Opinion: Financial returns show Voice was a David vs Goliath battle

(We recently) saw the release of the financial returns for last year's divisive Voice referendum.

It confirms what we already knew: this was a David vs Goliath battle.

The Yes campaign spent around $65 million, five times the expenditure of the Fair Australia No campaign.

The list of donors to the Yes side is a who's who of big corporations, woke philanthropists, and activist NGOs.

You have to wonder how shareholders and customers of companies like Woolworths, Telstra, Wesfarmers, and all the big banks feel about having money poured down the drain on this attack on our constitution.

And it was all done during a worsening cost of living crisis.

They tried to divide the country and made you pay for it.

But the facts are now there in black and white on the AEC website: the Voice was the priority of the elites, activists and corporations.

The No campaign was supported by everyday Aussies.

Despite the Yes campaign outspending the No campaign by an astonishing amount, Australians recognised the Voice for what it was: Albanese's Voice of Division.

The voice was going to entrench division in our constitution and not practically help the most marginalised in our community.

And since the Voice's defeat we've seen just how much Albanese and the Voice activists really care about helping address Indigenous disadvantage.

Albanese has had to be dragged kicking and screaming to care about crime in Alice Springs and continues to run away from calls for accountability for government spending on Indigenous programs.

And while some leaders of the Yes campaign might pop up occasionally licking their wounds in the pages of lefty newspapers or have taken up nice jobs at US universities, the rest have vanished without a trace.

You can't help but wonder if helping Aboriginal people really was the goal or it was just about their own legacy building.

Either way, Australians delivered a clear democratic message on October 14 in the face of an overwhelming effort from the activists and elites to buy their preferred result.

We can only hope that the big corporations will learn the lesson: they should focus on providing for their customers, not telling them what to think.

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The final results of the Voice referendum were formally confirmed last year, after Australians emphatically rejected the proposal for an Indigenous advisory board.

Australians in October 2023 voted on whether an Indigenous advisory group should be enshrined in the constitution.

To pass the referendum, the proposal needed a majority of 'yes' votes in at least six states and nationally, but it achieved neither.