Australia was not big enough to vote for the voice, says Stan Grant
Journalist and academic Stan Grant has spoken of his feelings of disappointment and rejection at the defeat of the Indigenous voice referendum, critical that public figures who talk about racism in Australia are characterised as “troublemakers” in media discourse.
The Wiradjuri man lamented the referendum loss as a missed opportunity to better help Indigenous people, saying current political processes are “not enough” to address disadvantage. In a speech to the Australian National University on Monday, Grant was critical of the no campaign’s attacks on the voice, but also questioned the yes campaign’s strategy.
“The voice was never a modest ask, it was monumental. Perhaps this was the opportunity lost by the yes campaign, to not let the voice truly speak,” Grant said on Monday night.
“Instead it was shushed…shrunk small enough to fit into politics. In the consultants’ suites and the lawyers’ dens, it was determined that if the voice was made so inoffensive people may say yes. Instead it was so inoffensive people found it so easy to say no.”
Grant, director of Monash University’s Constructive Institute Asia Pacific, delivered the keynote speech at ANU’s Crawford Leadership Forum. In a wide-ranging and emotive address, titled The witness of poetry: how history is too heavy for democracy, Grant spoke of his reaction after the 14 October vote failed.
“Our nation is set in stone: one word, no. Whatever hope there may be for a different Australia, I likely won’t live to see it,” he said.
“This morning I am hearing that word: no. That word without love. That word of rejection. That word from which no other word can come. This morning in the darkness I am hearing the cold-hearted no of a country so comfortable it need not care.”
Grant in May stood down as host of the ABC’s Q+A after receiving “grotesque racist abuse” which escalated after he spoke about the impact of colonialism ahead of King Charles’ coronation.
In August Grant told Guardian Australia he was quitting the ABC to work with Monash University, saying: “I’ve been in the crosshairs of the worst of our cultural pile-ons. And I think we can all learn, including me, we can all learn how to do this better.”
In his ANU speech, Grant said he was “grateful” to have declined invitations to speak on news panels on referendum night, and again lamented how such issues were discussed in the media.
“We who dare to speak of justice or racism, we are cast as the provocateurs. We are the troublemakers. We are the truth that dare not speak its name,” he said.
“Better we speak of fairness or equality or unity. Emaciated words starved of truth.”
Grant’s speech notes do not specifically criticise any politicians or campaigners, but at several points he appears to reference quotes from shadow Indigenous Australians minister and no campaign leader Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.
“The victorious politician who says this no vote puts an end to the politics of grievance and in a pithy, media tested, inane sentence the hurt of my parents, my grandparents, the early deaths, the youth suicides, the lives lost to imprisonment, the snotty noses, itchy skin, and dazed look of another generation of inherited trauma – the solemn truth of what a nation has done to the First People – is waved away as mere contrivance. A collective gripe,” Grant said.
“But the politician is so devastatingly convincing. The politician has no tolerance for history, pain is negated by progress.”
On referendum night, Nampijinpa Price told a press conference: “It’s time for a new era in Indigenous policy and the Indigenous narrative. We have to step away from grievance.”
Grant’s speech goes on to say: “I drink from a bubbler and I give thanks for running water. That’s the measure of history, we have running water now. Thank you colonisation.”
At the National Press Club, Nampijinpa Price said she didn’t believe there were any negative ongoing effects of colonisation on Indigenous people, adding: “Now we’ve got running water, we’ve got readily available food.”
Grant said the voice would have been “a release… a moment to lay our burdens down”, criticising the no campaign’s rhetoric.
“The voice to me, was never about resentment. It was never about identity… But Australia would not shoulder that load. Instead we got a lecture about unity. Those who own history, claimed for themselves history’s final word: no,” he said.
But the academic and broadcaster also said the yes campaign was an “opportunity lost” to talk up the voice’s benefits.
“A nation is not written in a constitution it is written in the heart. And our constitution was not big enough for our call from the heart,” he said.
“The weary leaders will now return to the flinty ground of Indigenous suffering in Australia. They will chip away with what tools they have. God bless them. This is the place of politics. It is bureaucracy and resources and meetings and inquiries. And we know it is not enough.”