Saturday’s referendum vote will be the only chance Australia will have to tackle racism and guarantee a better future for Aboriginal children, leading yes campaigner Noel Pearson has said.
In his final pitch to undecided voters, Pearson said the voice was the culmination of decades of struggle by leaders before him, adding he did not want to pass that burden to the next generation.
“My last pitch message is don’t slam the door on the children. Imagine how horrible it is going to be that our children learn that the country turned its back on them,” Pearson told Guardian Australia.
“I’ve got a mission background, so all of my metaphors tend to come from that direction. We’re on the south shore of Jordan here, and all I want is for our children to cross over to the other side.”
Speaking from far north Queensland, where he says he will remain until after the vote, Pearson said he was confident the voice would work if Australians would give it a chance.
“That’s the prospect we have in front of us. It’s a matter of getting our children to the other shore, not slamming the door in their face, not vandalising the opportunity for them, and letting this new generation of leadership really take this voice and make it work for our people,” he said.
On Friday the Australian Financial Review reported comments Pearson made at a private gathering, telling attendees he thought Australia had become a “hard country” and there appeared “nothing we can do to shift the numbers”.
Pearson said contemplating whether his faith in the Australian people had been misplaced was a question for tomorrow night.
“What am I going to say to our people in the event that I have been an absolute unashamed advocate of placing our faith in the Australian people? People are going to ask me what happened,” he said. “That will become a question tomorrow night, whether the faith has been misplaced. I still don’t think so.”
The yes camp has staged a massive ground campaign over the past six weeks. It has 50,000 volunteers, many stationed at pre-polling booths. Volunteers have knocked on 320,000 doors and made more than a million phone calls. In the final week, they were averaging 30,000 calls a night. Pearson has spoken at 129 forums since July. This week, he crossed three time zones in 24 hours.
The polls do not show a big shift in voter sentiment, but Pearson said the polls were at odds with the groundswell of positive sentiment he had seen on the campaign trail. Regardless of the result, Australia would need to reckon with the infiltration of “American style, divisive electioneering”, he said.
Pearson said Australia would find it almost impossible to tackle racism if the vote was no.
“I don’t think it’s ever going to be able to. This question, this weekend, is at the centre of it. If we don’t deal with this question, we’ll never be able to diminish it.
“That’s what I said in the beginning of this campaign. I have this great belief that if we do this, we will diminish racism in this country. Because it is this question that is the driving heart of this problem, and has always been the driving heart of this problem concerning our people,” he said.
“My pitch to those Australians still on the fence, still to decide their vote – this is not about constitutional law any more in these last 24 hours … This is about giving Aboriginal children a chance in the future, supported by a new generation of leadership. And it will be a great thing for the country when we do it.”
