Anti-Indigenous attitudes and divided support: the Indigenous voice and public opinion in Australia
By: Raymond Foxworth, Carew Boulding, Sarah Maddison, Edana Beauvais
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How do voters understand Indigenous politics? We use original survey data to explore attitudes around Indigenous politics and policy reforms in the context of a high-profile national constitutional amendment referendum to create an Indigenous advisory body to the Australian Parliament, known as the Voice. The proposed constitutional reform failed, with 60 percent of voters rejecting the change. We find that Indigenous voters supported the Voice significantly more than non-Indigenous voters. For non-Indigenous Australians, anti-Indigenous hostility and the perception that Indigenous support was divided were stronger predictors of opposition to the Voice referendum than standard predictors of political attitudes, including political and demographic variables and ideology. This paper adds to the growing literature on the policy demands of Indigenous peoples and offers important new evidence about how non-Indigenous people form attitudes on and evaluate Indigenous policy issues.