The No campaign against the Voice to Parliament has unveiled a new focus for its supporters, announcing it will now target the government’s proposed misinformation bill.
Following a letter from Indigenous leaders, which ended a week-long silence after their defeat, the No campaign has begun sharing its own strategic message.
“Australia has decisively rejected division. The Yes campaign managed to garner just 39 percent of the vote,” stated Matthew Sheahan, executive director of Advance.
“In anyone’s view, that is a clear defeat,” he added.
Advance played a key role in the Fair Australia No campaign, collaborating with Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Nyunggai Warren Mundine to oppose the Voice initiative.
Advance powered the Fair Australia No campaign, which joined forces with Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Warren Mundine to down the Voice
“It’s no surprise they’ve been in mourning for a week. Together, we dismantled their divisive agenda,” the campaign asserted.
‘Australia handed them a flogging that will sting for decades, believe me.’
READ MORE: What Yes leaders really mean with open letter slamming No voters
But Mr Sheahan warned the Yes camp is ‘regrouping’.
‘Why do you think they’re already talking about new laws to make ‘misinformation’ a crime?’
A proposed misinformation bill would give the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) stronger powers to deal with ‘content that is false, misleading or deceptive’.
‘Australia has overwhelmingly rejected division. The Yes campaign only managed to convince 39 per cent,’ Advance’s executive director Matthew Sheahan said
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland described these new powers, which would include information gathering and record keeping abilities, as a means to ‘create transparency around efforts by digital platforms to respond to misinformation and disinformation’.
The Human Rights Commission and the Australian Law Council are among firms concerned about the scope of powers the bill would provide.
Mr Sheahan called out the Labor party, the Greens and the Teal independents for ‘lining up… to call for new laws that will criminalise and police what you say’.
‘They think the only way they can win is if they silence their opponents. But you and I are already ahead of the game.
‘ADVANCE is campaigning right now on this next front. Every time they squeal ‘misinformation, disinformation’, they are really saying, ‘you are too stupid to make up your own mind’.
‘They think that if you oppose their radical vision of Australia, you’re ‘a dinosaur or a d**khead’, as Ray Martin put it.
Communications minister Michelle Rowland described these new powers, which would include information gathering and record keeping abilities, as a means to ‘create transparency around efforts by digital platforms to respond to misinformation and disinformation’
‘They just can’t accept the fact that Australians thought dividing us by race in our national rulebook was a bad idea.’
Mr Sheahan’s message to supporters came as Yes campaign group, the Uluru Dialogues, shared an open letter claiming to be ‘the collective insights and views of a group of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders, community members and organisations who supported Yes’.
‘The truth is that the majority of Australians have committed a shameful act whether knowingly or not, and there is nothing positive to be interpreted from it. We needed truth to be told to the Australian people,’ the letter read.
This appears to be a reference to the next stage of the Uluru Statement from the Heart – which calls for truth-telling through a Makarrata Commission.
The Makarrata Commission, which would combine treaty-making ambitions with truth-telling, was considered the ‘culmination of the agenda’ of the Uluru Statement, of which a constitutionally enshrined Voice to Parliament was merely part one.
The statement (pictured) said Indigenous leaders would continue to lobby for a Voice, despite the comprehensive referendum defeat
The letter called for schoolchildren to be taught about the struggles of Indigenous Australians, saying a lack of knowledge and racism contributed to the referendum defeat.
‘That so many Australian people believe there is no race or division on race in the current Australian Constitution speaks to the need for better education on Australian history and better civics education,’ the statement said.
In a direct challenge to non-Indigenous Australians, the letter said: ‘Australia is our country. We accept that the majority of Australians have rejected recognition in the Australian Constitution.
‘We do not for one moment accept that this country is not ours. Always was. Always will be.
‘It is the legitimacy of the non-Indigenous occupation in this country the requires recognition, not the other way around. Our sovereignty has never been ceded.’
