The co-convener of the Liberals for Yes movement has said that voting yes in the referendum for the Indigenous voice to parliament is a natural fit for conservative voters.
Kate Carnell, speaking to Guardian Australia before a town hall discussion in National party heartland in Tamworth on Monday, said she wanted to reassure Liberal and National voters who were thinking of voting yes on 14 October.
“My job is to say to Liberal and National party members: It’s fine to vote yes – because it’s absolutely in line with Liberal values,” Carnell said before the event, organised by local Yes23 group Yes for Tamworth.
Carnell said she hoped to persuade Liberal and National members who were “concerned about putting their heads up” because of the position taken by the federal parliamentary parties.
She said Australia spends a lot of money on Indigenous policy for “pretty ordinary outcomes” and Liberals believe taxpayer money should be spent efficiently.
“We’re going to try something different: we’re going to try what the Indigenous people want,” said Carnell, a former Liberal chief minister of the ACT.
About 140 people attended the yes campaign event at the Tamworth town hall, the same venue used by Recognise A Better Way for the regional launch of the leading no campaign in April.
In contrast to that no event, which drew protests and criticism from both traditional owners and the national race discrimination commissioner, Monday’s event was calm, quiet and focused on presenting the mechanics of the voice.
“My role as facilitator and MC for this event is really trying to provide a safe space for people to have genuine conversations,” Gomeroi man Marc Sutherland, Tamworth’s first Indigenous councillor, said beforehand.
“That room for questions, room for more clarity, is vital. To make sure we can do this at this event is a priority.”
Geoff Scott, a Wiradjuri man who was executive officer to the Referendum Council, said the yes campaign was rapidly gathering momentum.
“Over the last few weeks the turn out for the marches has been significant,” he said. “And what we’ve seen is a real turn in people’s opinions, a real flood of people wanting to help.”
But not everyone is convinced.
Fred Hooper is a Murrawarri man who walked out of the Uluru dialogues. He held up a cup and told the panel that if the voice were that cup it would be the government, not Indigenous people, who would ultimately decide how to fill it.
“It could be coffee, it could be tea,” he said.
Rachel Phillips, a panellist and the director of Birrelee Multifunctional Aboriginal Children’s Services, replied: “My hope is that cup, no matter what it’s filled with, means I’m not going to die of thirst, because there’s something to drink.”
Hooper told Guardian Australia after the event that truth-telling should come first, then treaty, then voice.
“There are a lot of Australians who are not descendants of the original colonisers,” Hooper said. “A lot of them immigrated here, after world war two, after Vietnam, and they wouldn’t have any idea of what happened.”
Landowner Helen Mary Jones said the panel was the first time she had heard the concept of the voice clearly explained. But she said she remained worried about the possibility of native title claims on private land – an outcome which has not been lobbied for and is not legally possible.
Charles Lynch, the New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council councillor for the north region, responded that in 43 years of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act, which allows claims on crown land but not freehold land, just 676 out of about 38,000 claims had been successful. Lynch said the risk to private land was a myth.
The loudest applause came when Phillips was asked whether she thought the voice would make a difference, and responded: “Yes gives our children a sense of belonging and a chance to grow up in a country that respects and acknowledges their culture – something that we haven’t had.
“We live in a no. And I honestly dream of a yes. Because it gives me hope. And I think it gives our children and our future hope.”
Taylor Williams, a Gomeroi woman and language teacher, told Guardian Australia that a lot of people had asked her how to vote, and she was “really excited” to hear how the panellists responded to the questions and misinformation that often followed those conversations.
“I was always going to vote yes, and I said my opinion, but some people would come in with stuff that’s so irrelevant and I never understood that. But they brought it up tonight, and I came here to get those answers,” she said.
