> Voice was a consititutional amendment to give Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders a body by which to speak [1]. How and in what way was vague (unfortunatel

> Voice was a consititutional amendment to give Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders a body by which to speak [1]. How and in what way was vague (unfortunately) but it would have been a large step forward The government could have legislated a statutory Voice, let it operate for a few years, and then have a vote on entrenching it in the constitution. If they’d done that, (1) there could have been a Voice right now; (2) greater odds an eventual referendum would have passed (voting on making an existing institution more permanent vs voting to create a whole new thing), and would have eliminated the “we don’t have enough information” argument. Whereas, in the situation we are now in, there is no Voice, and with a clear majority of the nation voting “No”, even a purely statutory one is now a political non-starter. If you want the Voice, this referendum should never have been held, since not holding it would have greatly increased the odds of a Voice existing. The referendum had the odds against it all along, given the low success rate of constitutional amendments in Australia; made even worse by the government’s decision to push ahead when bipartisanship was lost, instead of taking that as an opportunity to pause and re-evaluate their strategy (it could have been a good time to pivot to a purely statutory Voice and save constitutional entrenchment for later)