The Voice

[sptrawler]

Yes The Voice will be a purely advisory body. And it will be developed through Parliament. Parliament will oversee its budget and decide on details. Almost certainly it won't work perfectly the first time. Parliament always reserves the right and need to review operations and where necessary tweak systems.

Voting YES for the Voice gives indigenous communities a constitutional right to make representations to government about issues that affect their community. Governments can take or leave or amend any representations - as they do all the time.

The yes pamphlet: campaign’s voice to parliament referendum essay – annotated and factchecked

Pamphlets written by politicians and published by the AEC have put the official case for a yes and no vote. They were not independently factchecked before publication, so Guardian Australia has added notes to the full essays to help you make better sense of them

www.theguardian.com

So what is the difference between a constitutional right and a legislated right, as per the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Act of 1989?
Have a read enlighten yourself, maybe enlighten me?

ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER COMMISSION ACT 1989

www8.austlii.edu.au

 

[TimeISmoney]

Yes The Voice will be a purely advisory body. And it will be developed through Parliament. Parliament will oversee its budget and decide on details. Almost certainly it won't work perfectly the first time. Parliament always reserves the right and need to review operations and where necessary tweak systems.

Voting YES for the Voice gives indigenous communities a constitutional right to make representations to government about issues that affect their community. Governments can take or leave or amend any representations - as they do all the time.

The yes pamphlet: campaign’s voice to parliament referendum essay – annotated and factchecked

Pamphlets written by politicians and published by the AEC have put the official case for a yes and no vote. They were not independently factchecked before publication, so Guardian Australia has added notes to the full essays to help you make better sense of them

www.theguardian.com

The government has not shared a draft of the voice model, and says concrete details about how many people sit on it, how they are selected and how the voice would interact with parliament would be decided first through further consultation with Indigenous communities after the referendum, and then changed or amended over time by the parliament of the day.

It's the harsh truth but I think they need to do a little better than this. I know for a fact that they want the voice to negotiate a treaty as I've seen the footnotes from the voice committee on recommendations that they need the voice enacted before the treaty and truth-telling. How the treaty will affect me personally has a lot of unknowns, for anyone to say it doesn't affect me it's yet to be seen. Labor doesn't realise that the power is in the voter's hands here, if they don't conform to answering questions or they can't it really undermines how they've dealt with this whole situation in the first place, not many Australians will have trust or faith in what Labor is doing. This is how politics works unfortunately the knife can cut from both sides.

 

[wayneL]

I'm a bit bemused by how vitriolic the yes side is about people such as Jacinta. Instead of politely disagreeing and stating their own case, they attempt to frame them as akin to Lucifer himself.

I really do think there is something pathological about that.

 

[TimeISmoney]

I'm a bit bemused by how vitriolic the yes side is about people such as Jacinta. Instead of politely disagreeing and stating their own case, they attempt to frame them as akin to Lucifer himself.

I really do think there is something pathological about that.

Typical hard lefties, they always try to play the person and not the ball when they know they're losing. The worst I've found are the public servants from Canberra, most of them seem to come out of the same mold, not sure if they're wannabe senators or if that's the way they're treated in their workplace and they project it out to other people.

 

[TimeISmoney]

 

[Smurf1976]

“I was focusing on the fact that Indigenous Australians have lower life expectancies, higher unemployment and poorer living conditions. But turns out they have access to water and food so I’m not sure what all the fuss was about. Looks like everything’s tip top,” the Victorian man said.

The question is why do they have lower life expectancies and so on?

For a start 41% of Aboriginals smoke, versus 11% of the general population That alone explains a huge difference given smoking is well known to be destructive to health, wealth and isn't great for employment prospects either.

Now factor in the number who for whatever reason remain living in remote areas and that's another big factor.

Now factor in other lifestyle choices eg exercise and diet.

 

[SirRumpole]

The question is why do they have lower life expectancies and so on?

For a start 41% of Aboriginals smoke, versus 11% of the general population That alone explains a huge difference given smoking is well known to be destructive to health, wealth and isn't great for employment prospects either.

Now factor in the number who for whatever reason remain living in remote areas and that's another big factor.

Now factor in other lifestyle choices eg exercise and diet.

There is probably also a cultural resistance to "white man's medicine" with the result that they may delay seeking treatment until the situation is worse than it should be.

 

[TimeISmoney]

The question is why do they have lower life expectancies and so on?

For a start 41% of Aboriginals smoke, versus 11% of the general population That alone explains a huge difference given smoking is well known to be destructive to health, wealth and isn't great for employment prospects either.

Now factor in the number who for whatever reason remain living in remote areas and that's another big factor.

Now factor in other lifestyle choices eg exercise and diet.

Smoking and eating lots of junk food causes coronary heart disease and diabetes.

 

[Smurf1976]

Smoking and eating lots of junk food causes coronary heart disease and diabetes.

There are exceptions, there are people who do everything right but still end up with lung cancer or a heart attack despite never having smoked, but there's undeniably a high correlation between diet, drug use (including tobacco and alcohol) and exercise and all of the top 4 causes of death among Aboriginals.

I'm not saying they're evil people or anything like that, I acknowledge that cigarettes are addictive and many struggle to quit smoking, but I'm really not seeing how a Voice to parliament is the solution to that?

Of all ways the problem might be addressed, having a group of representatives with access to federal politicians to discuss completely unrelated matters seems a rather unlikely one.

 

[SirRumpole]

There are exceptions, there are people who do everything right but still end up with lung cancer or a heart attack despite never having smoked, but there's undeniably a high correlation between diet, drug use (including tobacco and alcohol) and exercise and all of the top 4 causes of death among Aboriginals.

I'm not saying they're evil people or anything like that, I acknowledge that cigarettes are addictive and many struggle to quit smoking, but I'm really not seeing how a Voice to parliament is the solution to that?

Of all ways the problem might be addressed, having a group of representatives with access to federal politicians to discuss completely unrelated matters seems a rather unlikely one.

Yes, personal responsibility is being overlooked.

No one has to beat up their wife or partner, drink to excess or vandalise property, but sometimes the individual is responsible while in other cases it's down to "entrenched disadvantage".

As I said before, what is needed is leadership of the indigenous people by indigenous people, not expecting Parliament to fix all their problems.

 

[mullokintyre]

Cupla interesting points.
The number of press members who went to Langtons speech were significantly than those that went to the Price speech.
We don't know if the small number of attendees was because of the much smaller of the size of the room allocated to the Price speech, or the planned number of attendees was so small they allocated the much smaller room.
Either way, it says a fair bit about the MSM.
As to the number of views, its an interesting metric, but no sure if it is a reflection of the OZ voters in general, or just a self selecting group of X users.
Mick

 

[TimeISmoney]

I'm not saying they're evil people or anything like that, I acknowledge that cigarettes are addictive and many struggle to quit smoking, but I'm really not seeing how a Voice to parliament is the solution to that?

I don't think the voice is much to be afraid of even in the constitution, but it is what can come after it. There have been safeguard mechanisms put in place but whether they can be overridden is another factor, and in many cases it might be state-dependent. Whether they get a constitutional voice or not many of them will go into a treaty in the near future, how many groups will refuse is another issue and can they get the outcomes they want? The Voice is just the red herring in my opinion at this stage.

 

[IFocus]

"It has been extraordinary to watch the initial public enthusiasm for the Voice referendum fall away under the barrage of misinformation, fear-mongering and straight lies from the No camp. Generating fear and doubt is the recommended tactic for No volunteers.
The sharpest decline for the Voice started with Peter Dutton’s inevitable political decision to nail the LNP’s colours to the No mast, but the murky role that social media has played and continues to play, has increased divisiveness and fuelled confusion."

​

​

Michael Pascoe: Social media turns ‘free speech’ to poison – look at Voice lies​

Misinformation is rife on Elon Musk's X, writes Michael Pascoe. Picture: TND
OPINION
Michael Pascoe


In 2012 a group of Buddhist ultra-nationalists took to Facebook to target Muslims in Myanmar.
As the internet spread throughout the country, so did Facebook and so did hate speech against the Rohingya.
Facebook quickly became Myanmar’s most popular social media platform and main source of digital news – and the uncensored channel of poison that fanned hatred and steadily increasing violence.

As Barbara F Walter recounts the tragedy in her book, How Civil Wars Start, an Australian documentary student, Aela Callan, sought out Facebook’s vice-president of communications and public policy in 2013, showing him the connection between hate speech and falsehoods and the looming Rohingya genocide. But Facebook turned a blind eye.
“In the years that followed, dozens of journalists, companies, human rights organisations, foreign governments, and even citizens of Myanmar continued to alert Facebook to the unchecked spread of hate speech and misinformation on the platform,” Walter wrote.
“But Facebook remained silent, refusing to acknowledge the problem.”
The military and government officials created thousands of fake accounts that spread disinformation and blamed the Rohingya for violence and crimes.
“The real genocide began in August 2017 when the Myanmar military, along with Buddhist mobs, began mass killings, deportations and rapes,” Walter wrote.
Myanmar is an extreme example of how social media lies and hate speech have disastrous consequences, but it is happening on a smaller scale in Australia now.

‘Racist, sexist and defamatory’​

I stumbled on a tweet (if that’s what postings on Elon Musk’s X platform are still called) that managed to be racist, sexist and defamatory about one of the Yes campaign leaders.
I bothered to report the anonymous tweet to X – and whatever sort of people they are who work for Musk replied that the tweet was OK by their standards.

It seems only direct threats of violence might get an anonymous troll sinbinned from X.
It has been a feature of the No campaign that people posting messages supporting the Yes vote are quickly attacked and abused by trolls. If you’re not used to copping abuse, the attacks can be upsetting and intimidating – which is the point of them.
Spreading such poison has another danger. It reinforces and inflames the delusions of people prepared to commit violence.
The 51 people murdered in the 2019 Christchurch massacres were victims of a right-wing terrorist radicalised on YouTube, the algorithms that drive social media reinforcing his hatred.
It has been extraordinary to watch the initial public enthusiasm for the Voice referendum fall away under the barrage of misinformation, fear-mongering and straight lies from the No camp. Generating fear and doubt is the recommended tactic for No volunteers.
The sharpest decline for the Voice started with Peter Dutton’s inevitable political decision to nail the LNP’s colours to the No mast, but the murky role that social media has played and continues to play, has increased divisiveness and fuelled confusion.
Crikey’s Bernard Keane has argued that doesn’t provide an excuse for the referendum’s outcome on October 14. The result will reflect Australia’s values – for better or worse – not the quality of the campaigns.
He’s right, but I’d argue that part of this revelation of Australian character is that a significant proportion of us are easy meat for a disinformation campaign that preys upon existing prejudices and fear.
Unrestrained social media creates and feeds echo chambers. Allowed to spread lies and poison, it reinforces prejudices.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s vehement opposition to amending the constitution puts him on one side of a growing divide. Social media is exacerbating it.
That is why Russia deploys an army of social media activists against America. According to a New York Times report, China has now joined that game as well, attempting to sow discord in the US.
Americans have been doing a pretty good job of that without outside help.
For an essay in The Atlantic, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt turned to an Old Testament story to exemplify the communication breakdown in the US:
“The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terrible wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognise the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.”
Haidt sees Babel as a metaphor for what some forms of social media have done – their virality tools have algorithmically and irrevocably corroded public life.

‘A billion dart guns’​

“A mean tweet doesn’t kill anyone; it is an attempt to shame or punish someone publicly while broadcasting one’s own virtue, brilliance, or tribal loyalties,” Haidt said.
“It’s more a dart than a bullet, causing pain but no fatalities. Even so, from 2009 to 2012, Facebook and Twitter passed out roughly a billion dart guns globally. We’ve been shooting one another ever since.”
The right has thrived on conspiracy-mongering and misinformation, the left has turned punitive.
Social media took off just as Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News was perfecting its formula for generating audiences through fear and outrage. In a prescient 2010 article, Ted Koppel, one America’s best broadcasters, bemoaned the rise of partisan “news”.
“While I can appreciate the financial logic of drowning television viewers in a flood of opinions designed to confirm their own biases, the trend is not good for the republic,” Koppel wrote.
“It is, though, the natural outcome of a growing sense of national entitlement. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s oft-quoted observation that ‘everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts,’ seems almost quaint in an environment that flaunts opinions as though they were facts.”
Australia’s local right reliably mimics whatever the ratbag end of American politics does next, meaning we can expect to see the tools they’ve used to oppose the Voice become standard practice – lies and conspiracy theories constantly fed into the echo chambers, Australians going down the American path of constant division.

Musk and Murdoch are poisoning debate in Australia

It’s been a feature of the No campaign that people posting messages supporting the Yes vote are quickly attacked and abused by trolls.

thenewdaily.com.au

 

[SirRumpole]

"It has been extraordinary to watch the initial public enthusiasm for the Voice referendum fall away under the barrage of misinformation, fear-mongering and straight lies from the No camp.

So , give us a few of the "lies and misinformation".

 

[IFocus]

 

[SirRumpole]

Another referendum under Dutton may or may not happen, like any other election "promise".

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

"It has been extraordinary to watch the initial public enthusiasm for the Voice referendum fall away under the barrage of misinformation, fear-mongering and straight lies from the No camp. Generating fear and doubt is the recommended tactic for No volunteers.
The sharpest decline for the Voice started with Peter Dutton’s inevitable political decision to nail the LNP’s colours to the No mast, but the murky role that social media has played and continues to play, has increased divisiveness and fuelled confusion."

​

​

Michael Pascoe: Social media turns ‘free speech’ to poison – look at Voice lies​

View attachment 162507
Misinformation is rife on Elon Musk's X, writes Michael Pascoe. Picture: TND
OPINION

Michael Pascoe


In 2012 a group of Buddhist ultra-nationalists took to Facebook to target Muslims in Myanmar.
As the internet spread throughout the country, so did Facebook and so did hate speech against the Rohingya.
Facebook quickly became Myanmar’s most popular social media platform and main source of digital news – and the uncensored channel of poison that fanned hatred and steadily increasing violence.

As Barbara F Walter recounts the tragedy in her book, How Civil Wars Start, an Australian documentary student, Aela Callan, sought out Facebook’s vice-president of communications and public policy in 2013, showing him the connection between hate speech and falsehoods and the looming Rohingya genocide. But Facebook turned a blind eye.
“In the years that followed, dozens of journalists, companies, human rights organisations, foreign governments, and even citizens of Myanmar continued to alert Facebook to the unchecked spread of hate speech and misinformation on the platform,” Walter wrote.
“But Facebook remained silent, refusing to acknowledge the problem.”
The military and government officials created thousands of fake accounts that spread disinformation and blamed the Rohingya for violence and crimes.
“The real genocide began in August 2017 when the Myanmar military, along with Buddhist mobs, began mass killings, deportations and rapes,” Walter wrote.
Myanmar is an extreme example of how social media lies and hate speech have disastrous consequences, but it is happening on a smaller scale in Australia now.

‘Racist, sexist and defamatory’​

I stumbled on a tweet (if that’s what postings on Elon Musk’s X platform are still called) that managed to be racist, sexist and defamatory about one of the Yes campaign leaders.
I bothered to report the anonymous tweet to X – and whatever sort of people they are who work for Musk replied that the tweet was OK by their standards.

It seems only direct threats of violence might get an anonymous troll sinbinned from X.
It has been a feature of the No campaign that people posting messages supporting the Yes vote are quickly attacked and abused by trolls. If you’re not used to copping abuse, the attacks can be upsetting and intimidating – which is the point of them.
Spreading such poison has another danger. It reinforces and inflames the delusions of people prepared to commit violence.
The 51 people murdered in the 2019 Christchurch massacres were victims of a right-wing terrorist radicalised on YouTube, the algorithms that drive social media reinforcing his hatred.
It has been extraordinary to watch the initial public enthusiasm for the Voice referendum fall away under the barrage of misinformation, fear-mongering and straight lies from the No camp. Generating fear and doubt is the recommended tactic for No volunteers.
The sharpest decline for the Voice started with Peter Dutton’s inevitable political decision to nail the LNP’s colours to the No mast, but the murky role that social media has played and continues to play, has increased divisiveness and fuelled confusion.
Crikey’s Bernard Keane has argued that doesn’t provide an excuse for the referendum’s outcome on October 14. The result will reflect Australia’s values – for better or worse – not the quality of the campaigns.
He’s right, but I’d argue that part of this revelation of Australian character is that a significant proportion of us are easy meat for a disinformation campaign that preys upon existing prejudices and fear.
Unrestrained social media creates and feeds echo chambers. Allowed to spread lies and poison, it reinforces prejudices.
View attachment 162508Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s vehement opposition to amending the constitution puts him on one side of a growing divide. Social media is exacerbating it.
That is why Russia deploys an army of social media activists against America. According to a New York Times report, China has now joined that game as well, attempting to sow discord in the US.
Americans have been doing a pretty good job of that without outside help.
For an essay in The Atlantic, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt turned to an Old Testament story to exemplify the communication breakdown in the US:
“The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terrible wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognise the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.”
Haidt sees Babel as a metaphor for what some forms of social media have done – their virality tools have algorithmically and irrevocably corroded public life.

‘A billion dart guns’​

“A mean tweet doesn’t kill anyone; it is an attempt to shame or punish someone publicly while broadcasting one’s own virtue, brilliance, or tribal loyalties,” Haidt said.
“It’s more a dart than a bullet, causing pain but no fatalities. Even so, from 2009 to 2012, Facebook and Twitter passed out roughly a billion dart guns globally. We’ve been shooting one another ever since.”
The right has thrived on conspiracy-mongering and misinformation, the left has turned punitive.
Social media took off just as Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News was perfecting its formula for generating audiences through fear and outrage. In a prescient 2010 article, Ted Koppel, one America’s best broadcasters, bemoaned the rise of partisan “news”.
“While I can appreciate the financial logic of drowning television viewers in a flood of opinions designed to confirm their own biases, the trend is not good for the republic,” Koppel wrote.
“It is, though, the natural outcome of a growing sense of national entitlement. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s oft-quoted observation that ‘everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts,’ seems almost quaint in an environment that flaunts opinions as though they were facts.”
Australia’s local right reliably mimics whatever the ratbag end of American politics does next, meaning we can expect to see the tools they’ve used to oppose the Voice become standard practice – lies and conspiracy theories constantly fed into the echo chambers, Australians going down the American path of constant division.

Musk and Murdoch are poisoning debate in Australia

It’s been a feature of the No campaign that people posting messages supporting the Yes vote are quickly attacked and abused by trolls.

thenewdaily.com.au

If you had told me 12 months ago that Peter Dutton would be a reasonable alternative to Peter Albanese as Prime Minister, and in with a chance of taking the prize at the next election, I would have said you were dreaming.

This il-considered Referendum is not going to get up and may have far reaching consequences for the political landscape in Australia.

I still don't understand it tbh.

Anyone in favour either overthinks or just follows the crowd.

Anyone agin it has too much time on their hands.

What a waste of time for a Nation.

gg

 

[JohnDe]

"It has been extraordinary to watch the initial public enthusiasm for the Voice referendum fall away under the barrage of misinformation, fear-mongering and straight lies from the No camp. Generating fear and doubt is the recommended tactic for No volunteers.
The sharpest decline for the Voice started with Peter Dutton’s inevitable political decision to nail the LNP’s colours to the No mast, but the murky role that social media has played and continues to play, has increased divisiveness and fuelled confusion."

​

​

Michael Pascoe: Social media turns ‘free speech’ to poison – look at Voice lies​

View attachment 162507
Misinformation is rife on Elon Musk's X, writes Michael Pascoe. Picture: TND
OPINION

Michael Pascoe


In 2012 a group of Buddhist ultra-nationalists took to Facebook to target Muslims in Myanmar.
As the internet spread throughout the country, so did Facebook and so did hate speech against the Rohingya.
Facebook quickly became Myanmar’s most popular social media platform and main source of digital news – and the uncensored channel of poison that fanned hatred and steadily increasing violence.

As Barbara F Walter recounts the tragedy in her book, How Civil Wars Start, an Australian documentary student, Aela Callan, sought out Facebook’s vice-president of communications and public policy in 2013, showing him the connection between hate speech and falsehoods and the looming Rohingya genocide. But Facebook turned a blind eye.
“In the years that followed, dozens of journalists, companies, human rights organisations, foreign governments, and even citizens of Myanmar continued to alert Facebook to the unchecked spread of hate speech and misinformation on the platform,” Walter wrote.
“But Facebook remained silent, refusing to acknowledge the problem.”
The military and government officials created thousands of fake accounts that spread disinformation and blamed the Rohingya for violence and crimes.
“The real genocide began in August 2017 when the Myanmar military, along with Buddhist mobs, began mass killings, deportations and rapes,” Walter wrote.
Myanmar is an extreme example of how social media lies and hate speech have disastrous consequences, but it is happening on a smaller scale in Australia now.

‘Racist, sexist and defamatory’​

I stumbled on a tweet (if that’s what postings on Elon Musk’s X platform are still called) that managed to be racist, sexist and defamatory about one of the Yes campaign leaders.
I bothered to report the anonymous tweet to X – and whatever sort of people they are who work for Musk replied that the tweet was OK by their standards.

It seems only direct threats of violence might get an anonymous troll sinbinned from X.
It has been a feature of the No campaign that people posting messages supporting the Yes vote are quickly attacked and abused by trolls. If you’re not used to copping abuse, the attacks can be upsetting and intimidating – which is the point of them.
Spreading such poison has another danger. It reinforces and inflames the delusions of people prepared to commit violence.
The 51 people murdered in the 2019 Christchurch massacres were victims of a right-wing terrorist radicalised on YouTube, the algorithms that drive social media reinforcing his hatred.
It has been extraordinary to watch the initial public enthusiasm for the Voice referendum fall away under the barrage of misinformation, fear-mongering and straight lies from the No camp. Generating fear and doubt is the recommended tactic for No volunteers.
The sharpest decline for the Voice started with Peter Dutton’s inevitable political decision to nail the LNP’s colours to the No mast, but the murky role that social media has played and continues to play, has increased divisiveness and fuelled confusion.
Crikey’s Bernard Keane has argued that doesn’t provide an excuse for the referendum’s outcome on October 14. The result will reflect Australia’s values – for better or worse – not the quality of the campaigns.
He’s right, but I’d argue that part of this revelation of Australian character is that a significant proportion of us are easy meat for a disinformation campaign that preys upon existing prejudices and fear.
Unrestrained social media creates and feeds echo chambers. Allowed to spread lies and poison, it reinforces prejudices.
View attachment 162508Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s vehement opposition to amending the constitution puts him on one side of a growing divide. Social media is exacerbating it.
That is why Russia deploys an army of social media activists against America. According to a New York Times report, China has now joined that game as well, attempting to sow discord in the US.
Americans have been doing a pretty good job of that without outside help.
For an essay in The Atlantic, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt turned to an Old Testament story to exemplify the communication breakdown in the US:
“The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terrible wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognise the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.”
Haidt sees Babel as a metaphor for what some forms of social media have done – their virality tools have algorithmically and irrevocably corroded public life.

‘A billion dart guns’​

“A mean tweet doesn’t kill anyone; it is an attempt to shame or punish someone publicly while broadcasting one’s own virtue, brilliance, or tribal loyalties,” Haidt said.
“It’s more a dart than a bullet, causing pain but no fatalities. Even so, from 2009 to 2012, Facebook and Twitter passed out roughly a billion dart guns globally. We’ve been shooting one another ever since.”
The right has thrived on conspiracy-mongering and misinformation, the left has turned punitive.
Social media took off just as Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News was perfecting its formula for generating audiences through fear and outrage. In a prescient 2010 article, Ted Koppel, one America’s best broadcasters, bemoaned the rise of partisan “news”.
“While I can appreciate the financial logic of drowning television viewers in a flood of opinions designed to confirm their own biases, the trend is not good for the republic,” Koppel wrote.
“It is, though, the natural outcome of a growing sense of national entitlement. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s oft-quoted observation that ‘everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts,’ seems almost quaint in an environment that flaunts opinions as though they were facts.”
Australia’s local right reliably mimics whatever the ratbag end of American politics does next, meaning we can expect to see the tools they’ve used to oppose the Voice become standard practice – lies and conspiracy theories constantly fed into the echo chambers, Australians going down the American path of constant division.

Musk and Murdoch are poisoning debate in Australia

It’s been a feature of the No campaign that people posting messages supporting the Yes vote are quickly attacked and abused by trolls.

thenewdaily.com.au

The Yes proponents just can’t understand that there are people out in the world that can and have made up their own mind, and that the No proponents are echoing what many people are thinking and believe.

 

[SirRumpole]

If you had told me 12 months ago that Peter Dutton would be a reasonable alternative to Peter Albanese as Prime Minister, and in with a chance of taking the prize at the next election, I would have said you were dreaming.

View attachment 162509

This il-considered Referendum is not going to get up and may have far reaching consequences for the political landscape in Australia.

I still don't understand it tbh.

Anyone in favour either overthinks or just follows the crowd.

Anyone agin it has too much time on their hands.

What a waste of time for a Nation.

gg

I don't think either side has covered themselves in glory.

They should have both realised the potential for division that this sort of thing would have.

If Labor felt a moral duty to do it, then they shouldn't have nailed their @rse to it's success, just put it to the people and stand back and shut up, although that would be pretty difficult.

I agree it's taking up a lot of oxygen that should be put into housing, the economy, health and the shortage of labour in almost every industry.

 

[wayneL]

"It has been extraordinary to watch the initial public enthusiasm for the Voice referendum fall away under the exposure of the misinformation, race-baiting and straight lies from the YES camp.

There, I corrected it for you.