Yes and No Voice campaigns turning focus to outer suburbs
With around one in five Australians living in the outer suburbs of our capital cities, both the Yes and No campaigns have put enormous effort into winning over voters in those fast-growing areas. But the outer suburbs are proving a tough market for Voice supporters ahead of the referendum, with people in those areas more likely to be disengaged with politics.
Transcript
00:00 It's tools down and bottoms up at the Anglevale Tavern in Adelaide's north.
00:07 These outer suburbanites are saying yes to a beer, but a resounding no to the voice.
00:12 I've heard basically nothing about it.
00:14 I hear it all the time on the news about voting yes, but what are you voting yes for?
00:18 They're confused about the whole matter, so I think they'll probably be voting no for
00:21 that reason because they're not sure.
00:23 In the pub, yes supporters are hard to find.
00:26 It's dividing us as First Nations people with a lot of fellas saying yes, a lot of fellas
00:31 saying no, and it's just dividing us even more and really I'm sick to death of hearing
00:39 about it.
00:40 It's being made to feel like you've done something wrong when you haven't is probably the major
00:44 thing there.
00:45 Australia's rapidly expanding outer suburbs house 20% of the country's population.
00:52 Voting in these areas usually follows household income. The lower it is, the stronger the
00:57 vote for Labor.
00:59 But polling shows economic issues such as employment and cost of living are the key
01:04 ones in these electorates.
01:06 And that makes things harder for the yes campaign.
01:09 Demographer John Black says outer suburban voters aren't receptive to proposals about
01:14 social change when they're so worried about petrol prices and interest rates.
01:19 It's the wrong time to take a position on a social issue such as this when people are
01:27 focused on their own needs. It's just simply not resonating with them and I think they're
01:33 coming to resent it.
01:34 On Brisbane's outskirts, some voters are expressing support.
01:38 Most of my friends around me are yes voters.
01:40 It's time to change, recognise Indigenous culture.
01:44 But many people are an emphatic no.
01:46 I find it a degree of apartheid, I find it discriminatory and I find it appalling that
01:53 the government has created a massive split in society.
01:56 All of my friends, and of course most of them are my age group which is older, I have nobody
02:01 that I know voting yes.
02:03 VU's the yes campaign is running out of time to change.
02:07 [BLANK_AUDIO]