Australia’s last vote was all about Indigenous people. Now they say it’s ‘silence’

On the journey into Yarrabah, there is nothing to suggest a national election is just days away.

Posters for candidates, inescapable in other parts of Australia, are conspicuously absent as you drive past fields of sugar cane and down a gently winding coastal road.

After entering this small Indigenous community near Cairns in far north Queensland, with fishing nets sitting on palm-lined shores, the only thing fighting for attention is a truck selling ice cream – urgently dinging a bell as it avoids the wild horses and dogs that wander the streets.

“It’s weird,” says Suzanne Andrews, chief executive of the town’s Gurriny Yealamucka Health Services. “We don’t see any placards. No-one’s visiting us.”

Watching the leaders of Australia’s two major parties debate each other on television, the Jaru Bunuba Bardi woman was dismayed that “they didn’t talk about any Aboriginal issues or concerns”.

“So,” she asks “what the hell’s going on?”

Indigenous Australians, who represent about 3.8% of the nation’s 26 million population, are by most socio-economic measures the most disadvantaged people in the country – something successive leaders have for years called a “national shame”.

Yet in this election campaign, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition leader Peter Dutton have had little to say on First Nations issues.

One glaring exception occurred this week, when during the final leader’s debate Dutton said Indigenous “welcome to country” ceremonies – where a local Aboriginal person acknowledges and give consent to events taking place on their traditional lands – were “overdone” and should not take place so frequently.

The comments represent one of the only times on the campaign trail that Dutton has publicly addressed issues specifically relating to First Nations people – and not to discuss disadvantage, but within the context of a culture war.

Part of the reason politicians try to steer clear of First Nations issues, according to experts and advocates, is that many believe they are too divisive and therefore electorally risky – especially after the failure of the Voice to Parliament referendum in 2023.

That referendum, which was loudly supported by Albanese in the most polarising moment of his leadership, saw 60% of voters reject a proposal to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia’s constitution and give them greater political say through a Voice to Parliament.

Those opposing it said the idea was divisive, would create special “classes” of citizens where some have more rights than others, and the new advisory body would slow government decision-making.

Ahead of the vote, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders on both sides of the debate told the BBC they hoped the unprecedented level of interest in their lives would build momentum for more policies to improve them.

Ms Andrews was one of them. But now she looks back at the result with sadness, believing it has now led political parties to “play it safe” and avoid “the hot Aboriginal issues”.

Others, including those who loudly opposed the Voice proposal, agree.

On referendum night, prominent anti-Voice campaigner Warren Mundine told the BBC “now the hard work starts”.

Some 18 months on, he says the reality is that people on both sides of the political aisle promptly disengaged with Indigenous issues after the referendum.

“This is one of the sad things about this election campaign here: whether the Voice got up or didn’t get up, we still had work to do,” he said.

“What’s happened now is that this is probably the first election that I’ve been in where there is no conversation about an Aboriginal policy. It’s just gone silent.”

Lidia Thorpe, an independent senator in Victoria, told the BBC that “Albanese particularly is too scared to mention us [Indigenous Australians] because of his failed referendum that we should never have had in the first place”.

Thorpe spearheaded an Indigenous-run Blak Sovereign movement opposing the Voice, calling instead for priority to be given to a legally binding treaty between First Nations peoples and the Australian government.

“In previous elections, even though we may have been an afterthought and tacked on the end of the sentences, like we always are, at least we were mentioned. Now it’s complete silence,” she said.

“This election could have been a real opportunity for both leaders to unite the nation and tell some truth about the plight of our people. They need to tell the truth that these injustices continue, and they need to tell the truth that they are in a position to change that, to turn that around.”

Since 2008, the Australian government’s Closing the Gap strategy has sought to reduce levels of Indigenous disadvantage through the annual tracking of 18 key measures in areas such as health and education.

The latest review, however, found only four were on track to be met, while four were worsening – including the annual rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander incarceration, which was up 12% in a year.

Despite these trends, Professor Rodney Smith of the University of Sydney says the defeat of the Voice – including in many Labor strongholds – makes it “electorally foolish” to talk too much about First Nations issues this election.

He points to Coalition adverts that tie money “wasted” on the referendum – which is estimated to have cost more than $A400m – into the discussion about cost of living and a struggling economy.

Prof Smith also argues, however, that the 2025 election is not unprecedented in its lack of focus on Indigenous affairs, but rather a return to the norm after several years of the issues receiving more attention than usual.

“I’m not saying people shouldn’t care about this,” he says. “I’m just saying that generally speaking, the electorate doesn’t particularly care about it.”

Recent data from Australian National University (ANU) seems to back that up. A long-term study of voter attitudes found that between January 2024 and January 2025 there was a sharp decline in the number of people believing it was the government’s responsibility to reduce the gap in living standards between First Nations Australians and the rest of the population.

“This lack of policy focus (by Labor and the Coalition) reflects a low prioritisation amongst the Australian population” ANU’s Professor Nicholas Biddle said.

Independent MP Bob Katter puts it more bluntly.

A former minister of Aboriginal Affairs when a Queensland state MP in the 1980s, Mr Katter says he thinks about the struggles of many Indigenous Australians “every night before I go to bed”.

He told the BBC he believes in more self-governance and has campaigned to give greater access to farmable land and fishing rights.

He also admits he doesn’t talk about those issues on the campaign trail, though.

“As a politician that’s got to win votes in the election, I wouldn’t be game,” he told the BBC.

That’s hard for many Indigenous people to swallow given the toll the referendum took – on those on both sides of the debate.

A report published by Sydney’s University of Technology last month found that the Voice referendum led to an increase in hostile levels of racism towards First Nations People, recording 453 “validated” incidents of racism roughly six months either side of the vote.

About a fifth of all complaints contained mention of the failed referendum.

“While there was significant thought and debate given to the ideas of nation building and the righting of wrongs, the undercurrent of racism was ever present,” said the report’s guest author Professor Lindon Coombes in his introduction.

“This is its insidiousness.”

In Yarrabah, Ms Andrews becomes suddenly tearful, telling how her two daughters, studying at university in Brisbane, were intimidated and got “so many racist remarks” after the vote.

“To do this to young people, who have left community to better their life and to be something, is so wrong,” she said.

It was not just increased racism that caused harm, but the tone and intensity of the debate leading up to the vote, many say.

Mr Mundine says his participation in the toxic and polarised national discussion meant he felt alienated from many in his community.

“I got kicked off boards. I lost jobs… [I] was ostracised.”

“Being the topic of every discussion for such a long period of time was overwhelming and extremely damaging to people’s social and emotional well-being,” says Clinton Schultz, a Gamilaroi/Gomeroi man, psychologist and Director of First Nations Strategy at the Black Dog Institute.

“The aftermath of that has left a lot of people not willing to engage in in the debates moving forward.”

Millima May, a Kulumbirigin Danggalaba Tiwi woman from the Northern Territory, in 2023 told the BBC all First Nations people wanted was “a seat at the table” where decisions about their lives were made. But now there’s been a “tactical” decision by some in the community to “lie low”.

“I think a lot of Aboriginal people have really chosen to opt out of the political space and of so -called democracy in Australia,” she says.

“If you could trust our political leaders and candidates to have nuanced and informed conversations, then you would be able to have debates and conversations in a respectful and safe way.

“But that is not how Australian politics is operating at the moment.”

Additional reporting by Tiffanie Turnbull