. As a victim of family policing in the past, she expressed that she doesn’t want to ‘hear any more advisories’ on what to do and instead wants to hear more from our government.
‘I want real change for my people’.
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