After the Voice

On 14 October 2023, Australians voted ‘no’ to the proposed Voice to Parliament. A constitutionally enshrined Voice was one of three important overarching aspects of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which was put forward as an invitation to the nation in 2017, and accepted by over six million Australians in October 2023 (Biddle et al. 2023).

As witnessed in the lead up to the Referendum, First Nations people and non-Indigenous Australians held varying opinions about the Voice to Parliament and there were mixed emotions about its outcome. What many First Nations people learnt from the Referendum result was that some Australians don’t understand equity versus equality, which could have been attributed to some of the confusing and conflicting information being disseminated by Voice Referendum campaigns.