I hope the Australian public is better than to fall for this. Though I fear we collectively are no better than the USA… somehow Abbot and Morrison were both elected after all.
I wonder whether the October 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, and the connection between Aboriginal and Palestinian causes, did quantifiable damage to the referendum results. Polls have shown that, outside of the inner-city left, Australians side more with Israel than Palestine, perhaps because both Australia and Israel are perceived as Western/vaguely American in a similar way. If so, the left’s rhetoric on Palestine may have doomed it, in the sense that “decolonisation” is associated with the black paragliders of Hamas and massacres of ravers at a doof.
I think most of the voters educated enough to have made that connection would have voted Yes anyway. Regardless, I don’t think the left was anywhere near as organised and loud about the situation in the Middle East as it has been this year. The referendum went down due to homegrown issues.
I wonder whether the October 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, and the connection between Aboriginal and Palestinian causes, did quantifiable damage to the referendum results.
I don’t think the crazy in Israel and Palestine had any bearing at all. In 2023, it was just more of the same back-and-forth the region has been under since the 1940s. Things escalated this year, but that’s a different story.
The polls were pretty clearly pointing to a “No” vote well before October 2023. No surprises happened on the day.
