Barely three weeks from the referendum we are seeing the indigenous sense of entitlement. A rock climber in the Grampians has been officially threatened by the wokeness police. A gas pipe to be laid 50m underwater off the Tiwi Islands has to be halted because chipped rocks were found 14m underwater; that's desecration. A housing subdivision north of Adelaide has to be halted since moving ancient bones to a new location is unacceptable.

That's all in a bit over two weeks. Imagine what would have been in store if Yes had got up. You'd think Yes advocates would read the national mood and tone it down.

Thank you Chek for your article.

I thought that enshrining the Voice in the constitution was a bad idea in principle, and unlikely to deliver much practical benefit to Indigenous Australians given the failures of ATSIC and similar previous bodies, and the complex and intractable problems that underpin indigenous disadvantage.

I nonetheless voted Yes, reluctantly, because I think the outcome of the No vote will be far worse than a Yes vote. The result of a Yes vote would have been an expensive, ineffectual, disappointment. I fear the No vote has set reconciliation back decades with no clear path forward, and must feel like a massive slap in the face even for Indigenous Australians who didn’t support the Voice. The government has no mandate to push on with the other arms of the Uluru Statement – truth-telling and treaty – which are arguably more radical and unpopular than the Voice. And while I think the vision of reconciliation of No campaigners like Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Warren Mundine is attractive – based on colour blind equality and empowerment, not grievance and identity politics – I doubt the sincerity of the Coalition’s commitment to work for it in practice. And it will be a very long time before we have another referendum – I may not live to see Australia become a republic.

It is not only the outcome I find disheartening, the process was democracy at its worst. Neither side gave serious consideration to their opponents’ strongest arguments, instead delighting in tearing apart the weakest ones. The “No” case included blatant disinformation and fearmongering. The Yes case was shrill and sanctimonious and abusive – calling people d*heads, dinosaurs and racists was hardly likely to win hearts and minds. The preening virtue signalling of major corporations, sporting and arts organisations that backed the Voice was repulsive to watch and almost certainly counter-productive – who was going to vote Yes on the moral authority of Alan Joyce?

Many people share the blame for his train wreck, but the main culprit is Albanese

'Reconciliation' is misleading and irrelevant here.
I have never had an argument or disagreement with 'the group'.
So I have no need to reconcile with them.
I doubt anyone else has either.

And a successful 'yes' would have meant introducing blatant racism in to the constitution.
Such a divisive idea can never succeed as long as thinkers are in the majority.

And I have a simple approach to a problem some seem keen to promote.
Let us stop being racist in our speech.
Let us cease referring to these 'peoples' as a different race.
No reference whatsoever in print or spoken word.
Never another reference to midgie-widgie land or country.
Absolutely zilch.
It is not done for others of different racial origin, so why for them?
Stop it altogether.
Make sure EVERYONE is treated equally under the law, and in social ways as well.

And we need to remember that when someone dies, he ceases to be COMPLETELY.
The person doesn't exist anymore.
Only the physical material he used to communicate and support himself remains.
And do we really want to moan and groan over bones which are perhaps 50,000 years old?
I would have thought common sense would come to the fore here.
But apparently not.

I sometimes wonder how the 'adults' around me got to be adults.

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Dear ttbn,

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You wrote :

« As for all the mass killings supposedly perpetrated … there were no bodies … no medical records, no police records, no archaeological evidence to support the Frontier War theory. »
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That’s true. However, an investigation was carried out in 2010 by a team of researchers under the direction of Prof. Lyndall Ryan of the University of Newcastle based on the methods of massacre investigation devised by the French historical sociologist and political scientist, Jacques Semelin, consisting in the analysis of a range of printed and archival sources.

Here are the results for the period 1788-1930 :

http://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/introduction.php

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Interesting that inter-tribal killings & killings of shipwrecked people don't qualify for such research.
Any frontier conflict is sad & deplorable in hindsight & as I have stated before, had there been Welcome to Country in those days many such conflicts would have been avoided !

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Dear Chek,

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The word “requiem” in the title of your piece could have two meanings : a religious (Catholic) mass said or sung for the repose of the soul of a dead person, or perhaps a type of shark, a requiem shark, an extraordinarily fast and effective hunter.

Time will tell which of the two is applicable.

There were probably multiple reasons for the massive rejection of the proposed modification to our old colonial Constitution, the democratic vote being one of them – but, as Churchill wisely observed : “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others” – so we just have to accept that.

An interesting result of the exercise is that the Uluru representatives did not simply want inclusion in the Constitution of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as first inhabitants – which means that now that inclusion of the Voice has been rejected, we can forget about modifying the Constitution to include our indigenous compatriots.

The parliament is free to legislate without the constraints of the referendum process.

As I have previously stated on various threads here on OLO on this subject, I consider that our indigenous peoples should just set up a lobby with the help and advice of professionals on such matters.

I see no sense in our indigenous citizens negotiating treaties with our state and federal governments. That could give rise to the sort of black separatist and black nationalist movements that exist in the US.

Australia is a single, multicultural nation and I’m sure most of us want it to stay that way. We don’t want Australia to become divisive. We want it to remain inclusive. That was probably the main reason for the overwhelming NO vote at the Voice referendum.

It was not a racial vote. It was a vote against separatism, against division. It was a vote for the preservation of unity, national unity.

Nor was it a vote against the specific rights and needs of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. They should be assured not by treaties but by legislation.

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