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DANIEL:

From Schwartz Media. I'm Daniel James and this is The Fight for a Voice, a special series from 7am.

Over the course of the referendum’s official campaign, opposition to the Voice has been dominated by the conservative “No” campaign, led by Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton, Jacinta Price and Warren Mundine.

But what about proponents of what is called the ‘Progressive No’ case - the group of advocates, predominantly first nations, opposed to the Voice. The Blak Sovereign movement against the Voice isn’t officially campaigning for its demise, and isn’t backed by less than transparent millionaires and other vested interests. Their opposition comes from an entirely different place to the official “No” campaign, yet reaches the same conclusion: NO.

Today we speak to the face of the ‘Progressive No’, Senator Lidia Thorpe.

This is episode 2: the progressives voting No.

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DANIEL:

I meet Lidia Thorpe on a day where there had been calls to boo Welcome to Country ceremonies at AFL finals matches. A call once unthinkable, but one that seamlessly fits into the overall tone of the national debate of the Voice in the midst of a fierce campaign. As I walk into her office a television crew from a commercial network is leaving. The Senator herself is in a spirited mood, on a roll and up for a fight.

Can you please introduce yourself?

LIDIA:

Lidia Thorpe, Gunnai Gunditjmara Djab Wurrung woman, and a Victorian Senator in the Federal Parliament.

DANIEL:

In her relative short time on the national stage, Lidia Thorpe has become one of the highest profile senators in the Parliament. The intensity she brings to matters important to her, the issues she cares about, was sparked from an early age in and around the housing commission flats, only metres away from her office as an Australian senator in Collingwood.

Senator Thorpe. What I thought of my start off with is getting you to describe some of your earliest memories of your mob and your family and their role in advocating for for us mob back in the day. What are your earliest memories of that?

LIDIA:

Well, back in the old days of Fitzroy and being one of the kids of the community. Yeah. And it was around the time of the Black Panther movement. Muhammad Ali come to see the blacks in Fitzroy. And I was I think I was about four years of age. He picked me up and put him, put me on his knee.

Audio excerpt – Muhammad Ali:

“Poem goes like this - I love your country, and I admire your style. But your pay is so cheap I won’t be back for awhile.”

LIDIA:

Yeah, dressing up into my red, black and yellow march at every invasion day, calling for treaty back in the old days. And my family were always instrumental in that movement.

DANIEL:

Thorpe’s mother, Marjorie, her grandmother Alma and her great grandmother Edna Brown were all instrumental in the movement that created something out of nothing.

LIDIA:

My grandmother was a big player in setting up the first Aboriginal health service in Victoria, and that was at a time where there was no funding. So my grandmother worked as a volunteer CEO for no money.

Audio excerpt – Broadcast:

“The service's headquarters are in Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, but it looks after about 83% of Victoria's Aborigines. The funding problems have meant that it's 32 staff, both medical and clerical, haven't been paid for five weeks.”

LIDIA:

And the Aboriginal Health Service was not just about health, it was a political voice for our people and it was a connection point for our people, particularly Stolen Generations, where they wanted to reconnect.

DANIEL:

Since the start of the 20th century the inner-north of Melbourne had become a centre for Aboriginal Victoria as people moved to the city for work or were forced off Missions under the order of the “half-caste” act. The slums of Fitzroy, Collingwood and to a lesser extent, Footscray would become hives of Blak political activity and resistance.

LIDIA:

And that was in response to police bashings and the fact that there were police officers walking around Fitzroy with batons, telling people that those batons were used to bash the boongs in Fitzroy. So the Aboriginal Legal Service was actually set up first.

DANIEL:

Yeah.

LIDIA:

And my mother was a secretary in those days at the First Aboriginal Legal Service.

DANIEL:

Services for Aboriginal people, run by Aboriginal people was an obvious, yet revolutionary act, another evolution in the act of resistance and Fitzroy was the natural place for it all to happen.

Audio excerpt – Crowd:

“Land rights now! Land right now! Land right now!...”

DANIEL:

It was a time of ideas, to move beyond the status quo. Aboriginal people had survived all that had been thrown at us, and now it was time to fight back.

DANIEL:

Tell us a bit about your mum and your grandmother.

LIDIA:

Mum was I mean obviously she's just a powerful black woman, but black matriarch, But she was on the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation with Linda Burney and Patrick Dodson. And Mum was also the co commissioner into the Bringing Them Home report, which was to end the Stolen Generation.

I was a teenager and I saw the effects that that had on my mother to hear hundreds and hundreds of stories of Victorian Aboriginal people who'd been stolen from their mother. And that's where my passion and anger comes from.

DANIEL:

Thorpe followed in her elder’s footsteps and quickly gained a reputation for being a fiery and formidable activist; she attracted the attention of political parties.

LIDIA:

Actually, prior to the Greens, I was approached by Labor. And I was wined and dined by the Labor.

DANIEL:

If they want you they go hard..

LIDIA:

Oh they do, many coffees, many yarns, many dinners. And…not for me. And then I met a Greens member who I still have a relationship with today who encouraged me to run. It was a difficult time for me because I didn't want to be part of the colonial project.

DANIEL:

Despite her reservations, Thorpe was elected as the Member for Northcote in the Victorian State Parliament’s lower house where she served one term before the Danslide election of 2018.

Almost immediately she was once again approached by the Greens, this time testing her interest in federal politics where she was eventually preselected to fill the senate vacancy created by the resignation of Richard Di Natale in 2020.

Audio excerpt – Speaker:

“Senator Thorpe, please come to the table to make and subscribe the affirmation of allegiance.”

Audio excerpt – Lidia Thorpe:

“I, sovereign Lidia Thorpe, do solemnly and sincerely affirm declare that I will be faithful and I bear true allegiance to the colonising Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.”

Audio excerpt – Speaker:

“Senator Thorpe…”

DANIEL:

Being a Senator in the heart of the nation’s federal power structure, hasn’t prevented her from being a fierce critic of the parliament itself which has led to an uneasy tension, one that Thorpe hasn’t been able to resolve.

LIDIA:

Well, it definitely does not have the best interests of First Nations people at heart. It's a joke. It's disingenuous. And you only need to see that with the voting records. And that's what these “Hand on Heart Yes” people don't delve into when it comes to climate change and the voting record on Labor, ignoring the voices of traditional owners who don't want their country fracked, who don't want coal fired, power stations built on their country, who don't want their children stolen. If you look at the laws, the White Australia policy, you look at deaths in custody. I mean, I won't bore you with all the statistics, but the laws that they are passing in there don't match up with a “Hand on Heart. Save the Aborigines Yes” Campaign.

DANIEL:

The election of the Albanese government and its commitment to take the Voice to a referendum highlighted tensions which had started to show between Thorpe and the Greens, particularly as she was placed in charge of negotiating with the newly elected government, to secure Greens support for the referendum.

LIDIA:

And there's racist elements in the Greens that didn't make me safe. I didn't feel safe in the Greens in the end. I tried and I tried. I set up the Blak Greens. Under the guidance of the original Aboriginal people that were part of the Greens, and the Greens started to ignore the Blak Greens coz it didn't fit with their narrative. So the Greens have their own issues that they have to deal with, and I was tired of trying to educate them. Talk about cultural fatigue. And then they white anted me out. So I had no choice.

DANIEL:

Was that white anting over the Voice?

LIDIA:

Oh, over a number of…

DANIEL:

Over everything?

LIDIA:

…a number of issues.

DANIEL:

For Thorpe, it was the Greens’ handling of its position over the Voice that was the final straw. She made the decision to quit the party.

Audio excerpt – Lidia Thorpe:

“I've told Greens Adam Bandt and the Senate President that I am resigning from the Greens to sit on the Senate crossbench. This country has a strong grass roots Blak Sovereign Movement full of staunch and committed warriors and I want to represent that movement fully in this Parliament.”

LIDIA:

They undermined me. No one was allowed to speak about the Voice. Because it was the leader and the portfolio holder who were meant to be negotiating with the government. And then I got undermined by, you know, people like Sarah Hanson-Young who came out in support of the Voice, regardless of what her leader said, regardless of what the portfolio holder said, and everyone was complicit in that.

DANIEL:

Thorpe confirmed what many had already assumed, her formal opposition to the Voice.

Audio excerpt – Lidia Thorpe:

“We are the original and only sovereigns of these lands. We are saying no to the referendum and no to the Voice.”

DANIEL:

By opposing the Voice, Thorpe opened up a new front in the debate. Opposition by conservatives was well known and well documented, but for many Australians, opposition from a progressive like Thorpe was a confusing entry into what had already been a bewildering debate.

What many wouldn’t know was that Thorpe wasn’t always locked in to her position on the Voice and at one point she says there was a chance she would support the “Yes” campaign.

LIDIA:

Labor's saying that they know what's best for us. And after 250 odd years, all they have on offer is an advisory body that may, just may give advice to the Parliament. And you've got the Indigenous Affairs Minister coming out saying, Oh, and then, you know, we need to focus on health, housing, education, employment. Anthony Albanese, who I've spoken to personally a number of times. I said implement the Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody, implement the recommendations of the Bringing Them Home report and get your government to support my private senator's bill on implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. Give us something Albo.

DANIEL:

Would that have been enough for you to give them a soft “Yes”?

LIDIA:

Potentially. And I told him, I've always said that. I've never hidden the fact that I've said that a negotiation is a negotiation. Right?

DANIEL:

What was his reaction to that? I mean, that's that's people can accuse the “Progressive No” campaign or whatever the position that it is of not being practical or pragmatic. What that was to the Prime Minister was a practical offering and solution and something that I would suspect the vast majority of First Nations people would say, Yeah, implement those recommendations, please.

LIDIA:

Well, the last thing he said to me is you'll get back to me. He said he'd had to go and speak to his people. I've made it very easy for him to do this. I've had my staff go through all of those recommendations and pull out only the federal responsibility. And they've had my letter for 12 months with demands to give me deaths in custody recommendations, child removal recommendations. Pass the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.

Since they first announced this. I've been at them and at them. Mark Dreyfus, Linda Burney all of them. Patrick Dodson He's the father of Reconciliation. Dodson Support the Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody. He couldn't even do that. It's actually quite demoralising as a Blak woman who was a kid growing up saying these fellows in these positions, seeing Dodson working on the Royal Commission into deaths in custody. Reconciliation movement to be in power in that Federal Parliament and have to toe the line with the Labor government, it’s sad, it makes me sad.

DANIEL:

It’s a sign of how perplexed Thorpe is with the national debate and the inaction of governments of all persuasion to act on fundamental issues like black deaths in custody. From her point of view, if government’s can't act on issues like that, what can they be relied upon?

Coming up – Inside the racism the debate has exposed…and why Senator Thorpe thinks it’s a good thing.

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DANIEL:

Around the country, over 80% of the Indigenous community support the Voice to Parliament – and in recent weeks, even some former ‘Progressive No’ advocates have turned towards “Yes”… saying that given the nature of the debate, they have to defeat the “No” campaign and send a message against the racist vitriol that’s ensued.

Lidia Thorpe remains committed to her positions. But to understand what Lidia, her supporters and other Blak sovereignty activists want, you have to go back to the Uluru Dialogues. It was there that a split first emerged.

LIDIA:

Now, I went to the Blacktown Dialogue first of all in Sydney and I held a sign with a number of other sovereign Blak women that said no consent. We were not allowed to have independent media. We weren't allowed to record anything. And what they did at that meeting is they divided us. They said “only delegates at this meeting - can they please come forward, and those that aren't delegates, you can stay at the back.” So all the Blak sovereigns, yeah, one were pushed up the back.

DANIEL:

This is where views over how the path towards the Ulruru statement diverge, never to be reconciled between Thorpe and her followers and those in charge of the dialogue process.

From Thorpe’s point of view, the Uluru Dialogues felt set up to achieve a predetermined outcome: to gather support for constitutional recognition.

But from the point of view of the organisers, and the vast majority of participants, it was an open discussion: the community could have said they wanted to walk away from constitutional recognition all together. But the majority said, they wanted to move forward - forward to Uluru.

It’s a disagreement that led to years of division and sometimes hostility.

DANIEL:

So that was the divide. And there was never going to be any sort of reconnection between you and the Blak Sovereign Movement and the people running the dialogue. That was kind of like the nexus point of that that Blacktown meeting for you.

LIDIA:

Well, I went to that Blacktown meeting to get a sense of how this machine operates, the assimilation machine. And I knew from the Blacktown meeting that the attendees were given five subjects to discuss and it was all about constitutional recognition. So when they come to Melbourne I put up a proposal at that start of the meeting that, yeah, we'll talk about your five agenda points, but we'd like to add another agenda item. We want a sovereignty item and the Referendum Council fought against that.

DANIEL:

The main chasm between supporters of the Voice and members of the Blak Sovereignty Movement centres around two aspects of the proposal. The first is the accusation by Thorpe and others that the Voice itself is too piecemeal, a voice to be legislated by the parliament may only hear what the government of the day wants to hear.

The other is around staging, the steps required to get to treaty and truth. Proponents of YES see the Voice as the beginning of the conversation of matters of truth and treaty. The Blak Sovereignty Movement wants a treaty first, above all else.

LIDIA:

So the treaty that we're looking at is about peace. And that is that too much to ask? I mean, we're the ones who are being demonised and oppressed here, and we're the ones saying, Hey, let's sit down, sovereign to sovereign and have an agreement on how we take this country into the future. We have to have a sovereign to sovereign debate in this country. The king ain't my sovereign. We have to have truth telling. We don't need a referendum. We should be going down the path of educating this country on the true history. Our people are ready. We know who we are. We know our clans. We know our nation and whitefellas out there know their local government area. We can stop now. It's not going to take a decade for a treaty. We can do it now.

DANIEL:

And we want to see those sorts of things happen before some of our old people…are gone.

LIDIA:

Well, we've lost too many already.

DANIEL:

And we’ve lost generations.

LIDIA:

And we're losing more and more. And the heartache that this referendum has created for our people is beyond words. To be honest. I'm just inundated with mob around this country who are just so sad and too frightened to speak up. I know blackfellas who've gone overseas just to get away from this.

DANIEL:

As things stand, the Voice and the referendum are the only game in town. The ensuing national conversation is one of the most taxing and toxic debates in modern Australian history. First Nations people often caught up in its currents, are smashed against the rocks as the country tries to make up its mind. Thorpe sees the debate as damaging but also sees it as a way to better expose the racist underbelly of the nation.

You made the decision to not actively campaign against the Voice and it's something that you've stuck with, regardless of what you think of the question. How hard has it been to see the”No” campaign go after Aboriginal people across the country to try and deny things like intergenerational trauma, to try and deny things like sovereignty? The personal attacks that people that you might not necessarily agree with. What's it been like from from your position as someone who is at the bottom end of those sorts of pile ons? A lot of the time. But what's it been like for you to not so much sit back, but to see that unfold over the last, you know, particularly the last four or five weeks?

LIDIA:

I think it's a good thing. I think it exposes the racism in this country beautifully. Right there it is. Guys hello. We said the country was racist. John Howard said through the whole reconciliation process and at the end of it, he said the country's too racist to reconcile. Well, there you have it. And this racist “No” campaign is exemplary of that. The “Yes” campaign, on the other hand, are equally racist because they are saying that they know what's best for us.

DANIEL:

Last week, Senator Thorpe revealed just how dangerous some of that racism had become – that her safety and her life had been threatened by Neo-Nazis, and she connected that directly to the debate around the referendum.

Audio excerpt – Lidia Thorpe:

“You wanna paint me as an angry Blak woman? Well you’re about to see an angry Blak woman, because I am not hiding this time. So what do they do? They send the fascists…”

DANIEL:

I just wanted to, before we finish up, just touch upon the personal toll on you, not only of just being in the bustle of federal politics, which I would imagine takes a toll on most people in that place. And like I said, because of your position in The Voice, you're calling out from everywhere. How has that impacted you?

LIDIA:

It made me go to the country and speak to my land and my water and my spiritual place. I have my grandmother's support and love and guidance, and I have the Blak Sovereign Movement who continue to lift me up. I have my ancestors who are guiding me. I am the mechanism to make this happen. And I might be the sacrifice, but I listen to my country and I listen to my own people. I've had a number of death threats. I haven't been allowed home for four months because someone wanted to kill me. It's affected my daughter. Yes, but it's not going to stop me.

So I'm a fighter. I've been raised tough. I've been raised hard. I worked for the Aboriginal funeral service for seven years, buried a lot of my people. So I'm more than equipped to deal with this stuff. And I've been copping racism all my life and put downs all my life. But it hasn't stopped me from seeking justice for my people. And that's all I'm about. I don't. I don't care about money. I don't care about privilege. You know politicians, the privilege and the power is quite disgusting. But I'll use that for the betterment of my people.

DANIEL:

Tomorrow on The Fight for a Voice – we go inside the campaign for ‘Yes’, their challenges in the final weeks, and where they find their hope. I’m Daniel James, I’ll see ya tomorrow.