CANBERRA, Australia, 15 Oct (AP) \u2014 Australia will look for new ways to lift Indigenous living standards after voters soundly rejected a proposal to create a new advocacy committee, the deputy prime minister said on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Every state and mainland territory apart from Australian Capital Territory voted against a proposal to enshrine in the constitution an Indigenous Voice to Parliament to advocate on behalf of the nation\u2019s most disadvantaged ethnic minority.<\/p>\n
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said his government remained committed to improving Indigenous welfare to close the eight-year gap in average life expectancies between Indigenous Australians and the wider community.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of exactly what the precise steps forward are from here is a matter that we need to take some time to work through and I think people can understand that,\u201d Marles told Australian Broadcasting Corp.<\/p>\n
\u201cComing out of this referendum there is a greater call for action on closing the gap,\u201d Marles added.<\/p>\n
Indigenous Voice campaigners were flying Aboriginal flags at half-staff across Australia on Sunday as a mark of their disappointment.<\/p>\n
Proponents had hoped that the Voice\u2019s advice would lead to better government service delivery and improved outcomes for Indigenous people.<\/p>\n
Accounting for only 3.8% of the population, Indigenous Australians have a suicide rate twice that of the national average, are more likely to be incarcerated than other Australians and suffer from diseases in the remote Outback that have been eradicated from other wealthy countries.<\/p>\n
Latest counting on Sunday found more than 60% of voters had opposed the Voice. There was majority support for the Voice in Outback polling booths in the Northern Territory. That part of the country has Australia\u2019s highest proportion of Aboriginal residents and the result suggests the Voice was popular among Indigenous Australians.<\/p>\n
Many Voice supporters accused opposition lawmakers of spreading misinformation and disinformation about the Voice.<\/p>\n
Marcia Langton, an Indigenous academic who helped draft the Voice proposal, said opposition leader Peter Dutton through his \u201cno\u201d campaign had \u201ccemented racism into the body politic.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe nation has been poisoned. There is no fix for this terrible outcome,\u201d Langton wrote in The Saturday Paper.<\/p>\n
Dutton accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of dividing Australians by holding the referendum.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the referendum that Australia did not need to have. The proposal and the process should have been designed to unite Australians, not to divide us,\u201d Dutton said.<\/p>\n
Albanese blamed Dutton\u2019s campaigning against the measure for the failure. No referendum has ever succeeded without support of the major parties.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you do the hard things, when you aim high, sometimes you fall short,\u201d Albanese said after conceding defeat.<\/p>\n
Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney, who is Aboriginal, told Indigenous people that the recent months of referendum campaign had been \u201ctough.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut be proud of who you are. Be proud of your identity,\u201d a tearful Burney said after conceding the referendum had been rejected.<\/p>\n
\u201cBe proud of the 65,000 years of history and culture that you are a part of. And your rightful place in this country. We will carry on and we\u2019ll move forward and we will thrive,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
It is the second time that Australians have rejected a referendum that would have included recognition of Indigenous people in the constitution.<\/p>\n
When a referendum was last held in 1999, Australians rejected adding a preamble to the constitution \u2014 an introduction that carried only symbolic and no legal significance \u2014 acknowledging that Indigenous Australians had inhabited the country \u201csince time immemorial\u201d and were \u201chonored for their ancient and continuing cultures.\u201d<\/p>\n
Australians have now rejected 37 referendums since the constitution took effect 122 years ago. Only eight have succeeded and none since 1977.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CANBERRA, Australia, 15 Oct (AP) \u2014 Australia will look for new ways to lift Indigenous living standards after voters soundly rejected a proposal to create a new advocacy committee, the deputy prime minister said on Sunday. Every state and mainland territory apart from Australian Capital Territory voted against a proposal to enshrine in the constitution […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-226330","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}