The day after the referendum failed with approximately 60% voting ‘No’ and 40% voting ‘Yes’, National Indigenous Television (NITV) host John Paul Jenke said on ABC’s Insiders:1
“… misinformation played a big part in this, I think we can't estimate that. The feedback that we were getting from Western Sydney was that, you know, the fear of ‘I'm going to lose my house if The Voice gets up, I'm going to lose my house, it’s giving them extra rights that I don't have’ and that really played a part… So, they [the ‘No’ campaign] let the bush fire out, we've got to admit they let the bush fire burn away and create smoke to cloud the issue. They never went back and corrected it to have this respectful debate on the facts…”
Responsibility for the failure to host a “respectful debate on the facts” about the Voice belongs to mainstream news media, social media platforms, and ‘No’ campaigners themselves.
Each contributed to a muddying of public understanding about the details and potential consequences of an Indigenous Voice – an advisory body – enshrined in the constitution, and the potential outcomes of this for non-Indigenous Australians. They did so by either creating misleading content, or uncritically and unaccountably platforming it.
Australia, like most other democracies, is grappling with
