I’m in Victoria and there’s a fairly sizeable First Nations led “progressive No” case that’s been made here. Much of it quite well founded and rational, often with direct experiences of the promise of land rights and its eventual dilution into Howard’s idea of native title or the ongoing issues with representation in Victorian First Nations politics (something which now interestingly has been given specific voice in Gary Murray’s election to the First Peoples' Assembly of Victoria).

This from Krakouer seems to track with a lot of what I’ve been hearing here as well. That this is far from ideal but that it’s a necessary stepping stone, either on its own merits or just by virtue of what the vote is going to mean beyond the Voice itself.

All that said, there’s going to be some people rightly furious if this is put up to a vote and fails given how pissweak the formal Yes campaign has been so far. A popular endorsement of the status quo will see decades of work on Treaty pushed back a generation or more, and I expect will either drastically curtail or end any serious relinquishment of assumed power and supremacy of the Crown in the state treaty processes.