Sarah*, a volunteer for the yes campaign, has overheard some strange claims outside pre-poll stations in Werribee, Victoria: “[That] the AEC are in cahoots with the Albanese government; that this is all shady, that it’s a coverup for something else.”
She said she’s seen a handful of no campaigners handing out pens to people who are going in to cast their ballot “so their vote can’t be erased by the AEC”.
False claims like this, which suggest the electoral commission might manipulate the vote, have been spreading online during the Indigenous voice to parliament campaign – often among communities that emerged during the pandemic years around opposition to lockdowns and vaccines.
“Do it in PEN and NOT with the pencil they will provide you with,” is one phrase that has spread recently about the referendum via Telegram messaging channels, at least one with more than 44,000 subscribers.
The Australian Electoral Commission’s disinformation register refutes allegations that pencils are provided so the commission can rub out votes, noting that voters are welcome to bring pens and that “polling officials are never alone with ballot papers”.
Sarah said she also witnessed the no campaigners “instructing people not to trust the Labor government because of the way Dan Andrews behaved during the pandemic”.
“When we think back to that time and how hard and stressful and awful it was, everybody has a residual feeling associated with that time. And they’re playing on that feeling,” she said.
“I think that’s unfair, because Indigenous people have nothing to do with the pandemic.”
The legacy of pandemic-era alliances across Australian communities – sometimes dubbed the “freedom movement” – on the voice can also be seen at events such as the recent anti-voice rallies in capital cities around Australia on 23 September.
The event, not associated with the official no campaign, was originally advertised on social media as a continuation of the World Wide Rally for Freedom series of marches and protests that began in 2021, but it was later renamed as “No to the voice”.
Axel Bruns, professor in the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology, has examined content about the voice shared on Facebook this year and found strong continuities between the unofficial no campaign and the loose alliances that sprang up to oppose pandemic measures.
“There is a carryover of a general anti-establishment, anti-government sentiment that continues beyond Covid itself and is finding other things to oppose,” Bruns said.
At the Sydney rally on 23 September, one of several around the country, the former Liberal MP Ross Cameron stood in front of signs that referred to 5G and 15-minute city conspiracy theories as well as anti-voice slogans.
Among the speakers was David Oneeglio, an anti-lockdown activist who has more than 56,000 subscribers on an associated Telegram channel. He claimed in his speech that the referendum would create a contract that would be “opening the door to the UN and the rest of the globalists who want this nation”.
Avi Yemini, who broadcasts for the Canadian outlet Rebel News, a key driver of anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown content, also attended.
Sherene Idriss, a senior lecturer in social and cultural research at Western Sydney University, also thinks the pandemic – a “once in a lifetime event” – has shaped some of the discourse around the voice.
She describes the movement between anti-vaccination groups and anti-voice groups in her Arab Australian community as a kind of “slippage”.
“‘They’re going to be entitled to take our house’, ‘They’re going to force us to change the education curriculum’, ‘We’ll have to pay more in tax’ – those are the kinds of statements thrown around in favour of a no vote,” she said.
She said she had heard false claims about the referendum at coffee shops, barbecues and other gatherings, and that part of their appeal plays particularly well among some migrants and their Australian-born children.
“There is a sentiment that the yes vote will create more power and opportunities for Indigenous people and in turn lead to a reduction in the kinds of opportunities the next generation of migrant-background children will have,” she said.
Several online identities who grew audiences through anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination activism have organised anti-voice forums and shared anti-voice content in multiple languages, in some cases promoting conspiracy theories that suggest the voice will lead to land grabs or communism.
Bruns said he had found pages and groups sharing conspiracy theory content around the voice that were created specifically about the referendum, but others that had grown their membership during the pandemic.
The Facebook group “Global non compliance Australia”, which expanded its membership to more than 20,000 in 2021, according to Crowdtangle data, shares significant volumes of content against the voice as well as about its more typical preoccupations, such as vaccines and the former Andrews government in Victoria.
A new public group, The Voice 2023 – Yes or No, was created in May this year and is among the most active sharers of links about the voice to its more than 9,000 members, according to the Facebook analysis.
“It’s lockdown or vaccines or whatever else we might have had, and the referendum now,” Bruns said. “There’s a growing network that is emerging here.”
* Name changed to protect privacy.
