2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum

The 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum was a constitutional referendum held on 14 October 2023 in which the proposed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice was rejected. Voters were asked to approve an alteration to the Australian Constitution that would recognise Indigenous Australians in the document through prescribing a body called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice that would have been able to make representations to Federal Parliament and the executive government on "matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples". The proposal was rejected nationally and by a majority in every state, thus failing to secure the double majority required for amendment by section 128 of the constitution. The Australian Capital Territory was the only state or territory with a majority of "yes" votes. Analysis of surveys following the referendum identified the main reasons why the majority of Australians voted no was a scepticism of rights for some Australians that are not held by others and a fear of constitutional change.
On 21 May 2022, the Australian Labor Party won government, with party leader Anthony Albanese becoming Prime Minister. During his victory speech, Albanese committed to holding a referendum to enshrine an Indigenous Voice to Parliament in his government's first term of office, acting on the 2017 request of Indigenous leaders for such a body made with the Uluru Statement from the Heart.
The government settled on and announced the text of the question on the ballot and the actual amendment on 23 March 2023. These were formally approved by parliament through the passage of the amendment bill, Constitutional Alteration (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice) 2023 (Cth). The bill was examined and endorsed by the Joint Select Committee on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice Referendum, subject to two dissenting reports authored by Liberal and National party members respectively.
The Liberal Party of Australia report put forward several changes, including the deletion of sub-section 128(ii) (to reduce a risk that representations from the body must be considered), a new section 77(iv) (to allow the parliament to control the applicability of judicial review under section 75(v) of the Constitution), the addition of the words "and the legal effect of its representations" to sub-section 128(iii) (to clarify the power Parliament has to legislate regarding the Voice), and the replacement of the words "executive government" to "ministers of state" (to reduce the possible ambit of people to whom the Voice may make representations). The Nationals' report, on the other hand, rejected the proposed bill entirely.
Following the passage of the bill, the referendum date was announced by the Prime Minister on 30 August 2023. The referendum was officially triggered on 11 September 2023 with the issuing of a writ by the governor-general to the Australian Electoral Commission.
Referendum ballot papers asked voters:
The proposed amendment to the Constitution was the insertion of the following chapter:
For any amendment of the Constitution to proceed, it must receive a double majority of votes: that is, a majority in each of a majority of the states (i.e. at least four of the six states), as well as a majority overall (i.e. including votes in the territories).
Voting in the referendum was mandatory for all eligible Australian citizens (and some British subjects). A total of 17,676,347 voters were registered on the electoral roll, and therefore required to either vote in person, by post or by phone. This was 2.6% larger than the electoral roll of the 2022 election.
The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) estimated the cost of the referendum would be about $450 million, where the federal government had supplied $364 million in the most recent budget to deliver the referendum. Funding for the referendum was provided to the AEC and National Indigenous Australians Agency in the October 2022 Australian federal budget, with a total distribution of $75.2 million (excluding Contingency Reserves) over two years (FY2022–24).
There is an additional $160 million of the federal Contingency Reserve available to deliver the referendum. In May 2023 the government announced a total of $10.5 million in the 2023 budget to improve mental health services for Indigenous people in the lead-up to the referendum.
The government originally attempted to remove the requirement for an official yes/no pamphlet along with other proposed changes to the referendum process in the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill 2022 (Cth), arguing that a physical pamphlet was outdated and that information could instead be distributed online or via television. Instead, the government proposed funding an education campaign to inform Australians about the referendum and to "counter misinformation". However, the pamphlet was ultimately retained in order to secure bipartisan support for the bill. Following this, parliamentarians of both houses who had voted for and against the constitutional amendment bill drafted, for inclusion in the pamphlet, 2,000-word essays detailing their Yes and No cases, with the text of each essay approved by a majority respectively of the Yes and No supporters. This approach was criticised by organisations such as The Greens, who wanted these statements to be independently fact-checked, as there was no legal requirement for the pamphlets to be truthful. After the pamphlets were released, several media organisations analysed the claims in both essays, with many characterising some in the No case as "false" or "misleading". No campaigners disputed this, however, arguing that fact checkers were labelling as "false" claims that remained subject to debate.
The yes/no pamphlet was published on the AEC website on 18 July 2023 and on 11 August 2023 it began to be posted to households.
Key dates in relation to the voting process for the referendum were:
The following tables summarise the positions of registered political parties at the federal level. Disagreement between federal party rooms and state-level party branches within the Liberal–National Coalition is discussed below.
Nationals leader David Littleproud announced on 28 November 2022 that his party would not support the Voice, with Senator for the Northern Territory Jacinta Price speaking out strongly against it. The decision led to Andrew Gee leaving the party to sit as an independent. The Nationals oppose the Voice on a federal level and in two states (South Australia and Victoria), although the party supports it in New South Wales, and Western Australia.
Federally, the Liberal Party opposed the Voice, with leader Peter Dutton repeatedly asking for more information before they could make a decision, before deciding on 5 April 2023 to reject the Voice. The Liberals offered an alternative proposal and do support the constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians. Only backbenchers have been allowed a conscience vote on the issue, while members of the Coalition Shadow Ministry are obliged to oppose the Voice. Despite the Liberal Party's federal position, the party is supportive of the Voice in New South Wales and Tasmania. The Western Australian branch was initially supportive, but changed their position in August 2023. On 3 September, Dutton committed to hold a second referendum on Indigenous recognition if the Voice referendum failed, while also expressing support for his party's election proposal for a series of legislated local bodies (without a national one).
Former Liberal MP, and Indigenous Australians Minister, Ken Wyatt, quit the Liberal Party on 6 April 2023, in response to the Federal Liberal Party's opposition to the Voice. Later, Julian Leeser (the member for Berowra) resigned from the Shadow Cabinet to support the Voice and campaign for an improved wording, although he did not quit the party and still remains in Parliament as a Liberal backbencher.
Since the resignation of Dominic Perrottet (a supporter of the Voice) as leader of the NSW Liberal Party after he led the party to defeat at the 2023 state election, most of the support for the Voice from Liberal members has come from Tasmania or from backbenchers, despite state branches refusing to bind their party or frontbenches by a stance (despite the federal Coalition binding its shadow ministers to oppose the Voice). Of other state Liberal leaders, New South Wales leader Mark Speakman supports the Voice, while Western Australian leader Libby Mettam initially supported the Voice, but then began opposing it due to the state's controversial Aboriginal heritage laws. The Liberals for Yes campaign was launched in 2023 as an attempt to attract support for the Voice from centre-right, liberal conservative individuals.
Similar to New South Wales, the Victorian Liberal Party has allowed its members a conscience vote on the issue. The Victorian branch has not yet declared its stance on the Voice. However, party leader John Pesutto confirmed his personal stance and other members have voiced their personal opinions (see below).
Campaigning for both sides of the question started in early 2023. Some of the groups and individuals involved are listed below.
According to Mayo, all of these campaign groups were working towards the same goal.
The government launched its official advertising campaign about the referendum in May 2022, to provide information about what the proposal is, what the Voice would do and how it would be set up, and to encourage Australians to prepare themselves for it. The AEC (which is an independent statutory authority) launched its major education phase in August 2023, aimed at helping and educating voters to prepare for the referendum.
An analysis of various contributors to the campaigns published in early August suggested that the No campaign represented by Advance Australia were using fear as their underlying message, and focussing on prominent Yes campaigners such as Thomas Mayo and Teela Reid. The Blak Sovereign Movement argued that a treaty should be negotiated ahead of establishing the Voice. The Uluru Dialogue was using a sense of pride to show how the nation would be a better place with the Voice in place. Yes23 emphasised fairness and integrity. The report analysed the relative levels of success of the different approaches.
The Yes and No campaigns started advertising on social media in early 2023, and although both had spent around A$110,000 on advertising on Facebook between mid-March and mid-June 2023, it was found that each had targeted different audiences. The biggest spenders were Fair Australia and Yes23. From 3 September 2023, with John Farnham's support, "You're the Voice" was used to advocate for the Yes campaign as a soundtrack to a video ad. The video for the Yes campaign, which aired on several platforms, includes the 1983 America's Cup yacht race (won by an Australian yacht); the handback of Uluru to its traditional owners in 1985; and the landmark Mabo land rights case in 1992.
At the end of August, the top five items on Facebook and X included several that were critical of the Voice and served the No campaign. Their analysis showed how negative stories can have the strongest impact on people's attention, and also how far articles on traditional media could reach on social media. At that time, the Yes23 campaign had spent more than any other campaign group; however, they were less geographically focused than spending by No campaigns. It concluded that while there were many more Yes than No ads published, its message was spread over 33 disparate themes, whole No ads predominantly covered only seven, which were all negative. By the end of September, online advertising by both camps was heavily focused on the Tasmania and South Australia, which were regarded as "battleground" states. Fair Australia started using TikTok in May, and was using it far more extensively and proving more successful than the Yes campaign by October. Yes campaigners on other social media such as Facebook, X, and Instagram had large followings. This may reflect the fact that the younger demographic on TikTok were more likely to be Yes voters, and the No campaign wanted to reach them.
There has been considerable activity in news and other traditional media from both sides of the debate, including TV news (used by around 58% of Australians in 2023), news published online (51%), and in print (19%).
Mass media in Australia are highly concentrated, with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp Australia dominating the landscape, owning over two-thirds of leading newspapers along with most online news websites; three News Corp outlets occupy the top three positions in the nation, based on popularity and viewership. An interim report commissioned by the Australians for a Murdoch Royal Commission group as part of its "Murdoch Referendum Accountability Project" was published in September 2023. University of Adelaide academic Victoria Fielding and a team of researchers analysed data on reporting and commentary by News Corp about the Voice between July and August 2023, covering The Australian, Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph, and Sky News Australia. It found that on the whole, news reporting was unbiased and accurate, but the opinion pieces were almost all in favour of the No vote. The majority of News Corp's content was commentary, not reporting, so when the various articles and videos were examined together, around 70% of the coverage favoured No arguments. Andrew Bolt and Peta Credlin were the top contributors in favour of a No vote.
In July 2023, a cartoon ad promoting the No campaign in the lead-up to the referendum was published by Advance Australia in the Australian Financial Review, featuring caricatures of Thomas Mayo a signatory and advocate of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, along with, MP and Yes advocate Kate Chaney, and her father businessman Michael Chaney. This led to bipartisan condemnation of the ad as "racist". The AFR later apologised for the ad.
In July 2023, Big W, an Australian chain of discount department stores, announced it would stop its in-store announcements that expressed support for the Indigenous voice to parliament.
In early October, the AEC asked the Yes campaign to remove a social media post that contained a misleading graphic that could cause No voters to cast an invalid vote.
In early October, the AEC asked the Yes campaign to move their signage away from theirs to avoid confusion, because both were of a similar purple colour.
Some opponents of the Voice, primarily right-wing and far-right politicians and commentators, internet trolls, and members of the sovereign citizen movement, have spread misinformation, disinformation and unfounded conspiracy theories regarding the referendum online. This activity is most prominent on Telegram, Twitter and WeChat. According to independent monitors and fact-checkers, online debate has focused on race, particularly on Twitter. Ben James, editor of the Australian Associated Press' FactCheck team, which monitors content on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, says that the amount of misinformation and disinformation had by early September exceeded that which had been observed on social media ahead of the 2022 Australian election. Leading Indigenous campaigner Thomas Mayo has been subjected to a great deal of racial abuse. While some misinformation has been observed from people on both sides of the discussion, there was generally more on the No side – although it is noted that not all of the claims emanated from the official No campaign. Social media experts have observed "bot-like behaviour" that spread the same content across social media.
A preprint study in September 2023 showed Yes tweets dominating the Twitter platform, including amplification of misinformation and conspiracy theories created by the No side, with the Yes voters trying to fact-check and correct them. Politicians and media were also increasing the themes of "racial division" and "hidden agenda" on Twitter, in particular Sky News Australia. Many of the No accounts appeared to be recently created and suspicious, although there was little evidence of social bots. The preprint concluded "Overall, our findings reveal a media ecosystem fraught with confusion, conspiratorial sensemaking, and strategic media manipulation".
It was reported that much of the misleading information and disinformation has been promoted by internet trolls linked to the Chinese Communist Party, with China being accused of espionage, attempting to undermine Western influence and attempting to silence Western criticism of human rights abuses in China. An analysis by Recorded Future confirmed the findings of Australian Strategic Policy Institute in this regard but found no evidence that Iran or Russia were trying to influence the debate. Chinese social media platforms such as WeChat also prominently spread misinformation and occasionally even racism.
Australian Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers said that social media had not adequately dealt with misinformation and disinformation on their platforms; of 47 reported by the AEC as being of concern, only 16 had been taken down.
RMIT FactLab, which had been checking some of the claims made by the No campaign, including that the Uluru Statement comprised more than one page, was suspended by Meta as its key fact-checking organisation in August 2023 because its certification from the International Fact-Checking Network had expired in December 2022. However, it continues its work and is regularly published by ABC News.
Concerns were aired about the quality of public debate, by both campaigns and private individuals on both sides of the debate, in some cases describing it as divisive and "toxic". Political commentator Laura Tingle described the debate as "bitter", criticising the No campaign in particular.
Marcia Langton was accused of calling No voters "racists", after The Australian published an article headlined "Langton brands No voters 'racist, stupid'"; it was shown afterwards that she was referring to the tactics of No campaigners, not the voters, which she said were "based in racism and stupidity".
There has been racism directed against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, including criticism of unrelated topics such as Welcomes to Country, claims that Indigenous people have special treatment, and promulgation of racist stereotypes. "Progressive No" campaigner Lidia Thorpe, who herself has been subject to racist abuse and death threats, exposed a video of a hooded man making racist remarks, burning an Aboriginal flag, and giving a Nazi salute. Abuse towards campaigners on both sides reportedly affected the mental health of several people.
Despite "Yes" having a large lead in opinion polls initially, public opinion slowly began shifting in favour of "No" in late 2022, with the latter coming out ahead in every poll taken from July 2023 (a month after the Constitutional Amendment bill passed through the Senate) onward.
On 4 October, the AEC reported that 903,570 votes had been cast after three days of early voting.
By polling day, 6 million early votes had been cast at pre-poll centres, and 2 million postal votes were expected.
The Constitutional amendment was rejected in both the state and national vote counts, with the Australian Capital Territory being the only state or territory with a majority "yes" vote.
Despite some predictions of a low turnout, the participation rate for the referendum was 89.92%, just higher than the rate for the 2022 election of 89.82%. Similarly, despite concerns about ticks and crosses, the informal voting rate was 0.98%, comparable to the rate for the republic referendum of 0.86% and lower than the typical rate for federal elections of around 2%.
Regions with a high proportion of Indigenous Australians overwhelmingly voted yes in the referendum. Labor MP for Lingiari, Marion Scrymgour suggested that 74% of the 11,000 people that live in the division's remote areas voted yes. The highest vote in support of yes in an Indigenous community was in Wadeye, at 92.1%. The Tiwi Islands voted 84% in favour, and Maningrida recorded an 88% yes vote. However, many of these remote communities also had a very low turnout, with Palm Island, which recorded a yes vote of around 75%, having a preliminary participation rate of around 1 in 3. Warren Mundine suggested that the low turn-out in remote communities indicated "that, at best, most Aboriginal people of voting age in remote communities didn't vote at all, and the percentage who voted Yes was less than 30 per cent". Election analyst Antony Green argued that drawing conclusions based on a relation between the vote of an electorate and its recorded Indigenous population was an example of the ecological fallacy as the data could not be used to predict the vote of individual voters.
Analysis of the referendum results and of survey data collected before and immediately after the referendum was conducted by the Australian National University to attempt to gauge the intention and reasoning of voters. The report concluded that:
The results also demonstrated some evidence of an urban–rural political divide. The four electorates returning more than 70% of votes in favour of Yes were the namesake electorates centred on the CBDs of Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra, as well as Prime Minister Albanese's inner Sydney electorate of Grayndler. By contrast, the only five electorates to return less than 20% of votes in favour of Yes — Maranoa, Flynn, Capricornia, Hinkler and Dawson — were all rural electorates in southern and central Queensland.
Analysis by DemosAU concluded that fear of constitutional change in general was the primary reason for the referendum's failure, with 29% of the electorate opposed to any change and 23% believing it should only be changed "if it doesn't work". They concluded that the referendum would have failed regardless of the proposal without bi-partisan support.
Once the referendum result became clear on the night of 14 October, Yes23 campaign co-chair Rachel Perkins called for a week of silence "to grieve this outcome and reflect on its meaning and significance". After this period, an unsigned open letter was distributed by the public relations firm that had worked for the Uluru Dialogue (a key yes group based at the Indigenous Law Centre of UNSW Sydney) that decried the result as "unbelievable and appalling" and concluded that constitutional recognition would no longer be possible. It also highlighted the role the Liberal and National parties had in the defeat, stating "there was little the yes campaign could do to countervail" the impact of their opposition. Warren Mundine responded to the letter, saying it was a "disgraceful attack on Australia and Australian people".
The result was perceived by many as a significant setback to reconciliation in Australia. Aboriginal academic and pro-Voice campaigner Marcia Langton declared that Australian voters' rejection of the Voice made it "very clear that Reconciliation is dead".
After the referendum, in which over 64% of South Australians voted against the Voice, state Liberal leader David Speirs cast some doubt on the state based voice. South Australian One Nation MP Sarah Game announced plans to introduce a bill to repeal the First Nations Voice Act 2023.
On 19 October 2023, the Queensland opposition Liberal National Party of Queensland (LNP) leader David Crisafulli announced that they would be dropping their support for a state based treaty and truth-telling. The LNP had previously supported a treaty in early 2023. The Path to Treaty Act 2023 was repealed and the state's Truth-Telling and Healing Inquiry was abolished following the LNP gaining government in 2024.
The Victorian Liberal Party were divided in the aftermath of the referendum over whether to continue supporting the state's treaty process. Alongside their fellow Coalition partners, the National Party of Victoria, in January 2024 both parties withdrew their support for treaty, leaving Victoria without bi‑partisan backing for the proposal.
Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the result was a rejection of identity politics and a chance to reject or reduce Aboriginal "separatism" with the wider Australian community, such as by no longer flying Aboriginal flags equally with the national flag or by not giving an acknowledgment of country prior to speaking at an official event.
Speaking one year after the referendum, Megan Davis and Yes23 campaign director Dean Parkin argued that the referendum debate had been unduly captured by politicians, with Indigenous voices shut out. Davis also stated that the Albanese government and the Commonwealth has subsequently endorsed leaving Indigenous policy to the states and territories who "aren't committed". Key figures in the No voice campaign Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Nyunggai Warren Mundine stated that Australians want the best for "the vulnerable and needy in our country (but) the voice failed to realise this" and "they didn’t want racial separation and race-based rights in the constitution and that they want all Australians to be treated equally".