MELBOURNE, Australia — MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — King Charles III ends the first visit to Australia by a reigning British monarch in 13 years Tuesday with anti-monarchists hoping his journey is a step toward an Australian citizen becoming head of state.
Controversy interrupted the visit on Monday when Indigenous independent senator Lidia Thorpe yelled at Charles during a reception that he was not her king and Australia was not his land.
Esther Anatolitis, co-chair of the Australian Republic Movement, that campaigns for an Australian citizen to replace the British monarch as Australia’s head of state, said while thousands turned out to see the king and Queen Camilla at their public engagements, the numbers were larger when his mother Queen Elizabeth II first visited Australia 70 years ago.
An estimated 75% of Australia’s population saw the queen in person during the first visit by a reigning British monarch in 1954.
“It’s understandable that Australians would be welcoming the king and queen, we also welcome them,” Anatolitis said. “But it doesn’t make any sense to continue to have a head of state appointed by birth right from another country.”
Anatolitis acknowledged that getting a majority of Australians in a majority of states to vote to change the constitution would be difficult. Australians haven’t changed their constitution since 1977.
“It’s tricky, isn’t it? We’ve got that hurdle, of course,” Anatolitis said.
Constitutional lawyer Anne Twomey said an Australian republic was not something that Charles, 75, need worry about in his lifetime.
She said the failure of a referendum last year to create an “utterly innocuous” Indigenous representative body to advise government demonstrated the difficulty in changing Australia’s constitution.
“It’s just that on the whole people aren’t prepared to change the constitution,” Twomey said.
“So a republic, which would be a much more complex constitutional question than the one last year, would be far more vulnerable to a scare campaign and to opposition,” she said.
“So unless you had absolutely unanimous support across the board and a strong reason for doing it, it would fail,” she added.
Philip Benwell, national chair of the Australian Monarchist League, which wants to maintain Australia’s constitutional link to Britain, said he was standing near Thorpe at the Canberra reception when she started yelling at the king and demanding a treaty with Indigenous Australians.
“I think she alienated a lot of sympathy. If anything, she’s helped to strengthen our support,” Benwell said.
Thorpe has been criticized, including by some Indigenous leaders, for shouting at the king and failing to show respect.
Thorpe was unrepentant. She rejected criticism that her aggressive approach toward the monarch was violent.
“I think what was unacceptable is the violence in that room, of the King of England praising himself, dripping in stolen wealth, that’s what’s violent,” Thorpe told Australian Broadcasting Corp. “The violence is from the colonizer being in that room asserting his authority, being paid for by every taxpayer in this country.”
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wants Australia to become a republic but has ruled out a referendum during his first three-year term. A vote remains a possibility if his center-left Labor Party wins elections due by May next year.
Australians decided in a referendum in 1999 to retain Queen Elizabeth II as head of state. That result is widely regarded to have been the consequence of disagreement about how a president would be chosen rather than majority support for a monarch.
Sydney University royal historian Cindy McCreery suspects Australia is not yet ready to make the change.
“There’s interest in becoming a republic, but I think what we may forget is that logistically speaking we’re not going to have a referendum on that issue any time soon,” McCreery said.
“I, as a historian, think that it’s probably not realistic to expect a successful referendum on a republic until we’ve done more work on acknowledging our … complicated history,” she said.
“Becoming a republic doesn’t mean that we’ve somehow thrown off British colonialism. It hopefully has meant that we’re engaging with our own history in an honest and thoughtful way,” she added.
Charles and Camilla’s Tuesday began watching Indigenous dancers perform at a Sydney Indigenous community center. The couple used tongs to cook sausages at a community barbecue lunch at the central suburb of Parramatta and later shook the hands of well-wishers for the last time of their visit outside the Sydney Opera House. Their final engagement was an inspection of navy ships on Sydney Harbor in an event known as a fleet review.
Charles’s trip to Australia was scaled down because he is undergoing cancer treatment. He arrives in Samoa on Wednesday.
QUITO, Ecuador — Ecuador’s fledgling president got a resounding victory Sunday in a referendum that he touted as a way to crack down on criminal gangs behind a spiraling wave of violence.
An official quick count showed that Ecuadorians overwhelmingly voted “yes” to all nine questions focused on tightening security measures, rejecting only two proposals on more controversial economic measures.
The quick count was announced by the Electoral National Council, Diana Atamaint.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
Ecuadorians voted Sunday in a referendum touted by the country’s fledgling president as a way to crack down on criminal gangs behind a spiraling wave of violence.
While official results were slow to be counted, an exit poll said Ecuadorians overwhelmingly voted “yes” to all nine questions focused on tightening security measures. They rejected only two proposals focusing on more controversial economic measures, the poll indicated.
Among the measures apparently headed for approval are President Daniel Noboa’s call to deploy the army in the fight against the gangs, to loosen obstacles for extraditing accused criminals and to lengthen prison sentences for convicted drug traffickers.
If electoral authorities confirm the exit poll projections, it would be a resounding victory and a sign of support for Noboa.
Ecuador was traditionally one of South America’s most peaceful countries, but it has been rocked in recent years by a wave of violence, much of it spilling over from neighboring Colombia, the world’s largest producer of cocaine. Last year, the country’s homicide rate shot up to 40 deaths per 100,000 people, one of the highest in the region.
Noboa has rallied popular support by confronting the gangs head on. That task became more urgent in January when masked gunmen, some on orders from imprisoned drug traffickers, terrorized residents and took control of a television station while it was live on the air in an unprecedented show of force.
Following the rampage, the 36-year-old president decreed an “internal armed conflict,” enabling him to use emergency powers to deploy the army in pursuit of about 20 gangs now classified as “terrorists.”
The referendum, in which 13 million Ecuadorians were called to vote, seeks to extend those powers and put them on firmer legal ground.
Noboa, ahead of the final tally, celebrated the results. “We’ve defended the country,” he said in a message posted on social media. “Now we will have more tools to fight against the delinquent and restore peace to Ecuador’s families.”
Noboa’s law and order rhetoric recalls the policies of El Salvador’s wildly popular president, Nayib Bukele, a fellow millennial, and could give him a boost politically as he prepares to run for reelection next year.
Noboa, the scion of a wealthy banana exporting family, is serving the final 18 months of a presidential term left vacant when fellow conservative Guillermo Lasso resigned amid a congressional investigation into allegations of corruption. Noboa was elected following a shortened but bloody campaign that saw one of his top rivals brazenly assassinated while campaigning.
SANTA FE, N.M. — Members of New Mexico’s Legislature are the only state lawmakers in the country who aren’t paid a salary for their service, but voters might change that as a referendum on giving legislators a steady paycheck gains traction.
A Democratic-sponsored initiative to provide New Mexico legislators with regular salaries earned its first committee endorsement Friday, over the objections of Republicans in the legislative minority.
The proposed constitutional amendment would scrap a ban on legislative salaries and create an independent commission to set and adjust future pay for the state’s 112 legislators. Similar proposals have stalled in recent years.
Salary figures aren’t specified and would be determined later by a nine-member “citizens commission on legislative salaries.” Salaries would take effect as soon as July 2026.
Currently, New Mexico legislators do receive mileage reimbursements for travel and a daily stipend toward expenses like room and board during legislative sessions. Those who serve at least 10 years qualify for partial retirement benefits at a subsidized rate through a public employee pension fund.
Advocates for legislative salaries in New Mexico say they are looking for ways instill greater professionalism and make elected office more accessible to people of limited economic means.
“I know there’s a lot of pride in being a ‘citizen legislature,’” said Democratic state Rep. Angelica Rubio of Las Cruces, co-sponsor the initiative. “I believe that we’re leaving a lot of people out of being able to represent their communities.
“It’s a privilege to serve in the Legislature — but it’s that much more of a ‘privilege’ when it comes to finances and when a person can’t afford to do this,” she said.
Republican state Rep. Martin Zamora of Clovis voted against the initiative in committee, expressing unease with a referendum on unspecified salaries.
“We’re going to ask the public to vote on this resolution but they’re not really going to be given the facts,” said Zamora, a farmer. “What if we did give ourselves an outrageous amount of pay for doing this job, and the citizens would say, ‘Hey, that’s not what I voted on.’”
Already this year, state lawmakers in Alaska received a 67% salary increase and New Jersey’s governor signed off on legislative salary increases amid concerns about rising costs and efforts to attract younger people or those with families to run and serve as legislators.
In New Mexico, a three-fifths vote of approval in both the House and Senate would send the proposed constitutional amendment to a statewide vote in November.
A separate referendum proposal would lengthen the Legislature’s short 30-day legislative session in even years to 60 days.
ATLANTA — Opponents of an Atlanta police and fire training center exulted as they marched into City Hall in September with 16 boxes of petitions to force a referendum on the issue. “116,000 signatures — can you hear us now?” they asked, confident they had enough.
But an analysis by four news organizations finds the outcome — if city officials ever count the petitions — could be decided by a narrow margin.
Organizers of the monthslong petition drive to “Stop Cop City” still say they have 116,000 signatures, but a hand count by The Associated Press, Georgia Public Broadcasting, WABE and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution tallied only about 108,500.
The news organizations found nearly half of a statistical sample of 1,000 entries couldn’t be matched to an eligible registered city of Atlanta voter. Some signers live outside the city, some seemingly fabricated addresses, and others provided far too little information — like the “Lord Jesus” who signed with an address of “homeless.”
Even with those problems, the analysis finds it’s still statistically possible that organizers met their target of 58,231 signatures. But additional legal and procedural disputes could doom the effort by sharply shrinking the total of eligible signers.
The fight over the $90 million training center has become a national dispute, with opponents deriding a facility they say will worsen police militarization and harm the environment.
Kate Falanga, a bar manager who signed the petition, called the proposed project “awful” and said the land — part of a huge urban forest — should be used for something that’s “better for everyone.”
“There’s a lot better ways to spend that than on militarizing a police force which is already an incredible presence and seems kind of unnecessary,” Falanga said.
Supporters including Democratic Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens say the city must replace outdated facilities and better train officers to avoid improper use of force.
“I believe this center will be the classroom space that redefines how we approach policing and maintains the readiness of our first responders to address the challenges they face,” Dickens wrote in September to U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, after the Georgia Democrat questioned referendum procedures.
Both Dickens and city officials who would validate signatures declined repeated interview requests.
The ballot referendum seeks to cancel the city’s lease with the private Atlanta Police Foundation to build and run the 85-acre (34-hectare) complex.
“The people who signed those papers, they’re real, they exist,” said Britney Whaley, who helped organize the petition campaign. “They want to see it on the ballot. They’re not going away. We have enough signatures to transform politics in Atlanta.”
But not everyone who signed counts as eligible in the citizen-led petition process, and the referendum push is in legal limbo. The reporting partners set out to analyze petition entries because officials haven’t counted the 25,000-plus pages submitted to the Atlanta city clerk.
Petitioners were required to collect 58,231 signers. That’s equal to 15% of Atlanta’s active registered voters in 2021. Each eligible signer must also be a registered city voter now.
With about 108,500 entries, nearly 53.7% must be valid for organizers to be successful.
Overall, the analysis finds as many as 52.7% of entries could be eligible. That’s below the 53.7% threshold, but because the analysis is a sample, it has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1% at a 95% confidence level. That means between 49.6% and 55.8% of entries should be valid. Thus, a complete count could produce enough valid entries to cross the threshold.
The reporting partners analyzed a sample of 1,000 entries, taking a random sample of pages proportionally from each of 16 boxes, and then choosing a random entry on each page. Comparing names and addresses to voter rolls, the partners matched 47.5% of names to eligible Atlanta voters.
Another 5.2% of entries are uncertain — for example common names matching multiple voters, but without a matching address. Those might be found eligible using birth dates redacted from public petition copies, or through signature comparisons. They might also be found eligible if signers provide additional information, a process known as curing.
Conversely, birth dates and signatures might lead to some apparently eligible entries being disallowed. Signature comparison, in particular, has been a much-disputed part of the proposed verification process.
The news organizations didn’t attempt to verify signatures, which means they couldn’t detect fraudulent signatures made using a voter’s information. At least a handful of pages have signatures in what could be the same handwriting. The sample found no duplicate signatures, but was statistically unlikely to detect people who signed more than once. Dickens said that’s why the city must examine petitions if a referendum goes forward.
“We have a duty to review these petitions and ensure that it is Atlantans who are speaking for Atlanta,” the mayor wrote to Warnock.
Whaley said petition collectors wanted anyone possibly eligible to sign.
“Now, you may be a little fuzzy on some details, right?” she said. “But what I won’t do is let you walk away without signing my paper if there is any chance that you were registered in the city of Atlanta in 2021.”
The demographics of eligible petition signers were roughly 50% Black, a third white and a majority age 42 or younger, closely matching the city’s electorate.
But people living near the training center site, which is just beyond the city’s eastern border, were more likely to sign the petition. The five city ZIP codes nearest the site contain less than a quarter of Atlanta’s registered voters, but produced 37.7% of eligible sampled entries.
By contrast, only 4% of eligible sampled entries came from ZIP codes in the city’s northern Buckhead region, where the electorate is whiter and more politically conservative.
Many of the people found ineligible in the analysis are not currently living within Atlanta. The media partners found 16.8% of petition signers registered elsewhere in Georgia, sometimes steps outside the city limits. Others were not Atlanta voters in either 2021 or 2023 or appeared to not be registered to vote at all.
Another 30% of entries that appear eligible could be disqualified for legal reasons or by city counting methods.
Former City Clerk Foris Webb III, who would lead any signature verification, declines to say how the city will treat entries that don’t have an address matching voter registration rolls. That alone could disqualify 12% of potentially eligible entries.
State law says the collectors witnessing signatures must be registered Atlanta voters and that organizers had until Aug. 21 to submit petitions. A federal judge extended that deadline into September and ruled that people who live outside the city could witness signatures. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals paused enforcement of that order. That’s why the city refused to count the petitions when organizers turned in boxes on Sept. 11.
Even if petitions are ultimately counted, only entries before Aug. 21 and collected by Atlanta residents might be ruled valid. The two issues could disqualify 20% of potentially eligible sampled entries — likely defeating the effort.
Appellate judges will hear arguments on the deadline and petition witness issues Thursday. The city also argues the underlying petition is void because it violates state law and would illegally cancel a contract.
Whaley said city officials act as if they are “scared,” calling their actions to block the referendum “deeply problematic and undemocratic.”
“I think now it is at a point where they are doing anything in their power to try to save this project,” she said.
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R.J. Rico of The Associated Press; Amanda Andrews of Georgia Public Broadcasting; Chamian Cruz, Emily Wu Pearson and Jasmine Robinson of WABE; and Riley Bunch, Pete Corson, Rahul Deshpande, Stephanie Lamm, Charles Minshew and Justin Price of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution contributed.
GEORGETOWN, Guyana — The government of Guyana, under pressure from neighboring Brazil and a Caribbean trading bloc, agreed Sunday to join bilateral talks with Venezuela over an escalating territorial dispute.
The century-old dispute between the two South American nations recently reignited with the discovery of masses of oil in Guyana. The government of Nicolas Maduro, through a referendum last week, has claimed sovereignty over the Essequibo territory, which accounts for two-thirds of Guyana and lies near big offshore oil deposits.
Even as troops mass on both sides of the shared Venezuela-Guyana border, Guyana President Irfaan Ali said Sunday that his country will meet on the Eastern Caribbean island nation of St. Vincent on Thursday to discuss where border lines between the two nations are drawn.
But any agreement is likely to be hard won with flaring tensions on both sides.
“I have made it very clear that on the issue of the border controversy, Guyana’s position is non-negotiable,” Ali said in a national broadcast.
The boundary was drawn by an international commission back in 1899, which Guyana argues is legal and binding, while Venezuela claims is a land theft conspiracy because arbitrators from Britain, Russia and the United States decided the boundary. Among other things, Venezuelan officials contend Americans and Europeans colluded to cheat their country out of the land.
Maduro’s government said Saturday it agreed to talks to preserve its “aspiration to maintain Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace, without interference from external actors.”
Venezuela had been pushing for direct bilateral talks using a clause in the old agreement, while Guyana claims the case should be decided by the United Nations’ International Court of Justice.
“In relation to our border, there is absolutely no compromise. The matter is before the ICJ and there is where it will be settled,” Ali said. “We expect that good sense will prevail and the commitment to peace, stability, the threat of disruption will cease.”
Ralph Gonsalves, prime minister of St. Vincent, will chair the meeting, while Brazil, which shares borders with both Venezuela and Guyana, and which had also placed troops on alert, will act as an observer.
Guyana leader Ali said he had also agreed to a conversation with Maduro following an emergency meeting of Caribbean leaders late Friday, where they asked for the conversation and emphasized their continued support for Guyana.
Steeped in patriotism, the Venezuelan government is seizing on the fight to boost support ahead of a presidential election among a population fed up with decades of crisis that has pushed many into poverty.
Venezuela’s government claims about 10.5 million people — just over half of eligible voters — cast ballots. It says voters approved rejecting “by all means” the 1899 boundary, turning Essequibo into a state, giving area residents Venezuelan citizenship and rejecting the U.N. court’s jurisdiction over the dispute. But Associated Press journalists and witnesses at voting centers said the long lines typical of Venezuelan elections never formed.
In 2015, major oil deposits were first discovered off Essequibo’s shore by an ExxonMobil-led consortium, piquing the interest of Venezuela, whose commitment to pursuing the territorial claim has fluctuated over the years. Oil operations generate some $1 billion a year for Guyana, an impoverished country of nearly 800,000 people that saw its economy expand by nearly 60% in the first half of this year.
While Guyana’s oil industry continues to boom, Venezuela’s has plummeted. Venezuela has the world’s largest proven crude reserves, but its oil industry has been crippled by years of mismanagement and economic sanctions imposed on the state-owned oil company following Maduro’s re-election in 2018, which was widely considered fraudulent.
SURAMA, Guyana — Congregants of an Anglican church in a sparsely populated rainforest village in Guyana gathered recently to bid on a bounty of bananas, squash and other produce during a community event. They sang hymns and rang a bell after each successful bid.
They offered grateful devotions typical of a harvest festival but also asked for peace for their community amid what they see as an existential threat. Their village, Surama, is part of Guyana’s Essequibo region — a territory larger than Greece and rich in oil and minerals that Venezuela claims as its own and whose future it intends to decide Sunday with a referendum.
The practical and legal implications of the vote, which among other things calls for turning Essequibo into a Venezuelan state, remain unclear, but the referendum has left area residents on edge.
“We are praying, we are hoping and we are having faith that nothing negative will come,” said Loreen Allicock, who led the congregation during the harvest festival. “We want to continue living a peaceful life in this beautiful land of ours.”
Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro has thrown the full weight of his government into the effort, using patriotic rhetoric to try to summon voters to the polls to answer five questions over the territory, including whether current and future area residents should be granted Venezuelan citizenship.
Guyana sees the referendum as a case of annexation and asked the International Court of Justice on Nov. 14 to halt parts of the vote. The court has not issued a decision, but even if it rules against Venezuela, Maduro’s government intends to hold the election Sunday.
The 61,600-square-mile (159,500-square-kilometer) area accounts for two-thirds of Guyana. Yet, Venezuela has always considered Essequibo as its own because the region was within its boundaries during the Spanish colonial period, and it has long disputed the border decided by international arbitrators in 1899, when Guyana was still a British colony.
Venezuela’s commitment to pursue the territorial claim has fluctuated over the years. Its interest piqued again in 2015 when ExxonMobil announced it had found oil in commercial quantities off the Essequibo coast.
The latest chapter on the dispute has sowed anger among area residents, the majority of whom are Indigenous people, against Guyana’s government. Information on the referendum has reached them mostly through inaccurate social media posts that have only created confusion among the Guyanese.
“We feel neglected as the people of this land. Nothing is being done for us at the moment,” said Michael Williams, an Indigenous leader for the Essequibo village of Annai. “The government (…) only comes when they want our votes. Now, there’s this dispute. Nobody is here to tell us, ‘These are the issues. This may come. Let us prepare for it. We are negotiating. We hope for the best.’ Nobody is coming to tell us that.”
The disputed boundary was decided by arbitrators from Britain, Russia and the United States. The U.S. represented Venezuela on the panel in part because the Venezuelan government had broken off diplomatic relations with Britain.
Venezuelan officials contend the Americans and Europeans conspired to cheat their country out of the land and argue that a 1966 agreement to resolve the dispute effectively nullified the original arbitration. Guyana, the only English-speaking country in South America, maintains the initial accord is legal and binding and asked the world court in 2018 to rule it as such.
Venezuelan voters on Sunday will have to answer whether they “agree to reject by all means, in accordance with the law,” the 1899 boundary and whether they support the 1966 agreement “as the only valid legal instrument” to reach a solution.
Maduro’s government held a mock referendum Nov. 19 to get voters acquainted with the issue, but it has not said how many voters participated or what the results were. Officials also have not offered a timetable or specific steps on how they would turn the Essequibo region into a Venezuelan state and grant area residents citizenship should voters approve the proposed measures.
Juan Romero, a lawmaker with the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, told state media that one of the actions the government would have to pursue if people vote in favor of the measures is a constitutional reform to incorporate English as one of Venezuela’s official languages. Meanwhile, another ruling party lawmaker, William Fariñas, has claimed “Essequibans” already “feel Venezuelan.”
That, however, could not be further from the truth.
People in Essequibo are proud of their Indigenous heritage. They point to the names of landmarks, given in their native language, as an example of why they believe the region never belonged to Venezuela. And they insist they do not want their lives disrupted by the referendum.
The International Court of Justice is expected to issue a decision this week on Guyana’s request to halt parts of the referendum. But the court is still years away from ruling on Guyana’s broader request to deem the 1899 border decision as valid and binding. Judges accepted the case last April despite Venezuela’s opposition.
In the meantime, Essequibo resident Jacqueline Allicock has one question for Venezuelan voters: “Why would you want to take away something that doesn’t belong to you?”
____ Garcia Cano reported from Mexico City.
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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
PANAMA CITY — Facing a second week of impassioned, nationwide protests, Panama’s National Assembly has nearly passed a new law revoking a controversial mining contract in an environmentally vulnerable part of country.
The bill passed a second debate late on Wednesday and now faces a final vote Thursday in which no changes can be made.
Panama’s legislature first agreed a contract extension with Canadian mining company First Quantum and it’s local subsidiary, Minera Panama, in March. The resulting protests — the largest since a cost of living crisis last July — have sparked a series of backtracks from President Laurentino Cortizo.
The new bill not only repeals that contract but extends a moratorium on all concessions for mining activities until the country’s Code of Mineral Resources is reformed.
Before legislators debated the extraordinary measure, Cortizo first proposed a national referendum on the contract. Eight lawsuits were also filed with Panama’s Supreme Court arguing it was unconstitutional.
Initially it was unclear how persuasive environmental objections would prove against the mine’s demonstrated economic promise. It is the largest private investment in Panama’s history and already creates roughly 3% of the country’s gross domestic product.
Now, however, popular protests have materialized into serious legislative and legal challenges, which pushed First Quantum’s shares into a 47% freefall since markets opened on the Toronto Stock Exchange at the start of this week.
Critics warned using a new law to revoke the contract could leave the government liable to legal action from Minera Panama. If, however, the Supreme Court declared the contract unconstitutional, lawyers said it would be annulled without the risk of possible multi-million dollar lawsuits.
While legislators argued, anti-riot police dispersed demonstrators around the Assembly building with rubber-bullet and tear gas. Earlier in the day nurses marched to the Supreme Court building to demand judges prioritize the constitutionality lawsuits.
The contract would allow 20-40 more years of open pit copper mining across 13,000 hectares of forested land just 75 miles (120 kilometers) west of the capital, in the state of Colon. Environmentalists argue continued mining would imperil drinking water and destroy more forest.
The mine is “in the middle of a jungle,” according to Minera Panama’s own contractor, Jan De Nu Group. In particular, it lies in Panama’s share of the Mesoamerican biological corridor, an important migratory route which studies estimate contains up to 10% of all known species.
In the last two decades, Panama has already lost roughly 8.5% of its total tree cover, mostly to agriculture, according to satellite image analysis by Global Forest Watch. Almost the same amount again has been disturbed by industrial activity.
While local protestors are concerned about drinking water, other advocates say the mine could threaten the Panama Canal, already driven by El Nino to its driest October since 1950.
While Minera Panama’s manager insisted in a September open letter that four rivers lie between the mine and the canal, the canal’s administrator expressed concern earlier this year that their water sources might conflict.
BARCELONA, Spain — Barcelona accountant Oriol Calvo ran afoul of the law when he was arrested in 2019 during a mass protest by supporters of Catalonia’s independence from Spain that turned violent. A court found him guilty of public disorder and of aggressive behavior toward a police officer — offenses he denies.
The 25-year-old is among several thousand ordinary citizens who faced legal trouble for their often tiny part in Catalonia’s illegal secession bid that brought Spain to the brink of rupture six years ago.
Now Calvo hopes his conviction and those of many others will be wiped clean if Spain’s acting prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, follows through and issues a sweeping amnesty for the separatists in exchange for their movement’s political parties helping him form a new government in Madrid.
Calvo’s sentence of 18 months was suspended since it was his first offense, but it is still a stain on his record and has affected his willingness to participate in politics. He has stopped going to rallies for independence for fears that it could complicate his legal situation. He also felt betrayed.
“I became very bitter,” Calvo said. “I felt betrayed by the justice system, but also I thought about all the efforts that the movement had made in the fight to achieve independence that had gotten us nowhere.”
Sánchez, who has granted pardons to several leaders of the movement in the past, says that the amnesty will be positive for Spain because it will further reduce tensions inside Catalonia. Yet no one doubts that he is doing it only out of political necessity given how divisive the Catalan independence movement is both inside Catalonia and the rest of Spain.
A national election in July left no party close to an absolute majority and with Sánchez in need of the support of several smaller parties to stay in power. Those include two pro-secession Catalan parties who led the unsuccessful 2017 breakaway attempt and who now find themselves holding the key votes in Parliament that Sánchez requires.
Given the chance to play kingmaker, the two separatist parties are using their leverage. They have made an amnesty law as a prerequisite for supporting Sánchez.
The clock is already ticking. Sánchez has until Nov. 27 to form a government, otherwise new elections will be triggered for January.
Sánchez and his center-left Socialist party have tried to keep as quiet as possible on the amnesty question, but the leader has acknowledged that talks are on-going with the Catalan parties, including one led by the fugitive former regional leader of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, who fled Spain for Belgium after his dream to carve out a new state in northeast Spain collapsed.
Spain’s courts are still trying to have Puigdemont extradited. Given that Puigdemont is considered an enemy of the state for many Spaniards, any deal that could benefit him is politically toxic.
Tens of thousands of people rallied in downtown Barcelona on Oct. 8 against a possible amnesty in a sign of the danger that Sánchez runs.
An amnesty “would be shameful because Spain can’t be governed by people who want to split from the country,” said 23-year-old Pablo Seco, an aeronautical engineer who attended the rally.
For Montserrat Nebrera, professor of constitutional law at the International University of Catalonia, the negotiations between Sánchez and the separatist leaders are a “hall of mirrors” wherein both sides try to appear that they have the upper hand, when in reality they need one another.
“Pedro Sánchez needs the amnesty law to pass so he can get the four votes he is lacking,” Nebrera told the AP. “The secessionists, however, also need to show their people that they are not only interested in saving the necks of their leaders … but also of the people who disobeyed authorities or damaged public property and whose punishments, while not huge, have greatly complicated their lives.”
Spain’s conservative party, which lost a bid to form a government last month, is already bashing Sánchez for what it describes as selling Spain out to stay in power. Former Socialist prime minister Felipe González has also said that the amnesty is not merited.
Spain granted a sweeping amnesty during its transition back to democracy following the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975. But legal experts are divided over the constitutionality of an amnesty for the Catalan separatists.
The pro-independence Catalan organization Omnium Cultural says that an amnesty should benefit some 4,400 more people, mostly minor officials and ordinary citizens who either helped to organize an illegal 2017 referendum or participated, like Calvo, in protests that turned ugly.
But Omnium and the two Catalan separatist parties say they want much more than just a clean slate for people in trouble with the law: they want the terms of the amnesty to establish a legal pretext for Catalonia eventually holding a binding, authorized referendum on independence.
“For us, the amnesty is not the solution to the conflict, it is the starting point from which the conflict can begin to be resolved,” said Xavier Antich, president of Omnium Cultural.
That going-for-broke position, however, may run the risk of wrecking the whole operation, as well as leaving people like Calvo in the lurch.
“They have already tried to have a referendum authorized and it has not worked,” Calvo said. “So I believe that trying to force something that we know isn’t going to happen is useless and could derail the amnesty talks.”
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Videojournalist Hernán Muñoz contributed to this report.
WARSAW, Poland — Poland is holding a high-stakes election on Sunday that has energized many voters, with the ruling conservative nationalist party pitted against opposition groups that accuse it of eroding the foundations of the democratic system.
The ruling party, Law and Justice, has a devoted base of supporters in the Central European nation of 38 million who appreciate its defense of Catholic traditions and its social spending on pensioners and families with children. The payments have given relief to poor people.
But support for the party has shrunk since the last election in 2019 — when it won nearly 44% of the vote — amid high inflation, allegations of cronyism and bickering with European allies. Law and Justice has been polling in recent weeks at over 30%, making it the single most popular party but still at risk of losing its majority in parliament.
In that case, some speculate that Law and Justice could need the support of the far-right Confederation party to govern, though both parties campaigned saying that was not an option.
Many Poles feel like it is the most important election since 1989 when a new democracy was born after decades of communism. The health of the nation’s constitutional order, its legal stance on LGBTQ+ rights and abortion, and the foreign alliances of a country that has been a crucial ally to Ukraine are all at stake.
Polling in recent days suggested that opposition parties have a chance to deprive the governing populists of an unprecedented third term in a row.
The Civic Coalition, Third Way and New Left have campaigned on promises to repair the rule of law and ties with the EU and other allies if they manage to gain power. The final outcome of the vote could be ultimately decided by the small margins gained or lost by the smaller parties.
Tomasz Druzynski, an information technology specialist, voted in Warsaw saying he believes change is possible.
“I believe in it and I think this is the first chance in eight years to change something. And I hope this change will come,” Druzynski said.
The continued growth of Poland’s dynamic economy is also on voters’ minds.
Jan Molak, an 80-year-old supporter of the ruling party, credited it with creating a more just economic system and the development boom of recent years.
“Things are getting better and better,” he said after voting in Warsaw.
Others see economic threats in the way the party has governed and believe the high social spending has helped to fuel inflation.
There is also a high level of state ownership in the Polish economy, and the ruling party has built up a system of patronage, handing out thousands of jobs and contracts to its loyalists. Some fear over time that will cause damage.
The EU, whose funding has driven much of the economic transformation, is also withholding billions of euros (dollars) in funding to Poland over what it views as democratic erosion.
Political experts say the election will not be fully fair after eight years of governance by Law and Justice, which has eroded checks and balances to gain more control over state institutions, including the courts, public media and the electoral process itself.
Retired nurse Barbara Burs voted early in Warsaw, saying she cast her vote to change the government because she wants a better country for her children and grandchildren — a “just and undivided Poland.”
The fate of Poland’s relationship with Ukraine is also at stake. The Confederation party campaigned on an anti-Ukraine message, accusing the country of lacking gratitude to Poland for its help in the war.
While Poland has been a staunch ally of Ukraine and a transit hub for Western weapons, relations chilled over the Ukrainian grain that entered Poland’s market.
Some 29 million Poles aged 18 and above are eligible to vote. They are choosing 460 members of the lower house, or Sejm, and 100 for the Senate for four-year terms.
A referendum on migration, the retirement age and other issues is being held simultaneously. Opposition groups oppose the referendum, accusing the government of seeking to tap into emotions to mobilize its electorate in the close and unpredictable race. Some called on voters to boycott the referendum.
At one polling station on the southern edge of Warsaw, people could be seen apparently declining to vote in the referendum, casting just two ballots into the assigned boxes. Voters were offered three ballots, one for the Sejm, one for the Senate and one for the referendum.
More than 31,000 voting stations across Poland are open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Over 400 voting stations will operate abroad. In a sign of the huge emotions being generated by the vote, more than 600,000 Poles registered to vote abroad.
On Friday, the Foreign Ministry fired its spokesman after he said that not all the votes cast abroad could be counted before the deadline for submitting them, which would cause them to be invalidated. The ministry said he was dismissed for spreading “false information.”
Exit poll results by global polling research firm Ipsos will be announced after polls close.
Individual parties need to get at least 5% of votes to win seats in parliament, coalitions need at least 8% of votes.
With a two-letter word, Australiansstruck down the first attempt at constitutional change in 24 years, a move experts say will inflict lasting damage on First Nations people and suspend any hopes of modernizing the nation’s founding document.
Preliminary results from the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) suggested that most of the country’s 17.6 million registered voters wrote No on their ballots, and CNN affiliates 9 News, Sky News and SBS all projected no path forward for the Yes campaign.
The proposal, to recognize Indigenous people in the constitution and create an Indigenous body to advise government on policies that affect them, needed a majority nationally and in four of six states to pass.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had championed the referendum and in a national address on Saturday night said his government remained committed to improving the lives of Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders.
“This moment of disagreement does not define us. And it will not divide us. We are not yes voters or no voters. We are all Australians,” he said.
“It is as Australians together that we must take our country beyond this debate without forgetting why we had it in the first place. Because too often in the life of our nation, and in the political conversation, the disadvantage confronting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people has been relegated to the margins.”
“This referendum and my government has put it right at the center.”
Supporters of the Yes vote had hailed it as an opportunity to work with First Nations people to solve problems in their most remote communities – higher rates of suicide, domestic violence, children in out-of-home care and incarceration.
However, resistance swelled as conservative political parties lined up to denounce the proposal as lacking detail and an unnecessary duplication of existing advisory bodies.
On Saturday, leading No campaigner Warren Mundine said the referendum should never have been called.
“This is a referendum we should never have had because it was built on a lie that Aboriginal people do not have a voice,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
During months of campaigning, the No vote gained momentum with slogans that appealed to voter apathy – “If you don’t know, vote No” – and a host of other statements designed to instil fear, according to experts, including that it would divide Australia by race and be legally risky, despite expert advice to the contrary.
No shortage of high-profile voices lent their support to the Yes campaign.
Aussie music legend John Farnham gifted a song considered to be the unofficial Australian anthem to a Yes advertisement with a stirring message of national unity. But opinion polls continued to slide to No.
Objections came thick and fast from the leaders of opposition political parties, who picked at loose threads of the proposal. “Where’s the detail?” they asked, knowing that would be decided and legislated by parliament.
Some members of the Indigenous community said they didn’t want to be part of a settler document, demanding more than a body that gives the government non-binding advice. Other Australians were completely disengaged.
Yes campaigner Marilyn Trad told CNN that volunteers making calls to prospective voters had to break the news to some – this week – that there was indeed a referendum.
Kevin Argus, a marketing expert from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), told CNN the Yes campaign was a “case study in how not to message change on matters of social importance.”
“From a public relations perspective, what is proposed is quite simple – an advisory group to government. Not unlike what the business council, mining groups, banking groups and others expect and gain when legislation is being drafted that affects the people they represent,” he said.
Argus said only the No campaign had used simple messaging, maximized the reach of personal profiles, and acted decisively to combat challenges to their arguments with clear and repeatable slogans.
The result means no constitutional change, but the referendum will have lasting consequences for the entire nation, according to experts.
For First Nations people, it will be seen as a rejection of reconciliation by Australia’s non-Indigenous majority and tacit approval of a status quo that is widely considered to have failed them for two centuries.
Before the vote, Senator Pat Dodson, the government’s special envoy for reconciliation, said win or lose, the country had a “huge healing process to go through.”
“We’ve got to contemplate the impact of a No vote on the future generations, the young people,” he told the National Press Club this week. “We already know that the Aboriginal youth of this country have high suicide rates. Why? They’re not bad people. They’re good people. Why don’t they see any future?”
Maree Teesson, director of the Matilda Center for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use at the University of Sydney, told CNN the Voice to Parliament had offered self-determination to Indigenous communities, an ability to have a say over what happens in their lives.
“Self-determination is such a critical part of their social and emotional well-being,” she said.
Teesson said a No vote doesn’t just maintain the status quo, it “undermines the self-determination of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.”
“I do hope that we don’t lose the possibility of the hope that this gave our nation and that we somehow work to find another way to achieve that,” she said.
Some experts say more broadly the No outcome could deter future leaders from holding referendums, as it could indicate that the bar for constitutional change – written into the document in 1901 – is too high.
The last time Australians voted down a referendum was in 1999 when they were asked to cut ties with the British monarchy and become a republic – and little has changed on that front since then.
“The drafters of the constitution said this is the rulebook and we’re only going to change it if the Australian people say they want to change it – we’re not going to leave it up to politicians,” said Paula Gerber, professor of Law at Monash University.
“So that power, to change, to modernize, to update the constitution has been put in the hands of the Australian people. And if they are going to say every time, “If you don’t know, vote No,” then what politician is going to spend the time and money on a referendum that can be so easily defeated?”
CANBERRA, Australia — Australians cast their final votes Saturday in the country’s first referendum in a generation, deciding whether to tackle Indigenous disadvantages by enshrining in the constitution a new advocacy committee.
The proposal for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament bitterly divided Australia’s Indigenous minority as well as the wider community.
Indigenous activist Susanne Levy said the Voice would be a setback for Indigenous rights imposed by non-Indigenous Australians.
“We’ve always had a voice. You’re just not listening,” she said, referring to the wider Australian population.
Levy spent Saturday at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, an Indigenous land rights protest that has existed in the heart of the national capital, Canberra, since 1972.
The collection of ramshackle shelters and tents in a park used to be across a street from the Australian Parliament before lawmakers moved into their current premises in 1988.
Old Parliament House is now a museum that was used Saturday as a voting station.
“Yes” campaigner Arnagretta Hunter was promoting the cause outside Old Parliament House just a stone’s throw from the Aboriginal Tent Embassy where signs advocating a “no” vote were on display.
Hunter said she had some sympathy for the Voice’s opponents because some of their questions had not been satisfactorily answered.
She described the Voice as a significant step forward for the nation.
“We can’t listen where there’s no voice. And to legislate that and enshrine that in the constitution is key,” Hunter said.
The Voice would be a committee comprised of and chosen by Indigenous Australians that would advise the Parliament and government on issues that affect the nation’s most disadvantaged ethnic minority.
Voice advocates hope that listening to Indigenous views would lead to more effective delivery of government services and better outcomes for Indigenous lives.
Accounting for only 3.8% of the population, Indigenous Australians die on average eight years younger than the wider population, have a suicide rate twice that of the national average and suffer from diseases in the remote Outback that have been eradicated from other wealthy countries.
Almost 18 million people were enrolled to vote in the referendum, Australia’s first since 1999. Around 6 million cast ballots in early voting over the last three weeks.
Around 2 million postal votes will be counted for up to 13 days after the polls close Saturday.
The result could be known late Saturday unless the vote is close.
Opinion polls in recent months have indicated a strong majority of Australians opposing the proposal. Earlier in the year, a majority supported the Voice before the “no’ campaign gathered intensity.
Australian Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers, who oversaw the referendum, said voting had been orderly apart from a few instances of campaigners harassing voters at polling booths.
“Referendums quite often unleash passions not seen at election time,” Rogers said.
“At an election, people think, ‘Well, in three years I can vote a different way.’ For referendums, it’s different. These are generational issues,” he said.
If the proposal passes, it will be the first successful constitutional amendment since 1977. It also would be the first ever to pass without the bipartisan support of the major political parties.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton described the Voice as “another layer of democracy” that would not provide practical outcomes.
Independent Aboriginal senator Lidia Thorpe voted “no” Saturday and said Indigenous people need grassroots solutions to their problems.
“We’re not going to be dictated to by another prime minister … on trying to fix the Aboriginal problem,” Thorpe said.
“We know the solutions for our own people and our own community,” she added.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited every Australian state and mainland territory in the past week encouraging support for the Voice.
He hit back at critics who said his proposal had created division in the Australian community.
“The ‘no’ campaign has spoken about division while stoking it,” Albanese said.
He said the real division in Australia is the difference in living standards between Indigenous people and the wider community.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Early voting began on Monday in New Zealand for the nation’s Oct. 14 general election, with conservative contender Christopher Luxon casting his ballot.
Early voting also began in some parts of Australia in a referendum that would enshrine in Australia’s constitution a mechanism for Indigenous people to advise Parliament on policies that affect their lives.
In New Zealand, the campaign of Prime Minister Chris Hipkins faced a setback on Sunday when he tested positive for COVID-19. He said he would isolate for five days or until he returned a negative test, but planned to continue with some engagements over Zoom.
Hipkins and his liberal Labour Party have been lagging behind the opposition National Party, led by Luxon, in opinion polls.
“After a rough night I woke up this morning feeling pretty unwell and just got this test result,” Hipkins wrote on Instagram, and said he’d work twice as hard when he got back out on the campaign trail.
Luxon on Sunday released a 100-day action plan he said would deliver tax relief, rebuild the economy and restore law and order. “New Zealanders have waited six long years for a government that focuses on what matters to them, and gets things done,” Luxon said.
In Australia, where voting is compulsory, some 98% of eligible Australians have signed up to vote in the referendum on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
Early voting began in four states or territories Monday, and the remaining four will begin voting on Tuesday after observing a public holiday Monday.
The “Yes” campaign is lagging behind in opinion polls but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who supports the potential change, said he remains hopeful.
“I know a lot of people have not made up their mind, and what I know is that the feedback, when people talk through these issues, they arrive at a ‘Yes’ vote pretty comfortably,” Albanese told reporters in Melbourne. “I sincerely think the key to the next fortnight is those one-on-one conversations with people to accept this request of the overwhelming majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.”
Political opponents say the referendum effort should have been bipartisan and that many unanswered questions remain on the details of how the Voice would work in practice.
In a coincidence, the election and referendum are both taking place on Oct. 14.
Built on the land of the Wakka Wakka people, Cherbourg’s modern motto of “many tribes, one community” reflects the varied origins of its 1,700 residents, descendants of people once forced to live there under laws of segregation.
Between 1905 and 1971, more than 2,600 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were forcibly moved from their land to Cherbourg, then known as Barambah, according to the Queensland government.
Some were marched barefoot through the Australian bush by colonial settlers under a law that called for the removal of Indigenous people from their traditional lands to be housed and educated in colonial ways.
Today residents live in neat rows of single story houses, their rent paid to a council that’s determined to turn the former government reserve into a thriving community where people want to live – and it seems to be working.
“We’ve got around 260 people waiting on our waiting list,” said Cherbourg Council CEO Chatur Zala. “There’s a huge demand for social housing because our rent is pretty reasonable.
“The rent in the big cities is so expensive, people can’t afford it.”
Life has changed for people in Cherbourg, but a divide still exists in Australia between non-Indigenous and Indigenous people on a whole range of measures – from infant mortality to employment, suicide and incarceration.
Indigenous people have proposed an idea they say may help close the gap, and on October 14 the entire country will vote on it.
A Yes vote would recognize First Nations people in the constitution and create a body – a Voice to Parliament – to advise the government on issues that affect them. A No vote would mean no change.
So how does Cherbourg, a community created from policies of segregation andassimilation, feel about what’s being billed as an historic step forward for Indigenous reconciliation?
“My community is very, very confused,” said Mayor Elvie Sandow, from her air-conditioned office in the center of Cherbourg. “They’re confused with the Voice, and then the pathway to [a] treaty.”
The mayor said residents will vote because if they don’t, they’ll be fined under Australia’s compulsory voting laws, then she immediately corrects herself.
“Well, they probably won’t vote,” she said. “They’ll just go out and get their name ticked off the [electoral] roll, so that avoids them getting a fine.”
A record number of Australians – some 17.67 million of a population of 25.69 million – have registered to vote in the country’s first referendum in almost 25 years, according to the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC).
Early voting has already started in remote communities, with AEC staff traveling vast distances by 4WDs, helicopters, planes and ferries to reach them.
Campaigners for both sides – Yes and No – have also been traversing the same routes, speaking to locals, organizing rallies and spending millions of dollars on radio, television and online advertising to win their votes.
“I think this is one of the most important events of my life,” said Erin Johnston, who was among thousands of people marching at a recent Yes rally in Brisbane, organized by the charity Australians for Indigenous Constitutional Recognition.
“We have an opportunity to right a big wrong,” Johnston said.
But with two weeks to go before the vote, polls are showing that the referendum is on track to fail, a potential blow for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who made it an election pledge.
The prime minister has stressed that the Voice is not his idea but a “modest request” made by representatives of hundreds of Aboriginal nations who held meetings around the country in 2017.
Together they agreed a one-page statement called the Uluru Statement from the Heart which calls for “a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution.”
“We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country,” it said.
Aunty Ruth Hegarty remembers her early days as a child in Cherbourg. There, children did not flourish, they did not walk in two worlds, and their culture was not seen as a gift but something to be erased.
Now 94, Aunty Ruth has written an award-winning book about growing up in the settlement. She was just a baby when her parents moved there from the Mitchell district in southwest Queensland looking for work during the Great Depression.
On arrival, the family was separated into different areas of the settlement. Then they realized they couldn’t leave.
Aunty Ruth was allowed to stay with her mother in the women’s section of a crowded dormitory until she was 4-and-a-half years old.
But after her first day at school, she was told she wouldn’t be living with her mother anymore. “You’re a schoolgirl now,” she was told, before being directed to the girls’ section where she shared beds, baths, towels and meals with other students.
“We were not allowed to cry,” Aunty Ruth wrote. “Crying always resulted in punishment.”
Punishment meant being caned, having their heads shaved, or being locked alone in a wooden cell at the back of the property, she wrote.
Mothers were sent to work as domestic staff for settlers while the men did manual labor, and when she was 14, Ruth was also sent away to earn money. At 22 she applied for permission from the state to marry, and when restrictions eased in the late 1960s, she moved with her husband and six children to Brisbane to start a new life outside the settlement.
“We escaped all right. But we had to convince my husband,” she told CNN at her home in Brisbane. “I said to him, there’s no jobs for the kids. Even if they went through high school, they wouldn’t get a job in our town. Every office in Cherbourg had White people working in it, so there’d be no jobs for them. So I had to tell him, we’re going,” she said.
Sitting beneath a pergola surrounded by flowers in her garden, Ruth still has the energy of an activist who has spent much of her life working to improve the lives of her people.
She wears an orange Yes badge and says she hopes the referendum will produce change.
“All I want is my constitutional recognition for me and my kids,” she said, leaning forward. “We need a change. We need change.”
Sitting to her right, her daughter Moira Bligh, president of the volunteer Noonga Reconciliation Group,said, “We’ve overcome disadvantage, but unless we’re all at our stage, we won’t stop.”
“I won’t stop,” Aunty Ruth added, “because I think it’s the right thing for us to do.”
Across town on a Wednesday night, an audience of No voters at an event organized by conservative political lobby group Advance gives an indication of why this referendum is so contentious.
Wearing No caps and T-shirts handed out at the door, they cheer loudly as the leaders of the No camp urge them to reject division.
“The Yes campaign focuses on the past. We focus on the now and the future, the making of Australia the envy of the world,” said Nyunggai Warren Mundine, a member of the Bundjalung, Gumbaynggirr and Yuin people.
Sitting in the back row, carpenter Blair Gilchrist says Indigenous people wouldn’t need a Voice if politicians were doing their jobs properly and spending money where it was needed. He’s not a fan of Albanese’s Labor government.
“Money has got to be scrutinized better. I think that’s probably the main thing. That the money is spent well,” he said.
Successive governments have spent billions of dollars to close the persistent gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in national health and welfare statistics, yet many targets aren’t being met. And on some measures, the gap is widening – including rates of incarceration, suicide and children in care.
The Voice seeks to give non-binding advice to government about what might work to end the disparity – but critics say it’s not needed.
“Infant mortality has dropped, life expectancy has increased, it might not be at the levels we need it, but it’s heading in that direction,” Northern Territory Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, a descendant of the Warlpiri people, told the audience.
The death rate for Indigenous children ages 0-4 was 2.1 times as high as the rate for non-Indigenous between 2015 and 2019, according to government figures. On average, non-Indigenous men live 8.6 years longer than Indigenous men – for women it’s 7.8 years. The gap’s even wider in remote communities, statistics show.
“The Voice, it suggests that Indigenous Australians … are inherently disadvantaged, for no other reason but because of our racial heritage,” Price said. “It’s suggested that every one of us needs special measures and [to be] placed in the constitution. That again is another lie. I mean, look at me and Warren, we’re doing all right, aren’t we?” she said.
Boththe Yes and No camps want more accountability – some proof that the billions of dollars spent each year on Indigenous programs are being used to help the most vulnerable. And both want a brighter future for the most disadvantaged Indigenous people, though they disagree about how to get there.
Many in the Yes camp say that future needs to start with recognition that, as the world’s oldest continuous civilization, First Nations people occupied the land for 60,000 years before the arrival of British settlers just over 200 years ago.
The official No camp believes nothing separates Australians – from First Nations people to new migrants – and changing the constitution embeds division. For the Yes camp, Indigenous people do hold a special place in the country’s history and their existence must be acknowledged, along with a permanent body that can’t be dissolved on the political whim of future governments.
Other Indigenous people are voting No because it’s not enough – they want treaties negotiated between the land’s traditional owners and those occupying it.
Back in Cherbourg, visitors walk through the old ration shed, where people from hundreds of Aboriginal nations once queued for their weekly allowance of tea, sugar, rice, salt, sago, tapioca, slit peas, porridge, flour and meat.
It’s now a museum, where elders share stories of life in those days.
Zala said Cherbourg Council has made gains in recent years, since Mayor Elvie was elected in 2020. The number of council jobs has doubled to 130, mostly filled by local staff, Zala said.
“The highest employment rate of any Indigenous community,” he boasted.
They’ve opened the first recycling center in an Indigenous community, which handles waste from surrounding areas; and the first Digital Service Center staffed by Indigenous workers, who gain experience and qualifications.
Plans are afoot to expand the water treatment plant beyond upgrades unveiled last year. But most of all, the council is working on ways to provide new homes for the hundreds of people wanting to move there.
It’s a tough task – Cherbourg still operates as a Deed of Grant in Trust (DOGIT) community, meaning it relies on government funding. There’s very little private ownership – almost all homes there are owned and maintained by the council.
For years, the council has encouraged residents to buy the homes their families have lived in for decades, but few financial incentives exist – there’s no market for houses, meaning no capital gains, and some prospective homeowners balk at the cost of private upkeep after so many years of council support, Zala said.
As a lifelong resident, Mayor Elvie knows the issues well. Her mother lived in the Cherbourg dormitory until she was old enough to marry. By the time the future mayor was born in the 1970s, restrictions were being phased out.
She is not afraid of change, but she doesn’t see how a Voice to Parliament in Canberra is going to help address the daily challenges she faces to keep her community employed, housed and educated.
For that reason, she’s going to vote No.
“I don’t make my decision lightly,” she said.”I have had a number of conversations with different mayors and communities and some mayors are for the Yes vote. It’s very divided right up the middle.
“I’m going No because I just feel it’s a duplication. At the end of the day, I am the voice of Cherbourg because I’m the elected mayor for this community.”
Zala is one of the newer Australians the No camp says would be done a disservice if the country’s Indigenous population was given special recognition in the constitution. Born in Gujarat, India, he moved to Australia in 2006 and has been working to close the gap in Cherbourg since 2011.
“That’s still my motivation every day when I come here. I don’t accept why we have to be different than any other community. I always believed that we don’t want to create a community which is so much behind,” he said.
Of the Voice, he said he’ll be voting Yes.
“At least by voting Yes, you have hope. We don’t know the detail [of] what’s going to happen after the Voice, but it’s best to get it through and see if there might be something good come to the community,” he said. “And I think lots of people are going to do the same.”
CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s prime minister said Tuesday he was confident that Indigenous Australians overwhelmingly support a proposal to create their own representative body to advise Parliament and have it enshrined in the constitution.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s remarks came as Tiwi Islanders cast their votes on making such a constitutional change. They were among the first in early polling that began this week in remote Outback communities, many with significant Indigenous populations.
The Oct. 14 referendum is to decide on having the so-called Indigenous Voice to Parliament enshrined in the constitution.
“I’m certainly confident that Indigenous Australians will overwhelming be voting ‘yes’ in this referendum,” Albanese told reporters in the city of Adelaide. He said his confidence was based on opinion polling and his interactions with Indigenous people in remote Outback locations.
He blamed disinformation and misinformation campaigns for polls showing that a majority of Australians oppose the Voice.
Some observers argue the referendum was doomed when the major conservative opposition parties decided to oppose the Voice. Opposition lawmakers argue it would divide the nation along racial lines and create legal uncertainty because the courts might interpret the Voice’s constitutional powers in unpredictable ways.
“What has occurred during this campaign is a lot of information being put out there — including by some who know that it is not true,” Albanese said.
No referendum has ever passed without bipartisan support of the major political parties in the constitution’s 122-year history.
Leading “no” campaigner Warren Mundine rejected polling commissioned by Voice-advocates that found more than 80% of Indigenous people supported the Voice. Mundine fears the Voice would be dominated by Indigenous representatives hand-picked by urban elites. He also shares many of the opposition parties’ objections to the Voice.
“Many Aboriginals have never heard of the Voice, especially those in remote and regional Australia who are most in need,” Mundine, an Indigenous businessman and former political candidate for an opposition party, told the National Press Club.
Indigenous Australians account for only 3.8% of the Australia’s population so are not expected to have a major impact on the result of the vote. They are also Australia’s most disadvantaged ethnic minority.
Voice proponents hope to give them more say on government policies that effect their lives.
In the three weeks until Oct. 14, Australian Electoral Commission teams will crisscross the country collecting votes at 750 remote outposts, some with as few as 20 voters,
The first was the Indigenous desert community of Lajamanu, population 600, in the Northern Territory on Monday.
Australian Electoral Commissioner Tom Roger on Tuesday visited Indigenous communities on the Tiwi Islands off the Northern Territory’s coast. The islands have a population of around 2,700.
Thousands of votes were expected to be collected Monday and Tuesday from 64 locations across the Northern Territory and the neighboring states of Western Australia and Queensland.
Andrea Carson, a La Trobe University political scientist who is part of a team monitoring the referendum debate, said both sides were spreading misinformation and disinformation. Her team found through averaging of published polls that the “no” case led the “yes” case 58% to 42% nationally — and that the gap continues to widen.
This is despite the “yes” campaign spending more on online advertising in recent months than the “no” campaign. The “no” campaign’s ads targeted two states regarded as most likely to vote “yes,” South Australia, where Albanese visited on Tuesday, and Tasmania.
For a “yes” or “no” vote to win in the referendum, it needs what is known as a double majority — a simple majority of votes across the nation and also a majority of votes in a majority of states. A majority of Australian states is four out of six.
Before Australians last voted in a referendum on First Nations people in 1967, Uncle Bob Anderson set up a table and chair at a tram stop in central Brisbane.
From his rail-side office, he’d tell anyone who would stop and listen that Australia counted its horses, cows, sheep and goats, but not its Indigenous people. “My question to you is, do you think they should be?” he’d say.
Some 56 years later, the Ngugi Elder sat on a chair under the hot Brisbane sun on Sunday, his wispy white hair covered in a straw hat, his presence a sign of support for another referendum concerning his people.
Nearby, thousands of people gathered for “Walk for Yes” rallies in multiple cities around Australia ahead of the October 14 vote.
On that day, some 17.5 million registered voters will be asked whether Australia should change the constitution to include a permanent body made up of First Nations people to advise the government on matters affecting them.
Now 94, Anderson says a Yes vote isn’t just important for him but the country.
“By talking and walking together as a nation and as a society, we will share a common destiny,” he said.
But less than four weeks out from the vote, polls suggest the split between the supporters and opponents is widening, in favor of no change to the constitution.
Veteran grassroots Aboriginal activist Wayne Wharton wore the reason for his objections on his T-shirt, as he shouted at Yes supporters on a bridge in central Brisbane.
“You’re a thief, a liar and a gatekeeper,” he yelled, to a mix of ages and races walking by. “Give back what you stole, give back what you stole, give back what you stole.”
The 62-year-old Kooma man told CNN on the phone that fundamentally people are being asked the wrong question.
“In a well-meaning country and a country seeking justice, this question would never have been raised or tabled. The question that would have been offered would have been a question about [a] treaty or just occupation,” he said.
Like Anderson, Wharton remembers the curfews that confined First Nations people to the outskirts of town between sunset and sunrise, the racial slurs hurled at him and his family, the abuse of his ancestors forced to live in missions, and the theft of First Nations children under policies of assimilation that later prompted a national apology.
Wharton said he wants “liberation, freedom and restitution” delivered through negotiation by the hundreds of Aboriginal nations with people occupying their land.
“I’ve seen many things change in my 60 years, and as the White bigots that created this continent of privilege die, the next generations have a greater sense of fairness and justice,” Wharton said.
“I believe in my children’s time a lot of this will be overcome. And that’s why I want to make sure that the door of opportunity is always going to be there for those people when the opportunity comes to create a just occupation, that the mechanism will be there and that it wouldn’t have been hijacked by some desperates in 2023 that changed the constitution.”
Other First Nations people see it differently, including Nick Harvey-Doyle, who at 31 is half the age of Wharton, and a third of the age of the Aboriginal Elder Anderson.
From his New York apartment, Harvey-Doyle, an Anaiwan man from New South Wales, co-organized a walk across Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday, attended by more than 350 people, mostly Australians, calling for a Yes vote.
“I’m from a really small country town that has about 10,000 people and I think there’s about 8,000 Australians in the New York tri-state area. To me, that’s almost essentially a whole country town worth of votes,” he said.
Harvey-Doyle is a former lawyer who is studying at New York University with a Roberta Sykes Scholarship that provides funding for Indigenous students to undertake postgraduate research abroad. Sykes, who died in 2010, was the first Black Australian to study at Harvard, and fought for a Yes vote in the 1967 Referendum.
That referendum, to count Indigenous people in Australia’s Census figures, passed with over 90% approval.
Harvey-Doyle implored Australians living overseas to cast their votes to improve the life outcomes for First Nations people, who have lagged behind the country’s non-Indigenous population in heath and welfare statistics for decades.
“We as Aboriginal people don’t feel like we have carriage over our most intimate and important personal affairs,” he said.
“I think Aboriginal people do have a different way of life from non-Indigenous people and the current structures and institutions we have in place, don’t always acknowledge that and aren’t always in the best cultural place to service our needs.
“Actually having a body that exists that is enshrined in the constitution that allows us empowerment, to give advice over our own lives and our own issues is actually super important.”
According to the Australian Electoral Commission, as of Sunday, more than 96,000 registered voters were outside Australia – including those living abroad and some 58,000 who have notified the commission that they’ll be traveling on October 14.
While voting is compulsory within Australia, being overseas is considered a valid reason not to vote. More than 100 polling centers will be open worldwide to enable people to vote in person, or they can return a postal ballot. Overseas voting starts early, on October 2.
To pass, the referendum needs the majority vote across the country, as well as the majority of people in at least four states.
Indigenous people won’t determine the outcome of this vote – that will be up to millions of other non-Indigenous Australians, some of whom object to Indigenous people being given a special place over others within the constitution, calling the vote “divisive.”
Wharton says the concept of millions of non-Indigenous voters deciding what’s best for 3% of the population is racist in itself.
However, Harvey-Doyle says he’s wary of the message a no vote would send in the country and beyond.
“If we vote No, it says that we are really happy to be apathetic towards the poor life outcomes that some average Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experience, and I feel like that goes against what it means to be Australian to give everyone a fair go,” he said.
“It’ll be a really sad global position for us to put ourselves in, if we do vote No.”
The people of Ecuador are heading to the polls – but they’re voting for more than just a new president. For the first time in history, the people will decide the fate of oil extraction in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
The referendum will give voters the chance to decide whether oil companies can continue to drill in one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, the Yasuní National Park, home to the last uncontacted indigenous communities in Ecuador.
The park encompasses around one million hectares at the meeting point of the Amazon, the Andes and the Equator. Just one hectare of Yasuní land supposedly contains more animal species than the whole of Europe and more tree species than exist in all of North America.
But underneath the land lies Ecuador’s largest reserve of crude oil.
“We are leading the world in tackling climate change by bypassing politicians and democratizing environmental decisions,” said Pedro Bermo, the spokesman for Yasunidos, an environmental collective who pushed for the referendum.
It’s been a decade-long battle that began when former President Rafael Correa boldly proposed that the international community give Ecuador $3.6 billion to leave Yasuní undisturbed. But the world wasn’t as generous as Correa expected. In 2016, the Ecuadorian state oil company began drilling in Block 43 – around 0.01% of the National Park – which today produces more than 55,000 barrels a day, amounting to around 12% of Ecuador’s oil production.
A continuous crusade of relentless campaigning and a successful petition eventually made its mark – in May, the country’s constitutional court authorized the vote to be included on the ballot of the upcoming election.
It’s a decision that will likely be instrumental to the future of Ecuador’s economy. Supporters who want to continue drilling believe the loss of employment opportunities would be disastrous.
“The backers of the request for crude to remain underground made it ten years ago when there wasn’t anything. 10 years later we find ourselves with 55,000 barrels per day, that’s 20 million barrels per year,” Energy Minister Fernando Santos told local radio.
“At $60 a barrel that’s $1.2 billion,” he added. “It could cause huge damage to the country,” he said, referring to economic damage and denying there has been environmental harm.
Alberto Acosta-Burneo, an economist and editor of the Weekly Analysis bulletin, said Ecuador would be “shooting itself in the foot” if it shut down drilling. In a video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, he said that without cutting consumption all it would mean is another country selling Ecuador fuel.
But ‘yes’ campaigners have ideas to fill the gap, from the promotion of eco-tourism and the electrification of public transport to eliminating tax exemptions. They claim that cutting the subsidies to the richest 10% of the country would generate four times more than what is obtained extracting oil from Yasuní.
“This election has two faces,” explained Bermo.
“On one hand we have the violence, the candidates, parties, and the same political mafias that governed Ecuador without significant changes.
“On the other hand, the referendum is the contrary – a citizen campaign full of hope, joy, art, activism and a lot of collective work to save this place. We are very optimistic.”
Among those campaigning to stop the drilling is Helena Gualinga, an indigenous rights advocate who hails from a remote village in the Ecuadorian Amazon – home of the Kichwa Sarayaku community.
“This referendum presents a huge opportunity for us to create change in a tangible way,” she told CNN.
For Gualinga, the most crucial part of the referendum is that if Yasunidos wins, the state oil company will have a one-year deadline to wrap up its operations in Block 43.
She explained that some oil companies have left areas in the Amazon without properly shutting down operations and restoring the area.
“This sentence would mean they have to do that.”
Those who wish to continue drilling in the area argue that meeting the one-year deadline to dismantle operations would be impossible.
The referendum comes as the world faces blistering temperatures, with scientists declaring July as the hottest month on record, and the Amazon approaching what studies are suggesting is a critical tipping point that could have severe implications in the fight to tackle climate change.
And according to Antonia Juhasz, a Senior Researcher on Fossil Fuels, it’s time for Ecuador to transition to a post-oil era. Ecuador’s GDP from oil has dropped significantly from around 18% in 2008, to just over 6% in 2021.
She believes the benefits of protecting the Amazon outweigh the benefits of maintaining dependence on oil, particularly considering the cost of regular oil spills and the consequences of worsening the climate crisis.
“The Amazon is worth more intact than in pieces, as are its people,” she said.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California voters may be asked twice on the same November 2024 ballot whether to keep or to ditch a law mandating new oil wells be a certain distance away from homes, schools and parks.
Recently, state lawmakers have been debating whether to reform the referendum process that makes overturning a law possible, as it has been leveraged by powerful industries to invalidate laws that are unfavorable to them.
Last year, lawmakers approved so-called buffer zones around oil wells, which dot communities around Los Angeles and the state’s Central Valley, as part of a package of bills aimed at tackling climate change and pollution. The oil industry quickly moved to undo the law by gaining a spot on the 2024 ballot.
But on Wednesday environmental advocates put forward their own proposed ballot measure aimed at getting voters to require buffer zones.
“People who live next to oil wells get very, very sick. Californians who live next to this stuff, they have headaches, nosebleeds, nausea,” said Kassie Siegel, director of the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. “You do not want the oil company moving in next door.”
The possibility of dueling ballot measures on new oil wells also showcases the growing political tension around California’s approach to dealing with climate change, with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration increasingly passing laws aimed at shrinking the oil and gas industry. Two measures on the same ballot could confuse voters, threatening both sides’ chances of success.
Outside California, nearly half of U.S. states have a process allowing voters to reject policies that state legislators have passed.
Environmental justice groups have made multiple attempts over the years to establish a minimum distance between oil and gas wells near places like homes and schools. Newsom signed the law last year that banned new gas and oil wells within 3,200 feet (975 meters) of sensitive areas.
A lawyer for the California Independent Petroleum Association quickly filed for the referendum to ask voters to overturn the law, and the group collected enough signatures earlier this year to put it on the ballot. Rock Zierman, the group’s CEO, said keeping the law would burden oil companies in California at a time when they already have to follow what he called some of the strictest environmental and labor laws in the world.
The Legislature is weighing whether to change the referendum process, so Californians don’t get confused about whether they’re voting to uphold or to overturn a law. The legislation would have voters decide to either “keep the law” or to “overturn the law.” That would mean a departure from a “yes” vote to keep the law or a “no” vote to overturn it.
The oil industry’s tactics to collect the 623,000 signatures needed to get their favored measure on the ballot has come under fire. The California Secretary of State’s office said last year it was investigating complaints alleging signature gatherers were spreading misinformation about the measure.
Over the decades, Californians have been asked to vote more than once on the same issue, on measures about car insurance rates and campaign financing, among other hot-button topics.
Ballot measures in California typically need support from more than 50% of the vote to pass. If there are two conflicting measures that meet that threshold, the one that got the most votes would prevail, said Bob Stern, former president of the nonprofit Center for Governmental Studies. But Stern said he’s never heard of a referendum and a competing measure appearing on the same ballot in California.
“When there are a lot of measures on the ballot, voters tend to vote no,” he said.
Voters also tend to vote “no” if they are confused about a referendum or initiative, Stern said. That can be a good thing for proponents of a referendum who want to garner enough “no” votes to overturn a law.
Advocates who want to keep the buffer zone law say it aligns with the state’s broader climate goals and will help protect residents from pollution-related health risks.
Mike Young, a political director with California Environmental Voters, said the law should have been passed a long time ago.
He asked, “What does that say about us that we’re not willing to protect our most vulnerable communities?”
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Sophie Austin is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Austin on Twitter: @sophieadanna.
Uzbekistan is holding a snap presidential election, a vote that follows a constitutional referendum that extended the incumbent’s term from five to seven years
FILE – Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev speaks during the presidential inauguration ceremony in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2016. Uzbekistan holds a snap presidential election on Sunday, July 9, 2023, a vote that follows a constitutional referendum that extended the incumbent’s term from five to seven years. President Shavkat Mirziyoyev was elected in 2021 to a second five-year term, the limit allowed by the constitution. (AP Photo/Anvar Ilyasov, File)
The Associated Press
MOSCOW — Uzbekistan is holding a snap presidential election Sunday, a vote that follows a constitutional referendum that extended the incumbent’s term from five to seven years.
President Shavkat Mirziyoyev was elected in 2021 to a second five-year term, the limit allowed by the constitution. But the amendments approved in April’s plebiscite allowed him to begin the count of terms anew and run for two more, raising the possibility that he could stay in office until 2037.
The 65-year-old Mirziyoyev is set to win the vote by landslide against three token rivals.
“The political landscape has remained unchanged, and none of the parliamentary political parties stand in open opposition to the president’s policies and agenda,” the elections observer arm of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said in a pre-voting report.
Since coming to power in 2016 after the death of longtime dictatorial leader Islam Karimov, Mirziyoyev has introduced a slew of political and economic reforms that eased some of the draconian policies of his predecessor, who made Uzbekistan into one of the region’s most repressive countries.
Under Mirziyoyev, freedom of speech has been expanded compared with the total suppression of dissent during the Karimov era, and some independent news media and bloggers have appeared. He also relaxed the tight controls on Islam in the predominantly Muslim country that Karimov imposed to counter dissident views.
At the same time, Uzbekistan has remained strongly authoritarian with no significant opposition. All registered political parties are loyal to Mirziyoyev.
In April’s referendum, more than 90% of those who cast ballots voted to approve the amendments extending the presidential term.
As part of his reforms, Mirziyoyev has abolished state regulation of cotton production and sales, ending decades of forced labor in the country’s cotton industries, a major source of export revenues. Under Karimov, more than 2 million Uzbeks were forced to work in the annual cotton harvest.
Mirziyoyev has also lifted controls on hard currency, encouraging investment from abroad, and he moved to improve relations with the West that soured under Karimov. He has maintained close ties with Russia and signed a number of key agreements with China, which became Uzbekistan’s largest trading partner as part of its Belt and Road Initiative.
Like the leaders of other ex-Soviet Central Asian nations that have close economic ties with Moscow, Mirziyoyev has engaged in a delicate balancing act after Moscow sent troops into Ukraine, steering clear of backing the Russian action but not condemning it either.
CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s Senate voted Monday to hold a referendum this year on creating an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, an advocate aiming to give the nation’s most disadvantaged ethnic minority more say on government policy.
Dozens of mainly Indigenous people stood up the public galleries and clapped when senators passed the referendum bill 52 votes to 19.
The Senate vote means the referendum must be held on a Saturday in a two-to-six-month window.
While the Voice would advocate for Indigenous interests, it would not have a vote on laws, and debate for and against the elected body has become increasingly heated and divisive.
Proponents hope the Voice will improve living standards for Indigenous Australians, who account for 3.2% of Australia’s population and are the most nation’s most disadvantaged ethnic group.
If the referendum is passed, it would be Australia’s first successful referendum since 1977 and the first ever to pass without bipartisan support.
Opposition spokesperson on the attorney general’s portfolio Michaelia Cash told the Senate on Monday most of her colleagues would vote to hold the referendum “because we believe in the people of this nation and their right to have a say.”
“This is not because we agree with what this bill ultimately sets out to achieve, which is of course to irrevocably change this nation’s constitution in a way that will destroy one of our most fundamental values: equality of citizenship,” Cash told the Senate before the vote.
Opposition Sen. Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who is Indigenous, said the Voice proposal was already dividing Australia along racial lines.
“If the ‘yes’ vote is successful, we will be divided forever,” Price said.
“I want to see Australia move forward as one, not two divided. That’s why I will be voting ‘no,’” Price added.
Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe, who is also Indigenous, said she opposed the Voice because it was powerless.
“It’s appeasing white guilty in this country by giving the poor little Black fellas a powerless advisory body,” Thorpe said.
Assistant Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy said providing Indigenous people with a Voice was a “very simple request” and urged all sides to keep the debate respectful.
“I urge all Australians to dig deep, to listen to the better side of yourself throughout this debate,” said McCarthy, who is Indigenous.
“This is a critical moment in our country’s history. It is the right thing to do … and it is time now to put this question to the Australian people,” she added.
Australia’s House of Representatives last month voted overwhelming in support of holding the referendum.
The Liberal Party and Nationals party, which formed a conservative coalition government for nine years before the center-left Labor Party was elected last year, both oppose the Voice.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese committed his government to holding the referendum during his election night victory speech.
The Voice was recommended in 2017 by a group of 250 Indigenous leaders who met at Uluru, a landmark sandstone rock in central Australia that is a scared site to traditional owners. They were delegates of the First Nations National Constitutional Convention that the then-government had asked for advice on how the Indigenous population could be acknowledged in the constitution.
The conservative government immediately rejected the prospect of the Voice, which it likened to a third chamber of Parliament.
CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s House of Representatives voted overwhelming Wednesday for a referendum to be held this year on creating an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, an advocate aiming to give the nation’s most disadvantaged ethnic minority more say on government policy.
While the Voice would advocate for Indigenous interests, it would not have a vote on laws, and debate for and against the elected body has become increasingly heated and divisive.
The 121-to-25 House vote that approved the referendum being held does not reflect the level of lawmakers’ support for enshrining the Voice in the constitution. The opposition conservative Liberal Party voted in support of giving Australians a choice at a referendum but is also campaigning for the Voice to be rejected by the public.
The Senate will vote on the bill in June, and the bill needs majority support to ensure that Australia’s first referendum since 1999 takes place between October and December this year.
Proponents hope the Voice will improve living standards for Indigenous Australians who account for 3.2% of Australia’s population and are the most nation’s most disadvantaged ethnic group.
Australia’s Race Discrimination Commissioner Chin Tan, a racism law watchdog, has warned that focusing the public debate on race emboldens racists and exposes the Indigenous population to abuse and vilification.
The Liberal Party and the Nationals party, which formed a conservative coalition government for nine years until elections a years ago, argue the Voice would create a racial divide.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton has told Parliament the proposal would permanently divide Australians by race. “It will have an Orwellian effect where all Australians are equal, but some Australians are more equal than others,” Dutton said.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who committed his center-left Labor Party government on election night last year to holding the referendum, said “scare campaigns” against the Voice would not find traction among most Australians.
“Australians won’t succumb to their appeals to fear and their ever-more ludicrous invitations to jump at our own shadows,” Albanese said in a recent speech.
Speaking in support of the Voice, government minister Tim Watts urged his fellow lawmakers to address Australia’s history of refusing to recognize or listen to its Indigenous people.
Watts quoted his own ancestor as a cautionary example: John Watts, a 19th century colonial lawmaker who had justified state-condoned extrajudicial police shootings of Indigenous Outback tribes.
“The natives must be taught to feel the mastery of the whites,” John Watts had told the Queensland state Parliament in 1861.
“The natives, knowing no law, nor entertaining any fears but those of the carbine (rifle): there were no other means of ruling them,” John Watts had added.
His descendant, Tim Watts, urged lawmakers in Parliament to: “Take this moment to be good ancestors.”
Opinion polls show the Voice has majority public support. But many observers say support is not yet high enough to indicate a successful referendum.
Of the 44 referendums held since the constitution took effect in 1901, only eight have been carried and none since 1977.
No referendum has ever been passed without the bipartisan support the major political parties.
The Voice was recommended in 2017 by a group of 250 Indigenous leaders who met at Uluru, a landmark sandstone rock in central Australia that is a scared site to traditional owners. They were delegates of the First Nations National Constitutional Convention that the then-government had asked for advice on how the Indigenous population could be acknowledged in the constitution.
The conservative government immediately rejected the prospect of the Voice, which it likened to a third chamber of Parliament.
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Find more of AP’s Asia-Pacific coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/world-news
