Why Australians Rejected Division

When the new Labor government took office in May 2022 it rapturously endorsed the referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. At the time, most voters were supportive of the measure. That support ebbed away, such that by the time of the referendum on 14 October 2023, the proposal was soundly defeated.

We conducted our periodic survey of Australian voters’ attitudes to political and social issues in December 2023. It was a large national survey (just over 3,000 respondents). It was designed in part to enable us to explore why the referendum failed. This essay draws on the findings of the survey.

The Setting

When the Labor Party came to power, it made much of its commitment to progressive aspirations, particularly support for minority groups seeking mainstream recognition. Foremost amongst these was the Aboriginal community’s pursuit of recognition of their prior occupancy and separate political representation. Increasingly, this cause came to be ‘sacralised’. That is, it had come to be regarded with such reverence that support was seen as a moral duty and opposition as morally repugnant.

We have drawn on Eric Kaufmann’s recent work in assessing the significance of sacralisation. Kaufmann argues that by the mid-1960s, the issue of civil rights for black Americans had become sacralised. He argues that the reverence accorded to it helps explain why it was given such priority within progressive circles at that time and since. According to Kaufmann, it is the key to explaining why black and related minority priorities have since gained traction in American institutions, to the point that any dissent is met with social cancellation within institutions dominated by progressives, including universities. We don’t pursue the cancellation question here. However, we find the concept of sacralisation of the Aboriginal cause useful in explaining the zeal with which it was promoted in the run-up to the Voice referendum.

The Sacralisation of the Voice

Arguably, by the 2000s, the Aboriginal cause had achieved a similar sacralised status to that of civil rights in the United States. In Australia, the process can be traced back to widespread concern over the ‘Stolen Children’ in the 1990s. The outcome was that the Aboriginal cause came to be framed, not just around claims that those of Aboriginal origin were disadvantaged, but that this disadvantage stemmed from their land being stolen and many of their children forcibly pressed into mainstream assimilation.

The Kevin Rudd-led Labor government’s solemn apology in 2008 was a significant milestone in the sacralisation process. Rudd implied that the Australian government and people had a moral duty to rectify the harm that had been done. He declared that: ‘for the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry’. He went on to promise, ‘A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia’.

Over the subsequent years, as Aboriginal community leaders sought to turn this commitment into tangible institutional change, they dressed their claims in moral language. This is evident in the program, the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which one of its architects referred to as a ‘sacred’ document. According to the Uluru Statement, the Australian government and people were obliged to accept Aboriginal claims that they were the nation’s founding people, and were a group who were owed perpetual recognition as a separate community with a constitutionally guaranteed political voice.

There is a progressive constituency in Australia that was responsive to this advocacy. This is notwithstanding the depth of the challenge the Voice represented for Australians who were committed to a vision of liberal democracy that held all Australians had equal civic rights – those who we subsequently refer to as ‘One Australians’.

We have been studying the progressive constituency for years. Its core lies amongst Australia’s university graduate class. In the 1960s most university graduates were conservative voters and most non-graduates Labor voters. Since then, there has been a gradual crossover, as graduates shifted to the Labor side, and non-graduates to the conservative side. By the time of the 2001 federal election a much higher percentage of graduate voters supported Labor or the Greens than did non-graduate voters. In the last four elections since 2013, less than a half of non-graduate voters have voted Labor or Greens.

This is an international phenomenon. It reflects graduates’ socialisation in progressive ideas during their university education. Since graduates now dominate the education, media and professional classes, they have had a significant influence on the causes supported within these circles. In Australia’s case, this domination also includes the upper reaches of the corporate system, at least where it concerns the corporate stance on social issues.

The Labor Party still presents itself as the guardian of workers’ interests on employment matters. It is still able to attract nearly half of the non-graduate constituency in elections where these issues are in focus. However, when attention is focused on progressive cultural issues, as with the Voice referendum, it is a different matter. As we show below, the defection of these Labor voters at the referendum was a crucial factor in the referendum’s defeat.

There was never any doubt that, following the Labor Party’s embrace of the Voice, it would continue to receive the endorsement of leading media, educational, and corporate interests as well as the votes of most graduates.

Given non-graduate limited support for progressive causes, this was not necessarily the case for these voters (who make up the majority of voters), including those non-graduates who were Labor voters.

Much depended on how the Voice debate was framed. If non-graduates had seen it as a gesture to help a disadvantaged minority share in mainstream opportunity, it would likely have been widely supported.

This positioning, however, was challenged as the debate ensued. Opponents argued that the Voice advocates were seeking much more. These opponents highlighted Voice advocates’ claims to a continuing separate status for the Aboriginal community on the grounds that they were the nation’s founding people, a people who had been wrongfully dispossessed. Opposition spokeswoman on the Voice, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, went further. She argued that the Voice would set back the Aboriginal cause because its leaders wanted to preserve separate Aboriginal communities, which would perpetuate Aboriginal disadvantage.

To the extent that voters saw the issue in the light of a continuing separate status, freighted with the wrongs of the past, the prospects of a majority supporting the Voice, especially among non-graduates, were minimal. This is because, as we detail shortly, most Australians do not share the progressives’ commitment to minority rights. Instead, most share a ‘One Australia’ stance where there is little room for the enhancement of minority rights – let alone constitutionally enshrined separatism.

One Australia

Most Australian voters have a strong sense of identity as Australians. How do we know this? In our December 2023 survey, we questioned respondents about their sense of belongingness to Australia. We asked, ‘To what extent do you have a sense of belonging to Australia?’ 57% said ‘a great extent’, 33% said ‘a moderate extent’, 8% said ‘only slightly’, and 2% said ‘not at all’. Those who feel a sense of belonging to Australia are likely to have a firm sense of identity and pride as Australians. This being the case, they are unlikely to welcome claims that their forebears stole the land and oppressed the indigenous community. Nor are they likely to support claims from migrants or any other minority community in Australia that they have a right to a separate but equal status with the majority of ‘One Australians’. Successive surveys have shown that decisive majorities of voters are opposed to such claims. Most prioritise integration.

The results of our survey on the question in our December 2023 poll are representative of this sentiment. We asked, ‘Some people argue we should increase immigration to increase our ethnic and other forms of diversity. What is your view?’ 37% said ‘No, We have enough diversity’, 30% said ‘No, We need to encourage national unity and a shared Australian identity’, 23% said ‘Yes, more diversity will give Australia a more vibrant society and economy’, and 11% said ‘Don’t know’. As is evident, only a small minority favour the diversity option.

We were able to gain a closer understanding of mainstream attitudes regarding the Voice by exploring voters’ views on proposals to change the day on which Australia Day is celebrated.

It will be recalled that on the occasion of Australia Day in 2023, there was loud advocacy on the part of Aboriginal rights activists and some progressive supporters that the day should not be celebrated on 26 January. This was because they claimed it represented the beginning of Aboriginal subjugation. For this group, it was better named ‘Invasion Day’.

We asked, ‘Would you support or oppose changing the date on which Australia Day is celebrated?’ 34% said they supported changing the date, 49% said they did not, and 17% had no opinion. This plurality is consistent with the expectation that few of the majority of voters who feel a strong sense of belongingness to Australia would be attracted to changing the date. If making the change meant accepting that their nation was forever morally tainted as an invader and dispossessor of the indigenous community, they would be unlikely to support it. Sixty-seven per cent of Coalition voters, 41% of Labor voters, and 18% of Greens voters said they opposed changing the date.

In our view, the prevalence of such views among voters meant that there was little hope for the Voice to succeed. By October 2023, the debate about the Voice had been positioned as being about Australians’ moral responsibility to give the Aboriginal community a constitutionally guaranteed separate community and Voice. It could no longer be seen simply as a benign gesture to help a disadvantaged community of Australians.

Progressive leaders provided active support to Voice advocates, enabling them to articulate the full agenda of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. It is likely that this public support contributed to its failure. This agenda was that, following the success of the Voice, there would be further action leading to a treaty and truth-telling and, by implication, further calls on the Australian Government for reparations. The more these claims were heard within the mainstream voting constituency, the less likely the Voice was to succeed.

The Voice referendum was unique in that, on most of the progressive issues pressed by governments, the electorate had no opportunity to vote. But they did have an opportunity on the Voice, and they were doing so in a context where the Labor Party leaders were asserting that a Yes vote was the morally responsible choice. Most other community leaders in media, educational, sporting, and corporate bodies took a similar stance.

Our December 2023 survey of 2,9000 respondents asked about how they voted at both the May 2022 federal election and the referendum. 71% of Coalition voters voted No, 45% of Labor voters voted No, 24% of Greens voted No, 87% of One Nation voters voted No, and 51% of voters for other parties and candidates voted No.

As would be expected, the great majority of Coalition and One Nation voters opposed the Voice. However, this would not have been enough to defeat it. The crucial bloc of voters who secured the defeat were Labor voters even though every Labor state and federal MP in the country urged a Yes vote.

Who were these Labor voters? We were able to identify them according to their level of support for progressive causes. They were people who voted Labor but did not support Labor’s progressive agenda. This judgement was based on our construction of a conservative/progressive scale, which was scored from voters’ views across the range of social issues tested in the December 2023 survey.

Why did No voters vote No? Many factors came into play when electors cast their Voice vote. These include emotional issues (such as attachment to an Australian identity) that are difficult to quantify in an attitude survey. We nevertheless did our best to provide voters with a list of the factors that No advocates were advancing at the time, which they felt justified a No vote. We did the same for Yes voters.

We start with the No vote. We asked No voters for the ‘most important reason for voting No’ from a nominated list of reasons. 53% said ‘We are one country, and no legal or political body should be defined only based on race or ethnicity’, 18% said ‘I don’t think the idea of First Peoples makes any sense. We are all Australians. The country belong to all of us’, 14% said ‘There are other things such as cost-of-living that are more in need of fixing in Australia’, 5% said ‘I voted No because the party I usually vote for in Federal elections was backing No’, another 5% said ‘The Uluru Statement from the Heart indicated that this constitutional change was just the beginning. There would be treaties, truth-telling, and costly reparations to be paid’, and 4% said ‘I didn’t understand what the referendum was about’.

These results are consistent with our hypothesis that No voters were predominantly believers in one Australia and thus reluctant to support the advancement of permanent and separate Indigenous rights. The great majority of No voters said that they viewed Australia as ‘one country’ or that ‘We are all Australians’ and, on these grounds, did not support separate minority communities. We included an option about cost-of-living concerns. This was because several pollsters at the time were arguing that such concerns were distracting voters from supporting the Voice. Our results show that this argument was incorrect.

What about the minority who voted Yes? The results indicate that the share of voters attracted by the sacred claims to restitution and thus Aboriginal community separateness was relatively small. 52% said the most important reason for voting Yes was ‘The amendment is an opportunity to create positive change for disadvantaged Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders’, 16% said ‘I voted Yes because I was concerned about what the rest of the world would think of us if we voted No’, 12% said ‘Voting Yes will help heal the nation and move on from the divisions of the past’, 9% said ‘I voted Yes because the party I usually vote for in Federal elections was backing Yes’, and 5% said ‘Voting Yes means Australia can apologise and begin to make up for its colonial past’.

Conclusion

The failure of the Voice referendum was a momentous event. It occurred despite the declaration of many electoral pundits in the aftermath of Labor’s May 2022 victory, that we were in for years of Labor electoral hegemony. This, they said, was because Labor had the youth and graduate vote on its side, and because of the ever-growing number of graduates.

These views were ill-informed. They did not recognise the gulf between graduate and non-graduate preferences on progressive issues, nor that, in the near term, non-graduate electors would continue to outnumber graduate electors.

This error of judgement was revealed with the decisive loss of the Voice referendum in October 2023. The Yes case was positioned as a separatist challenge to One Australia sentiments and, as a result, suffered a resounding defeat. Significantly, it was the near half of the voters who supported Labor at the May 2022 election who helped tip the scales to the No side. These voters, in the main, were not adherents of Labor’s progressive platform.