There is nothing to celebrate about the weekend’s referendum result.

My party campaigned in the March election on a colour-blind platform, so obviously I voted ‘No’ … but the whole thing is a tragedy.

Prior to the weekend, the Labor Party had proposed 25 referendums since federation. 24 failed.

With that abysmal track record, the federal Labor government foolishly decided to have another go on a racially charged issue.

The last time a Labor Prime Minister proposed a referendum was in 1988. Bob Hawke proposed four constitutional amendments that year. They not only failed, but recorded the biggest ‘No’ votes in Australian history with almost 70 per cent voting ‘No’. The following day Bob Hawke, his Attorney-General Lionel Bowen, and the Labor National Secretary Bob Hogg all said publicly that Labor would not propose future referendums unless the Opposition was also in robust support.

I call that wise advice the Hawke Rule.

Labor Prime Ministers Keating, Rudd and Gillard kept faith in the ‘Hawke Rule’.

On the night Anthony Albanese was elected Prime Minister he rejected the Hawke Rule and announced he would hold a referendum on the Voice.

I have never had an antipathy for this Prime Minister. While we agree on little, I admired from afar his efforts in the struggle for democratic reform of the Labor Party.

I am certain the Prime Minister and most of the ‘Yes’ campaigners sincerely believed a constitutionally protected Voice would lift Aboriginal living standards.

But I am sorry, this mindset is the product of a lifetime in the political bubble. That mindset sees a social problem and has only one solution: more government spending and bureaucracy.

The judgment of history is clear – more government spending and bureaucracy is the problem. It is a belittling approach to say to individuals, simply because of their Aboriginal ancestry, they need special government help … the other side of that coin is they are personally disempowered without government assistance. Good intentions are once again creating poor outcomes.

The tragic part of the weekend’s result is that many Aboriginal Australians may now have the view the nation does not care about the need to raise their living standards. That is what many in the ‘Yes’ campaign told them.

So I want to say to our fellow Australians with Aboriginal ancestry that Warren Mundine was correct when he said:

‘The only person who can better your life is not the government. It’s not the Voice. It’s you… You’re the only person who can make a difference.’

For 65,000 years the Aboriginal people survived in this tough land. That required individuals in every tribe and generation to exert themselves so that they survived and flourished.

When Chris Minns was the Opposition Leader he promised to introduce a Treaty between New South Wales and our Aboriginal community. He said he would do so regardless of the result of the Voice referendum.

This is an insult to the voters of New South Wales who, on the weekend, voted by a large majority to reject legal structures based on an individual’s ancestry.

An individual’s family tree is of interest to them and of incidental interest to their friends, but it is detrimental to create legal structures based on laws that treat people differently because of their ancestry. It has never been a positive to do so in the past and it will never be a positive to do so in the future.

The Australian people, and my party in particular, are robustly committed to the principle laid down by Martin Luther King 60 years ago:

‘I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.’

We must never make exceptions to this simple but sublime principle.

I urge the ‘Yes’ campaign to have rediscover introspection. They seem unanimous in believing Australian voters are either dumb, gullible, or racist.

The American columnist, the late Charles Krauthammer once noted:

‘To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.’

Sadly the same thing can be said about many of the ‘Yes’ campaigners after the weekend’s result. I urge them to abandon this blind, self-righteous attitude and to have an open mind to the idea that a clear majority of Australians may have made the correct decision because we cherish egalitarianism.

I urge Premier Minns to abandon his proposed treaty, or at least put such a proposal to the people of New South Wales in a referendum-style vote.

The Hon John Ruddick MLC is a member of the NSW Legislative Council and gave this speech in parliament on October 17, 2023