Clear messages to health services and leaders, as well as politicians, media and the wider community emerged from a #CroakeyLIVE discussion on the Voice referendum, which was held this week to mark the upcoming anniversary on 14 October.
The webinar – part of Croakey’s #Medicare40Years project – was moderated by Professor Bronwyn Fredericks, and the speakers were Dr Mark Wenitong, Bridget Cama, Lucy Davis and Dr Clinton Schultz.
Marie McInerney writes:
As the one-year anniversary of the Voice referendum approaches, health services and funders have been put on notice to do better at supporting the social and emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities, and to work as if the vote been Yes.
Speakers at a #CroakeyLIVE webinar this week shared powerful insights into the ongoing toll of the referendum, from increased experiences of racism to a sense that governments and the wider community were turning away from supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ rights.
Dr Clinton Schultz, a Gamilaroi man, psychologist and Director of First Nations Strategy and Partnerships at the Black Dog Institute, said the referendum and associated political and media discourse had created growing demand for social and emotional wellbeing support.
“But there’s no increase in service availability,” he said, warning that services and funders should be prepared for an upsurge in presentations around the referendum’s anniversary.
While the referendum discourse had promoted polarisation, division and lateral violence, Schultz called for the practice of “lateral kindness”.
The webinar was also told that many health and other organisations could learn from the example of the Salvation Army, which had chosen to “work as if there was a Yes vote”.
Two days after the 14 October 2023 referendum, the organisation announced the “result does not dissolve The Salvation Army’s commitment to empower Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities”.
“The Salvation Army is committed to living a YES future, despite this result.”
Cobble Cobble woman Lucy Davis, who works with the Salvation Army as its National Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) Manager, said the organisation was committed to ensuring First Nations people are at the table in key decisions through its Indigenous Advisory Council, and expanding on its next RAP by strengthening its advocacy area so local voices are heard.
Organisations did not have to follow the lead of governments and politicians in accepting the No result, she said. “You can choose to empower First Nations voices.”
Dr Mark Wenitong, a Kabi Kabi man with longstanding and wide-ranging clinical and policy experience in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, also looked to the health sector for leadership.
He told the webinar that many Yes voters hold influential positions in systems and are well placed to achieve systemic and structural change, beneath the political radar and more based on “the championship of supporters” – for example, through Primary Health Networks.
“While politicians and politics might fund the health system, they don’t keep the health system running effectively. We do,” he later told Croakey.
Wenitong also suggested that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been “too nice for too long”, and that “it’s time for us to start really using the Western system properly and making people accountable via legal action”.
“This is just what any mainstream population would do to force change and accountability in health systems that fail to provide the right services,” he said.
He highlighted examples of racism in the health sector, including preventable deaths from complications with rheumatic heart disease (RHD) of three Aboriginal women in Doomadgee in north-west Queensland and died) and experiences in remote services where “sick children have been given Panadol at night and told to go home, some to die”.
Take a stand
Schultz, Davis, and Wenitong joined co-chair of the Uluru Youth Dialogue, Bridget Cama, and moderator Professor Bronwyn Fredericks in the #CroakeyLIVE discussion, reflecting on the impact of the referendum and discussing how the health sector and allies more broadly can support the fight for self-determination and justice
Panellists shared their hurt, anger and hope, and called on allies to keep up the momentum for structural reform, to lobby politicians, take a stand on critical issues like raising the age of criminal responsibility, to make a submission to the federal Truth and Justice Commission inquiry (due Friday, 20 September) – and to also to make a public stand to #StayTrueToUluru on the referendum anniversary, on 14 October.
While nearly 230 health organisations publicly supported the Voice last year, there is concern that many non-Indigenous people and organisations have accepted the result and moved on, despite widespread commitment from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations and communities still to the Uluru Statement’s calls for Voice, Treaty, Truth.
The webinar discussion also highlighted the stakes involved in Queensland’s upcoming election. While panelists were upset that Labor governments, at federal and state levels, had not done more to progress a Yes vote, they were mindful that the Queensland Liberal National Party is committed to scrapping the Path to Treaty Act, including the historic Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry, which began formally this week.
Watch its ceremonial opening here.
The Voice has a future
Bridget Cama is looking towards a future where a Voice proposal will be put to Australians again, hopefully within the next ten years, and this time successfully – led by galvanised young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and a new generation of non-Indigenous voters who want action on issues like climate change and the Uluru Statement.
Cama, a Wiradjuri and Indigenous Fijian woman, said the past year has only served to show why the Voice was so necessary, pointing to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women being left out of important conversations on gendered violence, and the new Northern Territory Government planning to lower the age of criminality to 10, against all expert advice.
“My position is: We go again [to a referendum], that we still need a Voice, no matter what,” she told the webinar.
“The ask of the Uluru Statement doesn’t go away just because we had a failed referendum.”
Cama recalled the night of last year’s referendum as “devastating” for members of the Youth Dialogue. “Like everyone else we were really hurting,” she said.
Recently they all came together in person for the first time since the referendum, to have the difficult conversations about what next and what role young people want to play.
They recalled the 2023 Hands on Heart National Youth Voice Conference, when Indigenous and non-Indigenous young leaders came together to pledge passionate support for a constitutionally enshrined Voice – “a really special moment” that acknowledged “we couldn’t do the work alone”, Cama said.
“There are young people out there who are ready to step up and who know that there’s no other option…it’s our futures on the line.”
Cama said she has taken time over the past year to process what happened, and importantly to dig into the Uluru Dialogue’s research that shows racism and hate were “only one part” of the result. It is “dangerous”, she warns, particularly for young Indigenous people, to have that as the narrative.
The Uluru Dialogue is planning a listening tour that will begin to “unpack the No” in detail, “to let our mob know that [the reasons for the result were] actually really complex”, she said.
Factors included the cost of living crisis that dominated mainstream concerns at the time – the Voice was the fifth on the list of top issues that people were talking about at their dinner tables, she said. Other reasons were a lack of civics education, particularly about the Constitution, and misleading media reports that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community was equally divided on a Voice.
Very much on the plus side, not only did 6.2 million people vote Yes, but the Uluru Dialogue’s research is showing “they were really staunch in their vote”, Cama said.
“They really understood the proposal, they understood that it came from mob and that it would make a positive impact, not only on our lives but our entire country.”
Mark the anniversary
Lucy Davis told the webinar that she too had been “pretty gutted” by the referendum decision.
Coming close to tears, she described being at the same referendum night event as Cama and other young leaders, and watching as they rolled up the original Uluru Statement, painted by the Mutitjulu people, which had been gifted to the Australian people, not to political leaders.
“It was like being at a funeral, she said.
Davis described her excitement about the dominance of Blak voices and faces in the media during the referendum campaign. Then after the vote, you heard “crickets”. “And that is what breaks my heart,” she said.
Davis, who is part of Mob23, which operates in partnership with the Uluru Dialogues, talked about the impact of misinformation and disinformation during the campaign, including having to spend much time at campaign events addressing fear mongering and lies.
While concerned about what will happen for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people if conservative parties win upcoming federal and state elections, she is particularly critical of Labor governments – and “ashamed and upset” that they failed to step up enough during the referendum campaign.
She compared Queensland Labor’s public campaigning with the “massive ceremony” held in Brisbane this week to launch and promote the Truth-Telling and Healing Inquiry, saying they should have done that with the Uluru Statement and on the referendum.
“Many, many Australians had absolutely no idea what they were voting on, many Australians did not know what the Uluru Statement is, there should have been an education piece.”
Declaring that she will “stay true to Uluru”, Davis agreed on the importance of the 6.2 million Australians who voted Yes.
She called on these Australians to mark the 14 October referendum anniversary by hosting an event in a park or other public place, inviting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, sharing food and posting images and messages “all over your socials”.
Stepping up
Psychologist Dr Clinton Schultz said an important lesson from the referendum is that those contributing to media and political discourse need to be more mindful of their impacts on social and emotional wellbeing.
Schultz, who helped develop The Respectful Referendum pledge during the campaign, said political and media debate had not only boosted racism and deficit discourse but also increased community tension, polarisation and lateral violence –“one of the most detrimental things for our social and emotional wellbeing as mob”.
However, he also had observed “a massive amplification of cultural strength and resilience”, both within his own children and more broadly among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth.
“I think it’s really lit a torch under many young people who may have not been involved [before] in political affairs or rights campaigning…to really step up and look at what their responsibilities as a collective group are, and to stand up for us as Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander peoples, as the next generation coming through,” he said, urging mob to “share lateral kindness with each other”.
He also sees a huge need for non-Indigenous Australians to be guided by Gamilaroi ways, of collective ownership, accountability and responsibility, saying individualism is embedded in the Australian psyche.
“That’s not just unhealthy for individuals, that’s unhealthy for communities, and it’s definitely unhealthy for the environment,” he said.
Political vacuum
Dr Mark Wenitong told the webinar he too had been “absolutely cut” by the defeat of the referendum, which he knew through his work was a “life and death” issue.
He later told Croakey: “I guess I thought Australia had my back from the last 30 years of working towards better health for all Australians, in policy for remote and rural Australians.”
Ahead of the referendum, he had regarded the prospect of the Voice as the “most exciting thing I’ve seen in the last 20 years”, offering the chance finally to break down silos in policy and practice.
“The Voice issue to me wasn’t a ‘heart’ issue, it was just intelligent good strategy and it would have saved Australia millions of dollars in reduced duplication, lack of harmony between federal portfolios and consultancy fees,” he said this week.
Like other speakers, Wenitong lamented a “political vacuum, a lack of real political leadership by all parties”, saying he was appalled that politicians, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, accepted the referendum result with the cliché that “the people have spoken and the people are always right”. This lacked leadership and was “a stupid thing to say”, he said.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people understand the political reality of being a minority voting population, and even then where 40 percent are currently too young to vote, and that other macro policy issues “will always supersede our issues,” he said.
“So I don’t believe this was a ‘timing’ issue,” he said. “It’s always been this way in my experience and there will always be more critical issues than our health and wellbeing.”
But when real leadership is demonstrated, it “cuts across this narrative and challenges populism”, he said, giving the National Apology to the Stolen Generations as an example of when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people felt “that there was finally some truth in Australia and understanding”.
“No-one lost because of this ethical moral leadership,” he said.
Wenitong believes Australia has “gone backwards”, not just because of the referendum, but also because there is “a lack of trust in anything these days”, from politicians and the media to corporates and other organisations. Even those parties that were supportive of Voice were “pretty ambivalent anyway”, he said.
Disinformation powered by social media has not helped and “smashed” the Yes campaign: “a truthful 10 second message is really, really difficult to have, a dishonest one is really easy”, he said.
Wenitong warned Australia was in for difficult times, as the referendum outcome had deeply disappointed “our land and our ancestors”.
“Welcome to Country has blessed this land and all who walk on it to become the lucky country,” he said. “If Australia doesn’t want that anymore, don’t expect it will bless your footprints or toils on this land and continue to be the lucky country.”
Treaties were a useful tool “but not the be all and end all”, as could be seen in Aotearoa/New Zealand, following the change of government and abolition of the Māori Health Authority.
But Wenitong said he took hope from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people: “I think we’ve matured through this, I think we’ve gone to a new level of reality and understanding of where we sit in this country.”
He added that he was buoyed by the mobilisation of young people, and their hope and optimism, as described by Cama, as well Schultz’s “brilliant call for lateral kindness”.
Talk to candidates
Professor Bronwyn Fredericks, who is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous Engagement) at the University of Queensland and Co-Chair of Croakey Health Media, was a passionate campaigner ahead of the referendum and remains a staunch advocate for the Uluru Statement from the Heart.
She said she has not spoken or written much in the wake of the referendum, as she needed to take the time to grieve and heal, including from being abused while campaigning during the campaign.
On referendum day, she voted at an Ipswich booth where houses across the road had life-sized cardboard cut-outs of One Nation politician Senator Pauline Hanson on display facing one of the entries to the booth.
Although four out of five people in Ipswich voted No, Fredericks has also taken comfort and strength from knowing that 6.2 million Australians voted Yes.
Ahead of upcoming state and federal elections, she urges Voice supporters to talk to candidates about their positions, and whether they will “stay true to Uluru”.
Watch the webinar
See Croakey’s archive of articles on the Voice
