Waleed Aly and Patricia Karvales have been slammed after they claimed the no vote in the Voice was driven by less-educated Australians who may not have fully grasped the complexities of the issue.
Australia resoundingly voted No to the proposed change to the constitution, with every state rejecting the proposal and only the ACT voting Yes, in a major blow for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who spearheaded the referendum.
During The Project’s analysis of the results on Monday night, Aly claimed educated people were more likely to vote Yes.
‘The biggest dividing line seems to have been education. If you were in a seat with high levels of tertiary education, bachelor or post, you were at the very top end of the ‘Yes’ vote.
Aly, who is also a university lecturer, said people with ‘the lowest levels of tertiary education … were at the low end of the Yes vote’.
‘And that’s not to say people who are educated know what they are doing, people who don’t have tertiary education don’t, it’s about the style of the message.’
Aly said he ‘can totally see why you would propose (the Voice). If you go through the history, you go through the experience of the people who designed it or came up with the idea, it actually makes perfect sense.
‘But most people haven’t been on that journey, and when you come to them with this idea that’s actually quite abstract and complicated, they’re going to respond with an instinct and that instinct is it just doesn’t feel right.’
The Yes campaign suffered a significant setback in Western Sydney, with 10 federal electorates in the area regarded as a critical for the Labor party at elections all voting No.
It’s also home to the working-class Aussies Aly referred to in his analysis of the referendum outcome.
Liverpool Council Mayor, Ned Mannoun, hit back at Aly’s comments, and said the residents of Western Sydney were ‘not dumb’.
‘Commentary that says ‘we’re not smart, that’s why we didn’t vote for The Voice’ is pretty disrespectful,’ Mannoun told 2GB’s Ben Fordham.
‘People here are very intelligent. They get what’s going on, and there are multiple reasons why they didn’t vote yes to the Voice, and it wasn’t because of education reasons.
Education levels were the major deciding factor on whether people voted Yes or No for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, Waleed Aly said, adding the referendum was just too ‘complicated’ for some people
‘If you’re using tertiary education as a way to judge intelligence then I think that’s (a) very simplistic view of the world.
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‘There are people, I’m sure you would’ve met them throughout your time Ben, that work bloody hard. They’re very, very, very smart people – never gone to university before.’
Mr. Mannoun, voters in Western Sydney rejected the idea of supporting the Voice due to a lack of detail about the proposal.
‘Once again, that gut feeling, I think people here can smell b(ull)s(***) a mile away.
‘It just doesn’t make sense because if there was detail I think they would’ve had (a) much greater chance of bringing people on, but people didn’t know what it was.
‘I couldn’t explain (it) to people. I had no detail, I think I have a good idea how government works,’ he said.
‘It did not make sense. So just please don’t look down on us out here.’
Meanwhile, ABC host Patricia Karvelas came under fire after she analysed how people’s education and income reflected their vote with Fran Kelly on the ABC podcast, The Party Room.
ABC Radio National and Q&A host Patricia Karvelas (pictured) came under fire after her and Fran Kelly analysed how people’s education and income reflected their vote
‘The yes vote, if you look at it has been achieved in places where voters have a bachelor’s degree or have better than average wages Fran, right?’ Karvelas said.
‘If you’ve got a bachelor’s degree, chances are you know something about government structures, you’ve taken an interest in the kind of way these things happen, not because you’re better, but just because you’ve got the opportunity to have done that.’
The Radio National host stressed that she wasn’t ‘judging people’s achievements’ and only suggesting that those with a bachelor’s degree more likely came to a ‘different conclusion’ about the Voice.
‘I think about you know, who and where remote, Indigenous Australians kind of probably get it, because they live it,’ she said.
‘And then where people have been educated, they’ve come to different conclusions.’
‘And then you get a whole swathe of people working very hard can I say, and probably having very little time to focus on reading constitutions, or proposals, and making pretty quick on the hot decisions, where I do think quick social media campaigns probably have had a big impact.’
‘And so I think that is the bigger part of the demographic story. And the Yes campaign didn’t get to those people.’
