“And if not now – when? We need to recognise First Nations people in our Constitution. We should be proud of sharing this continent with the oldest continuous culture on earth,and we know that when we listen to people who are directly affected,we’ll get better outcomes. And that is what this is about.”
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Campaigners for the Yes side have this year tried to remind voters that the Voice came out of the bottom-up process of the Uluru Dialogues. But they were hamstrung by the political debate between the government and the opposition,as well as haggling over the wording of the constitutional amendment,amid falling support for the Yes side in recent polls.
Albanese said there was a “different poll every day” but they all showed the Yes side leading the No side – which was not the finding of the latest Resolve Strategic poll conducted for this masthead.
The Resolve poll this month showed support for the Voice had fallen below a majority on the Yes or No question for the first time,dropping from 53 to 49 per cent.
The poll showed voters had swung against the proposal for the third month in a row and are backing the No case in the three states of Queensland,Western Australia and South Australia – enough to sink the referendum.
For the referendum to be successful,it must gain a majority of support across Australia as well as a majority in four of the six states.
NSW Premier Chris Minns threw his weight behind the Voice Yes campaign at an event in southern Sydney yesterday,arguing Sydney residents had a “special responsibility” to vote Yes.
Minns told Yes supporters at Rockdale Town Hall,hosted by Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney in her electorate,that as the most populous state with the largest First Nations population of any jurisdiction,NSW had a “historic opportunity” to move towards reconciliation.
“The NSW government and the Labor Party in NSW are fundamentally and comprehensively calling for a yes vote for the referendum,” he said. “A decisive yes vote is the wind in the sails that the reconciliation movement needs in this state and this country.”
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Burney said she wasn’t concerned about polling results,and wouldn’t be reading about the Voice in newspapers but instead putting her faith in voters.
“This is our one shot in the locker,” Burney said. “It’s about listening,and it’s about recognising. Do not be fooled by naysayers ... it will make us a nation we can all be proud of.”
Meanwhile,in a speech to the NSW Liberal state council on Saturday morning,Ley said her party decided to oppose the Voice when it was clearly leading in the polls.
“This is bad policy. It is a bad proposal. It will not deliver better outcomes for Indigenous Australians but it will deliver worse outcomes for all Australians,” she said.
“We took a principled decision on this. We weren’t going to be influenced by all the polls – I note that support for ‘Yes’ was somewhere between the 60s and 70s before we declared our position.
“We were motivated by doing what was right for our country.”
But Ley said as the natural party of government,the Liberals in opposition needed to do more than “exposing the flaws of a Labor to get elected”.
“It’s not good enough to just smash this bad Labor government for being awful – we need to show people we are worth voting for,” she said.
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news,views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletterhere.