- The Guardian
- Issue #2069
A vote for no will tell us unequivocally that you are comfortable to continue witnessing the despair of our people. A vote for yes says you want to be a part of change.
Arrernte man,Tyson Carmody, Kings Narrative
By now everyone should know that it’s on. The referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament has been called for Saturday 14th October. This will be the question:
A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
Do you approve this proposed alteration?
The Communist Party of Australia is calling for ALL members and supporters to write YES in the space provided, and to campaign for a YES vote.
Why campaign?
The Communist Party of Australia has a long history of consistent support for rights, land, and sovereignty for First Nations People Australians. Every CPA meeting begins with a full acknowledgment that the land on which we meet is stolen land, and that sovereignty has never been ceded. We are serious about this, and we are in this for the long haul.
We support the Voice – something requested by a democratic gathering of Indigenous Australians in the Uluru statement from the heart – because it will give momentum to the struggle for land, and for Indigenous Australians to have real power in this country.
We are not utopian about these things. The Voice will be introduced by a colonialist bourgeois parliament, in a country in which, as this paper has often pointed out, big corporations have power out of all proportion to their numbers. Bourgeois politicians will continue to dance to the tune of the big end of town.
The Voice is a step towards fighting that.
We don’t know exactly how the Voice will work out in practice. If the Voice gets up, there will be a fight on to have it heard. It’s very likely that there will be attempts to silence or marginalise the Voice. The hope is that the Voice will give a higher profile to issues that affect Indigenous people in this country.
What we do know for sure is that if the Voice doesn’t get up, it will be a win for the worst kind of paternalistic racist. There is no middle way on this.
We will be writing YES in the square provided, and campaigning for this because we are for First Nations People Australians.
We will be voting YES in this referendum because we do not trust any of the bourgeois politicians to deliver justice for Indigenous people.
We are campaigning for YES for a genuine Voice for First Nations people.
A No vote is a vote for Terra Nullius, the idea that Australia was an empty land when the European settlers came here. Success of a ‘No’ vote would mean that we get things they way they are and an empowered racist far-right. It would mean rewarding Hanson, Dutton, and the right-wing NewsCorp commentariat.
A Yes vote would definitely be a win for Albanese and Labor, but that’s not why we’re supporting it. We’re supporting Yes because it will be a win for the First Nations People Australians who produced the Uluru Statement from the Heart. We are campaigning for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament because a lot of other wins are needed.
Join us
Voice Campaigns around Australian
Comrades carried out activities in favour of the Yes to Voice campaign in Brisbane. Leafleting and banner drops at Garden’s Point campus . A banner drop at the cultural centre and the banner displayed at the Brisbane launch
Melbourne comrades continued with banner drops and with a very successful leafleting session at Footscray station. Reaction was overwhelmingly positive from passers-by who took leaflets, and Party members received a lot of compliments for fronting up.
