Australia has overwhelmingly voted no to recognising Indigenous people in its constitution and enshrining a First Nations voice to parliament on matters that affect them.
It is a brutal end to a proposal put forward by Indigenous leaders to address entrenched disadvantage in their communities and heal the wounds of colonisation.
Here is how world and national media reacted to the outcome.
BBC
Britain’s national broadcaster reported: “Australia has overwhelmingly rejected a plan to give greater political rights to Indigenous people in a referendum.”
The BBC characterised the campaign as “fraught and often acrid”, pointing to the no camp’s claim – unfounded according to Australia’s leading constitutional minds – that the voice would be divisive and create a “special class of citizens” that had more rights than others.
The result would leave Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, “searching for a way forward”, the BBC reported.
In a story published hours before the defeat, the BBC drew in the New Zealand perspective on Australia’s referendum.
“New Zealand is looking across the ditch to Australia and I think many at least Pakeha New Zealanders [New Zealanders of European descent] are probably puzzled that what is in their eyes such a modest proposal is struggling to win sufficient votes,” said historian Bain Attwood, adding that Māori people have long been granted a political voice.
The New York Times
The New York Times covered news of the defeat with the headline: “Crushing Indigenous hopes, Australia rejects ‘voice’ referendum”.
In a long article, Sydney-based correspondent Yan Zhuang spoke to Indigenous Australians who saw the voice as “Australia taking a step to do right by them after centuries of abuse and neglect”.
It centred on Indigenous voices from Fitzroy Crossing in remote Western Australia, which from 1990 to 2005 had an elected body that gave advice to the government and was considered by locals better than the current alternative.
But, Zhuang wrote, confusion, suspicion and unrealistic fears drove Australians to ultimately vote no: “I’m not normally a suspicious person, but there’s a secret agenda we were never going to be told about,” said one Sydney resident who spoke to the New York Times.
Zhuang reported on the views of experts and Indigenous leaders that Australians are aware of the disadvantage confronting the Indigenous population, but “see these problems as failures of Indigenous people and communities, rather than of the systems that govern them”.
Joe Ross, an Aboriginal leader in Fitzroy Crossing from the Bunuba tribe, told the New York Times the debate and the ensuing result had “shown the real underbelly of this country”.
The New Zealand Herald
New Zealand gained a new prime minister after Labour lost to the conservative National party on the same night as the referendum. The New Zealand Herald reported “advocates for constitutional change in Australia were devastated on Saturday by the defeat”.
About an hour before the defeat was made official, the Herald published a story with comments from a Papua New Guinean academic, the University of Canberra’s Dr Bal Kama, who said the no vote would be a setback Australia’s relations with the Pacific.
The Sydney Morning Herald
Turning to domestic coverage, the Sydney Morning Herald’s headline blared, “AUSTRALIA SAYS NO” above a graphic of the country sliced down the middle with a 41% yes vote and a 59% no vote.
The lead story started with Albanese’s call for a new “national purpose” to tackle Indigenous disadvantage.
The paper’s political editor, Peter Hartcher, argued in a column featured on the front page that the voice was silenced by fear and doubt. He pointed to the fact the majority of respondents in polls supported the voice consistently for the past five years, but “a political campaign set out to wreck the voice” eroded this, flipping it to the majority of Australians deserting the voice.
“Many Indigenous Australians will take this personally,” wrote Hartcher. “They shouldn’t. It’s just politics.”
The Herald’s Melbourne counterpart, the Age, led with the headline, “Voters Silence Voice”.
The Daily Telegraph
The front page of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph was dominated by a grim-faced Albanese as he fronted the nation after the defeat was confirmed. The headline read: “No Hard Feelings”.
The lead story reported: “It took less than 90 minutes of counting for the no vote to be declared successful.”
And later added: “A visibly upset prime minister Anthony Albanese, who will have to weather criticism his own mistakes doomed the vote to failure, has pledged to unite the country after the divisive and heated campaign.”
The Telegraph’s sister publication, Melbourne’s Herald Sun, was softer in its assessment of the defeat on the front page, perhaps due to Victoria being the closest state to achieving a yes vote. It also led with a picture of a visibly upset Albanese, but above the headline “Time to Unite”.
The Canberra Times
In the ACT, which was the only territory or state to record majority support for the voice, the Canberra Times led with the headline “On Deaf Ears”. Above is a picture of Albanese with arms wide opening wearing a “Yes” campaign T-shirt.
The subheading read: “The ACT has voted yes but Australia has delivered a resounding ‘no’ to the call for an Indigenous voice to parliament.”
NT News
In the Northern Territory, which has the largest proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the defeat shared the NT News front page with a report on “why women think a boob check is scarier than a croc”.
Below was the headline: “Australia has said no to the Voice. The outcome must be respected after a long and divisive campaign. Today we look to our leaders and ask … WHAT NOW?”
NITV
SBS’s National Indigenous Television, a dedicated media channel for and about Indigenous Australians, strove to alleviate what will be a challenging day for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, leading with a story that stressed Albanese’s promise that the referendum’s defeat is “not the end of the road” for reconciliation.
Reporter Rachael Knowles wrote that Albanese and the Indigenous Australians minister, Linda Burney, had accepted the outcome, adding: “They pushed the need to grieve but said tomorrow they’ll continue on the path of reconciliation.”
