Woke Magic: Now the No in the Voice Referendum Made Indigenous People Disappear! By James Reed
Here is my winner for this week of the James Reed Post-Voice Referendum Freak-Out Award, which has no prize money beyond the mere distinction of winning. A Left-wing Aboriginal activist has said that No voters have denied the existence of indigenous people. “We cannot have reconciliation with people who do not say that we exist in this country, who are not talking about the truth of what has happened.” Naturally the “truth” that she is talking about, which will be pushed down Aussie throats in the state South African-style Truth Commissions, is the blackarm band view of history that is in the Uluru Statement, fully endorsed by our Leftist woke prime minister. You know, Australia was invaded and hence is illegitimate, which would not follow at international law, even if it was true.
So, in this sense, yes, this is all rejected, as it is based upon historical myths, created by Leftist academics. Second, the claim that No voters, which included a majority of indigenous voters, as the Northern Territory results showed, indicates that her claim is just logically incoherent, as indigenous voters would then not accept their own existence, which is completely contrary to fact.
“A left-wing Aboriginal activist has suggested Australians who voted No have denied the existence of Indigenous people.
Larissa Baldwin-Roberts, the chief executive of activist group GetUp!, said the resounding defeat of the Voice to Parliament referendum had killed off reconciliation between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and the rest of Australia.
'Personally, I think reconciliation is over - it's time for a reckoning,' she told the ABC's Q+A program on Monday night.
Ms Baldwin-Roberts, whose Indigenous ancestors come from the NSW Northern Rivers area, suggested the strong No vote suggested most Australians had denied the existence of Aboriginal people.
'We cannot have reconciliation with people who do not say that we exist in this country, who are not talking about the truth of what has happened,' she said.
Ms Baldwin-Roberts said she had been inundated with calls from friends and family since the October 14 referendum was defeated in every state, with only the Australian Capital Territory voting in favour.
A lengthy but unsigned letter was distributed by activists associated with the Uluru Dialogue group that steered the Voice proposal to its shattering referendum defeat on October 14.
'It's devastating for our communities,' she said.
'Regardless of what the question was, the rejection that we feel from the Australian voters.'
Nationally, the No vote triumphed in a landslide with 60.6 per cent of voters, or 8.8million Australians, rejecting the Voice proposal, based on updated Australian Electoral Commission returns published on Tuesday morning.
But in Western Australia, the No vote was even more emphatic 63.8 per cent after the state's Labor Premier Roger Cook scrapped his predecessor Mark McGowan's cultural heritage laws, that required landowners and farmers to pay for cultural surveys if they wanted to do work on their property.
'Some of the lies that were perpetrated throughout the referendum, from things around cultural heritage and farmers not needing to know how to build a fence, and the idea this would mean more substantive rights,' Ms Baldwin Roberts said.
Just 32 out of 151 lower house seats backed the Voice, with that support confined to wealthy and inner-city electorates in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Newcastle and Wollongong.
Aboriginal communities, however, voted strongly for the Voice with Palm Island in north Queensland returning a 75 per cent Yes vote, as the broader Townville-based Liberal electorate of Herbert delivered a 76.1 per cent No vote.
Ms Baldwin-Roberts' ancestral homeland also voted No, with 67.6 per cent of voters in the Nationals-held seat of Page, covering Lismore and Casino, rejecting the Voice in an area also known as Bundjalung Nation.
The neighbouring Labor seat of Richmond, covering Ballina and Byron Bay, delivered a 56.7 per cent No vote.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart in 2017 had called for a Voice referendum and a Makarrata Commission, involving a truth-telling inquiry into colonialism and treaty making.
But Ms Baldwin-Roberts was lukewarm even about implementing the other aspects of the Uluru Statement.
'Truth telling is important. I just don't know where we go from here,' she said.
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