In 1924 the US Congress passed the Immigration Act banning Asian – particularly Chinese – immigrants to America. Faster than the Yanks, in 1901 on December 23 – Federation year – the new Australian Commonwealth government passed the Immigration Restriction Act, core legislation that effectively halted all non-European immigration into the country, contributing to the development of an ‘Australia for the white man’ society.

The Immigration Restriction Act, aka the ‘White Australia’ policy, was owned by a Labor government that wanted an end to Chinese on the gold fields and islanders ‘kanakas’ in the Queensland cane fields. It was ended in the 60s by a Liberal government, but not before my parents, Ceylon (as it was then) Dutch Burghers, had to prove they were of ‘80 per cent European’ bloodline and culture to be allowed to migrate to Australia in the late 50s.

I’m having breakfast pho with Mai. It’s not her real name but the pho is absolutely authentic. It is her birth country’s gift to Australians, along with wrapped prawn rolls and banh mi. Her granddaughter, like mine, is tearfully, fruitlessly still trying for out-of-reach tickets for Taylor Swift.

Mai’s family escaped Vietnam by sea. Her father had been an army officer, her grandfather a French-speaking civil servant. A year in a refugee camp in Malaysia, then my teenage years learning the new language and culture, a high school and university where the ‘boat people’ label was never far away.

She had to learn, as I did, the back-and-forth that shows your understanding of the nuances of Australian conversation. When a not-tactful colleague complimented Mai on her fair, northern skin, she shot back, ‘I sat on the shady side of the boat.’

‘You think people, people like us, who gave up everything for a chance to start again in Australia will stand back for a blonde, blue-eyed person with maybe one-twentieth Aboriginal ancestry?’ she asks. The question does not need a response. We both know how we will vote.

I think about the millions of refugees, migrants, people who like Mai’s family and my parents, who pinned their last best hopes of making it in Australia. People who will not be pushed down the ladder for a political, race-based referendum, stage managed by bureaucrats, a compliant virtue-signalling media, politicians, and political wannabees.

They will vote ‘No’ because their choices are so clear and they have struggled too long and hard to let it go for the Prime Minister’s vague ‘modest’ constitutional change, fully understanding what it is to be judged as less than others, given fewer advantages, options, opportunities, throughout life, simply because of their race.

Like the ‘White Australia’ policy that my parents had to contend with, the Voice may be another Labor policy failure in the history books.

Tina Faulk is a freelance journalist.