The Squiz

It’s 8 sleeps until Aussies head to the polls to vote on whether we should enshrine an Indigenous Voice to Parliament in our Constitution. As we head into the final stretch, PM Anthony Albanese says he’ll do whatever he can to secure a ‘Yes’ vote on 14 October and that he’s “heartened by the campaign and the engagement that I’ve had with people who do have love for our common humanity”. But that certainly wasn’t the view of many after Indigenous Senator/Blak Sovereignty leader/’No’ campaigner Lidia Thorpe was targeted in a very ugly way yesterday. 

What’s that about?

She was targeted in a video showing an Indigenous flag being burned by a far-right extremist. Albanese described the video posted on Twitter earlier this week as “quite horrific” and a threat towards Senator Thorpe that has “no place in discourse in Australian life.” For her part, Thorpe was highly critical of the PM and the Federal Police for not doing more to protect her from extreme racial abuse. Aside from condemning the video, Albanese wouldn’t respond to Thorpe’s comments yesterday, while a statement from the Federal Police (which is investigating the video) said it takes our public officials’ safety seriously.

How is this nastiness going to impact the vote?

Dunno – and if you’re politics nerds like us, you’ll be gobbling up the analysis of how things went down after it’s run and done. But plenty of people are getting out to vote early – the latest pre-poll data from the Electoral Commission shows that, as of yesterday afternoon, more than 1.179 million Aussies had cast their votes, and 1.8 million had applied for postal votes. But there’s still a lot of campaigning left to do… Albanese confirmed that he’s going to Uluru early next week. Meanwhile, ‘No’ campaigners Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Coalition leader Peter Dutton have been in Perth and Adelaide this week. They say the referendum is causing “division” amongst Australians, and Dutton has predicted the country will vote ‘No’ “in record numbers”. TBC…