For the nine months since the Coalition successfully sank the proposed Voice, there has been relatively little national discussion about the place of Indigenous people in our country.
For a year before the Referendum, we had almost daily national stories and conversations about the proposed Voice, the rights of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and potential solutions to Closing the Gap and apart from the occasional dog whistle about young people in Central Australia, the nation has turned to other issues.
Following the Budget, the Coalition’s new prey are international students. International students are to blame for rent scarcity and rises (despite only representing 4% of the rental market); and have come in such numbers that our leading universities have revenue in the billions. The fact that international student are choosing to come here and the fees they pay mean our universities can afford to do a whole range of research that they otherwise couldn’t do because Government funding of research at 1.79% of GDP is way behind the OECD average of 2.68% doesn’t seem to matter.
After the Federal Government opened the door, declaring Australian universities were in danger of losing their ‘social licence’ to enrol international students, and that caps were needed, the Coalition pounced, making sure they were seen as the parties most opposed to migration, with the proposal to cut net migration to just 140,000 in their first two years of office should they win the next election.
All of which sets the scene for a dramatic pre-election campaign over the next year, where a minority group in Australia is singled out in what many might construe (and numerous commentators have already labelled) as a simplistic play for votes of everyday Australians.
Sound familiar?
There is a degree of othering here. The White Australia Policy, which was enthusiastically upheld here for more than six decades, from the shiny dawn of Federation until a Liberal government quietly dismantled it in 1966, was our open declaration of preference for Caucasian people to populate our shores.
A year later, Indigenous people were granted the right to join other Australians at the ballot box and have the full rights that other Australians held, and a progressive embrace of multiculturalism, revelling in the foods and sometimes the cultures of waves of not-always-white immigrants from distant shores.
Now, in the 2020’s, we have dug up enough stuff to take us to the very upper echelons of the richest societies in the world and the nation is struggling to work out how do deal with those pesky non-whites who we started to like in the 1970s. We have become so successful that lots of people want to come and live here, and while we do admittedly have massive workforce shortages, as anyone who has tried to fill a school staffroom, a hospital nursing station or a GP surgery will attest; we really care more about rent costs than dealing with our workforce issues.
So there we have it, the welcome mat which we had lovingly pointed to and dusted down year on year for the last two decades has been replaced with a ‘sorry we’re full’ sign laminated and hung at a jaunty angle on the front door.
For universities, communities that thrive with international students in their midst and the future of the Australian economy in general, this race to see who can keep out the most international students is alarming.
But in the middle of those concerns, it is all too easy to forget the plight of the othered – the international students already studying here, who are being called out as the cause of Australia’s ills.
What did they do wrong? Choose to come to Australia to study, hoping to give their career a kick start and maybe meet some nice local people along the way. They leave family and friends thousands of miles away, head to a brand new culture and pay tens of thousands of dollars each year for the privilege of slogging through a few years of study.
International students deserve to be heard and deserve not to be blamed for issues such as Australia’s long-term failure to build enough housing to keep up with demand. But they are being blamed, and misinformation peddled about them is sticking. Just as misinformation about the Voice and about Indigenous people stuck – and continues to stick, muddying national comprehension.
One of the most important aspects of the Voice discussion was not just about self-determination and having a say in our own future, but also about the potential of Indigenous insights and knowledge to add value to the lives of non-Indigenous people.
Here is the perfect example – lessons that Indigenous people involved in the Voice campaign can pass on to the next group in the sights of the Coalition – international students.
- Lesson 1: Don’t let misinformation go unchallenged. International students will continue to be blamed for a range of issues over the coming months, as parties seek to build political capital from condemning a minority group. Marshall your facts, contact the media whenever they run misinformation verbatim and try to correct as many false or unsupported statements as possible.
- Lesson 2: Get a spokesperson with cut through asap. Love her or hate her politics Jacinta Nampijinpa Price was a devastatingly powerful advocate for the ‘No’ campaign last year, available for a huge number of media grabs and ads, with simple, clear messages. International students need at least one strong advocate, ready to make a case again and again.
- Lesson 3: Win the 97%. The Voice referendum was never about what Indigenous Australia wanted. It was decided by the 97% of Australians who were not Indigenous. The same goes for international students. You don’t need to win over universities, who support you, or other international students – you need to grab at the hearts and minds of everybody else in Australia.
- Lesson 4: It’s not about the money. Voters were spooked by suggestions from the No camp that the Voice was a cash or power grab, despite the proposal being clearly for a modest advisory body. In the same way, you will not win the argument in relation to the financial contribution of international students – bizarrely that is being characterised as a bad thing, making universities ‘rich’. If you are really going to cut through, the challenge is the same as for Indigenous people – demonstrating that mainstream Australia benefits in ways that they notice and value.
- Lesson 5: Allies Rock! There is no doubt the Voice campaign would never have achieved as much as it did without non-Indigenous allies walking side-by-side with us. Actively welcome allies who can help reclaim the space in which international students are valued on and off campuses in communities across the country. Indigenous campaigners will be among the first to jump on board.
In our post-pandemic, post-Colonial Australia, the inclusion of communities and willingness to seek out and listen to voices different to our own should be a signal indice of community health.
The Voice vote may have been lost, but the voices it forged have only just begun.
Professor Maree Meredith is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous Leadership) at the University of Canberra.
Tim Winkler is a higher education consultant and Director of Twig Marketing and Future Campus.
