It’s not much more nuanced than that. Have you heard of Australia’s history wars? Many of the leaders and major ministers of Australia’s conservative party have been, and still are, subscribers to a completely alternate and incorrect version of Australia’s history which has been pushed for decades by right wing media and political journals like Quadrant. The current party leader, Peter Dutton, literally walked out during the federal government apology for the damage it caused to the Stolen Generations.

Decades of this shit has really slowed progress on Indigenous affairs and reconciliation, and it’s a big part of the reason why so many Australians have a warped idea of their own country’s history (if they even know anything) and why our attitudes towards our Indigenous peoples seem so laughably archaic to the rest of the world.

That’s not far from how it is here - but I’d say it’s more dishonest politicians tokenistically acknowledging Country (such a performative exercise) and capitalising common nouns in that way. Nobody’s really saying “we created this place”, more that we have this culture of falling over ourselves to recognise Traditional Owners while not actually doing much to address Indigenous disadvantage. Referenda are seen as a big deal and usually fail, especially where they’re not led by those who care about the movement, AND are completely transparent about what the result will mean. This referendum was led by the governing party of Australia as an election commitment, and what would result was neither well thought out nor explained adequately. Australia voted not to support the vague word of hand-wringing do-gooders we don’t trust.

The context is important here - Australia had a continuous indigenous population for over 60,000 years before white settlement. White Australia never had an agreement with indigenous peoples at large, and through relentless expansion of colonies, spreading diseases like smallpox, introducing alcohol and drugs, forcibly abducting and schooling children, heavy incarceration and a slew of other typical British colonial shit ended up leaving them disenfranchised, alienated, and excluded. Indigenous Australians prior to colonisation had a deep affinity with the land and tended it like custodians, but because they didn’t build towns or farm like Europeans, they were just swept aside without ever really being acknowledged or addressed.

The Voice was asked for as a product of the Uluru Statement of the Heart - not long, worth a read- https://ulurustatement.org/the-statement/view-the-statement/

It was really first and foremost about having an acknowledgement that maybe, just maybe, the settlers cocked things up and that it’d better to fix things together. It’s not asking for anything “more” or extra, it’s about correctly telling history and reframing our national dialogue to be coming from a place of partnership, instead of colonialism, so we could fix some of the very real issues modern Australians face as a result of hundreds of years of callous racism. It was a chance for white Australia and government to really listen and maybe find better ways of doing things.

But now instead we get to try to explain to our kids why 60% of the country don’t think representation or inclusion matters while indigenous Australians will continue to struggle without a government that can listen to them.

Why would anyone have a problem with that?

I probably didn’t articulate it well but “planless virtue signalling” is exactly what I meant - I suppose when it’s clearly planless (if well-intentioned) it’s easy for reactionaries to reframe what it’s really about, since the populace is ignorant but generally tired of being told how to think and why things ‘must’ change.