The no side in the voice referendum has misread the mood among migrants

This week the no case against the voice referendum made a pitch to migrants and multicultural Australians. Their effort demonstrated little understanding of, or respect for, Australia’s diverse ethnic and cultural communities.

The attempt to pit migrant communities against Indigenous people, and confuse things with talk of a preamble, has achieved the opposite result: it has further galvanised and clarified the support of ethnic and cultural communities behind the referendum.

They should have paid closer attention. In May last year, Australia’s peak religious institutions released an unprecedented joint resolution calling for bipartisan action on the Indigenous voice referendum. It was signed by leaders of the Christian, Jewish, Sikh, Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist communities, demonstrating growing consensus in favour of this constitutional reform.

In 2022, the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia (FECCA) confirmed its support. Clearly, the no campaigners did not talk with multicultural communities before trying to co-opt them into their cause.

FECCA rejected the plan for preambular recognition of Indigenous people and migrants – a concept which failed abysmally at the 1999 referendum, was debunked repeatedly by constitutional conservatives as legally unsafe, and was resoundingly rejected by Indigenous Australians in the 2017 Uluru Statement.

Now it has been rejected by multicultural Australia too. “We never asked for migrants to be recognised in the constitution,” tweeted Mohammad Al-Khafaji, Fecca’s CEO, confirming the “resounding support” within multicultural Australia for a First Nations voice . “Trying to wedge migrant communities … not only won’t work, but it’s offensive to our community’s intelligence,” he continued. “This is not being done in good faith and it’s divisive.” Ouch.

Prominent business leader Ming Long was equally unimpressed. ‘‘We should give recognition to First Nations, who have been in this country for 60,000 years. Our country didn’t start when our constitution was put in place or when Captain Cook arrived.” So ‘‘we need to give Indigenous Australians that special place in our history,” she told the AFR.

Another business leader of migrant background who did not want to comment publicly told the paper Australia should recognise Indigenous peoples as other countries like New Zealand and Canada have done – which was much more important than “simply mentioning everyone” in a tokenistic preamble.

Warren Mundine and his team have misread the mood. Many migrants and their descendants feel deep empathy for the plight of Indigenous peoples. Though many of our families have struggled, migrants by and large have come to this country and enjoyed great opportunity. Such opportunity stands in stark contrast to the losses experienced by First Nations people.

My ancestors came from India via Fiji, where the British took indentured servants to work on sugar cane plantations. But we understand that the opportunity and prosperity my family enjoys – though created through hard work – has been enabled by Indigenous dispossession. Indian Australians – like many migrants – have been given more of a fair go in this country than the original owners.

Take voting rights. The Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 provided that “aboriginal natives” of Australia, Asia, Africa or the Pacific Islands were not entitled to be on an electoral roll. A Victorian Indian man, Mitta Bullosh, challenged his exclusion in 1924. The commonwealth subsequently altered the act to allow Indian people to vote – but not Indigenous people, who didn’t get equal voting rights across jurisdictions until some four decades later. If only Bullosh had advocated the rights of his Indigenous compatriots along with his own.

Discrimination against Indigenous people was not limited to voting rights. Colonial protectors once controlled many aspects of Indigenous people’s lives. Policies included unequal wages, forcible removal of children, and other harsh controls. The protection era in some jurisdictions lasted until the 1970s, around the time my parents came to Australia.

While my parents were at university at Monash, the Wik people of Aurukun tried to buy back some of their traditional lands. But Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen enacted a policy preventing Indigenous people from buying large tracts of land. Wik leader John Koowarta challenged the law and in 1982 the high court struck down the policy. But the government dodged the decision by declaring the land a national park, which meant it couldn’t be bought.

The Wik people couldn’t buy land on the country they had lived on for thousands of years. Meanwhile, my Indian Australian parents could purchase property freely to build our lives and wealth. Is it any wonder so many Indigenous families suffer intergenerational disadvantage to a far greater extent than other Australians? No wonder they want a voice in decisions made about them.

Many multicultural Australians came from countries where we too experienced discrimination. We love Australia, which has given us so much opportunity. But we know that Indigenous dispossession “underwrote the development” of this nation that is now our home – as the then chief justice, Gerard Brennan, explained in his Mabo judgment.

This is why many of us want to help Indigenous Australians achieve the modest constitutional recognition they seek: a voice in their own affairs.

I urge multicultural Australians to continue to build support in our communities. Let’s continue to declare that we will vote yes in the voice referendum, and urge others to do the same. Let’s work together across left and right, and across divides of belief and culture. If we stand in solidarity, the referendum will succeed.

Dr Shireen Morris is director of the Radical Centre Reform Lab at Macquarie University law school. She is co-editor of Statements from the Soul which was released on 20 February 2023.