TRANSCRIPT
For Palawa man, Rodney Dillon, the referendum for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament is the culmination of years of advocacy.
“I’ve been in Aboriginal politics and doing things in Aboriginal areas for over 50 years, probably 52-54 years. And I would say, this is the most important part of my history that I'm going to walk through in my lifetime. I will never see another referendum. I will never see these things change if we don't get this up.”
He's on the Referendum Working Group, and has been campaigning across Tasmania for months, for the Yes campaign.
He says the Voice is a chance to give First Nations people oversight on how funding is actually spent on matters involving them.
“The importance of giving advice to people to having people that are affected by the funding, to give advice to the people it's allocating the funding. I think that says, you know, that's of utmost importance.”
If the referendum is successful, there isn’t one single issue he wants the Voice to tackle first but rather several issues he sees as linked: housing, health, education and employment.
“They all travel together. If you haven't got a good house, you don't usually go to school. Your health’s not that good if you haven't got a house. So, all these things we know traveling, and you’re hardly likely to have employment if you haven't got a house as well, so we know those four things live together and they’re the important steps that we need to take, they're the first four steps that this country needs to take together.”
But there’s strong opposition to the Voice here too.
Palawa lawyer and activist Michael Mansell thinks it doesn't go far enough.
“It's one of the weakest proposals that could have been put about empowerment of Aboriginal people. If we're talking about Aboriginal people having a real say about our, our circumstances, and what we're entitled to, we need to be inside the chamber not outside giving advice and I would have preferred that six designated seats be set aside in the Senate for Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders to be elected by Indigenous people.”
He believes a treaty would be more beneficial for Aboriginal people.
“My aim is for Aboriginal people to get justice. Having an advisory body is hardly a form of justice. Having a treaty that returns land, that gives a guaranteed source of revenue, establishes a national Indigenous body to distribute the resources and to give discreet Aboriginal communities control over health, housing, education, policing, land use and planning and a range of other things is justice.”
And if the referendum gets up, he won’t be involved in the Voice body.
“I'm not going to advise any white people to make decisions about us, we should be making the decisions.”
In the state’s north, Federal Liberal MP Bridget Archer is going against her party and campaigning for Yes.
She says she’s disappointed in the view her party has taken.
“I think it's been important for me to come out and to give comfort, if you like and confidence to other liberals who I know are out there and do want to support the Yes campaign and may have been confused about why the party has taken a No position while the Coalition has taken a No position when actually there's been a long history of bipartisanship on this issue.”
The last two polls from Resolve, and one from Roy Morgan, have support for the Yes vote in Tasmania at 56 per cent.
But polling analyst Dr Kevin Bonham says those numbers might not be accurate.
“The figures for Tasmania have been quite strong in a lot of this polling, but because the sample sizes are so small and because the Tasmanian samples may not be representative. It's hard to know how much trust to place in those.”
Stay informed on the 2023 Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum from across the SBS Network, including First Nations perspectives through NITV. Visit the to access articles, videos and podcasts in over 60 languages, or stream the latest news and analysis, docos and entertainment for free, at the . Kerrin Thomas, SBS News.
