SYDNEY: Australia’s historic indigenous rights referendum is haemorrhaging support, and a flurry of damning new polls show only a minority is in favor of the October vote.
If the referendum passes, Indigenous Australians, whose ancestors have lived on the continent for around 60,000 years, will be recognized in the constitution for the first time.
They would also gain a constitutionally enshrined right to be consulted on laws that affect their communities.
But less than two weeks after Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese launched the “Vote Yes” campaign in a blaze of publicity, polls show the national mood is sour on the idea.
One poll on Monday showed 57 percent of respondents opposed the referendum, known as the Vote, compared to 43 percent in favor. Another over the weekend showed an even wider split of 61 to 37.
Some polls show that support for the referendum has fallen by more than 20 percentage points over the past year.
RedBridge polling director Kosmos Samaras told AFP that “the overall picture is one of continuous decline” and that it was “difficult to see” a dominant Yes campaign.
Samaras likened it to the Brexit referendum, where progressive inner-city voters split from older voters in regional Australia.
Conservative opposition leader Peter Dutton on Monday called on Albanians to cancel the referendum because it would only damage fragile race relations.
“How can you in good conscience push the country to a divisive referendum on October 14,” said Dutton, who opposes the Voice.
“Will the Prime Minister withdraw his Vote referendum so we can avoid a result that divides the nation?”
Albanians are determined to press ahead despite worrying polls, accusing Dutton on Monday of choosing “politics over substance”.
Polls also point to a widening gap between the Australian public – who view the Voice with skepticism – and the Indigenous Australian minority, who are overwhelmingly in support.
Campaign group Yes23 said on Monday that “more than 80 per cent of Indigenous Australians” were behind the looming referendum.
The Voice has been plagued by criticism that it grants special privileges to indigenous peoples and that it is a plan prepared by urban politicians with no experience of remote indigenous communities.
“The vote is not new, it has been decades in the making. The idea came directly from indigenous communities, not from politicians,” the Yes23 group countered on Monday.
Indigenous elder Noel Pearson, a prominent supporter of the Voice, described the referendum as a rare opportunity to help “the most helpless people in the country”.
“We are the underdogs in this referendum, but I still believe we can achieve victory,” he told ABC national television on Sunday.
“I can’t believe we still live in Australia where that hand is just slapped away.”
Aboriginal Australians carry the flame of one of the world’s oldest continuous cultures.
But more than two centuries after the first British settlers docked in Sydney Harbour, they are still far more likely to die young, live in poverty and be imprisoned.
