Today host Brooke Boney delivers message to Aboriginal Voice to Parliament No voters

An Indigenous TV star has opened up about her thoughts on Anthony Albanese’s proposed Voice to Parliament, declaring that a ‘No’ vote in the upcoming referendum would be ‘quite damaging’.

Channel Nine Today show presenter Brooke Boney shared her thoughts about the proposal for an Aboriginal advisory body – which every Australian will vote on at a referendum later this year – in an essay published on Thursday. 

To people considering voting No at the upcoming referendum, including Indigenous voters, Ms Boney said: ‘It’s OK if people want to vote No but I’d hope those people have a plan for what to do to improve the situation if the referendum fails.’

”There are also some Aboriginal people who want to vote No,’ Ms Boney wrote. 

‘Their argument is that they don’t want to be included in a document or be a part of a system that has oppressed Aboriginal people for a couple of hundred years.

‘They ask why would this be any different and why should they put their faith in a system that has so often failed us’.

Ms Boney said this cohort ‘have every right to feel let down and ignored because too often and for too long that has been the case’.

But she urged those in the No camp – whether they be Indigenous or not – to ‘find out as much information as you can’ and to ‘have a look at how we’ve done things in the past and then decide whether you think we can do better’. 

Ms Boney added that ‘we need to be realistic about how profound the impact of a No result would be on our country’. 

It comes after Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney’s National Press Club address on Wednesday, where she shared a pointed message to those thinking of voting No.

‘The No campaign… is importing Trump style politics to Australia. The aim is to polarise, to sow division in our society by making false claims,’ she said.

‘Do not let the No campaign get away with using Trump style politics. Do not let them divide us.’

Anthony Albanese with Voice advocates during a media conference after the passage of laws enabling the referendum later this year

Ms Boney (pictured left with her mother) said ‘we need to be realistic about how profound the impact of a No result would be on our country’

In her article, Ms Boney warned No voters that they risked coming accross as ‘fearful of change’ or ‘not at all interested in helping Aboriginal people’ if they didn’t have good enough reasons as to why policy to help Indigenous people had not yet been implemented. 

‘My fear is that nothing will change, and we’ll wake up the day after and Aboriginal policy will be pulled together in the same way it always has been and will continue to be expensive and not as effective as it could be,’ she wrote. 

Ms Boney also reflected on how ‘joyous’ it would have felt for her grandparents following the sucessful 1967 referendum in which Australians voted overwhelmingly to amend the Constitution to allow the Commonwealth to make laws for Aboriginal people and include them in the census.

‘If the opposite were to occur and we had to walk down the street the next day, we don’t have the luxury of seeing people’s thoughts that might be “No, but … I’d like to see this happen or that happen”,’ she wrote. 

‘All we would see is No and that would be quite damaging’.