Gott mit Karlton!

This week, the IPA published a survey of 660 South Australians on their attitude towards the proposed Indigenous-only Voice to Parliament. The results are so eye opening that I am going to dive straight into them.

South Australia is critical to the referendum on the Voice, because in order for it to pass, at least four states in Australia must vote in favour of it.

The first and obvious question asked in the survey was how they were intending to vote in the referendum to establish the Federal Indigenous Voice to Parliament in Australia’s Constitution, which will be held later this year. The results for the different demographics are as follows:

South Australian Graph 1
So, only 39 per cent of the South Australians surveyed indicated that they’ll be voting Yes at the upcoming referendum. [Read IPA Poll here]

But what’s more interesting is that only over a quarter of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (ATSI) surveyed said they would vote yes, with the remainder indicating No or unsure. It shows that Indigenous Australians themselves are highly divided on the Voice, with more leaning towards voting No than Yes, regardless of what Voice activists say.

In the same survey, South Australians were also given a range of policy solutions – including a Canberra-based Indigenous Voice to Parliament – and asked to choose the one most likely to improve the day-to-day lives of Indigenous South Australians living in remote parts of the state. Here’s how Indigenous South Australians voted:

South Australian Graph 2
Let’s consider it again. Not a single Indigenous South Australian selected the federal Voice as most likely to improve conditions on the ground in remote communities.

We are told again and again that No campaigners should ‘listen’ to Indigenous Australians. Sadly, as the survey shows it is the activists and leaders fixated on a federal Voice to Parliament who need to do more ‘listening’.

If they truly listened to their constituencies and communities, they would find there is broad agreement on what policies would actually help remote Indigenous communities.

The most popular choice among Coalition, Labor and Greens voters of a policy most likely to help remote Indigenous communities is ‘More local job opportunities’ with 32 per cent of Coalition voters, 37 per cent of Labor voters and a whopping 49 per cent of Greens voters choosing it as their top policy preference.

So, if Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was truly looking to unite the country, he would make this his goal.

As IPA Deputy Executive Director Daniel Wild said in a radio interview on FiveAA Mornings with Matthew Pantellis:

By far, the most popular choices were local job opportunities, prohibitions on alcohol consumption, and income management, such as cashless debit cards. So, the key point is that what South Australians are saying is that they believe practical on-the-ground policy approaches are more likely to deliver better outcomes than a Canberra-based Voice to Parliament.

Sorry that the tables wouldn’t copy, but this from the IPA weekly letter shows that South Australia may not be voting Yes on the Voice. Let’s hope so.