Coverage of the Voice to Parliament Debate in The Australian and Guardian Australia

The final speaker in this ANZCA 2023 session is Julie Browning, whose focus is on the role of campaigning media during the October 2023 referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. A referendum represents an unusual campaign in that it is polarised by design (the choice is a simple Yes or No), and can cut across party lines (as it did in this case, at least to some extent).

This can be both an advantage and disadvantage, as it can also lead to disorganised campaigning by multiple groups that otherwise have little in common with each other and do not get along well. In this case, the official Yes 23 campaigns positioned itself as a grassroots effort, but various political and business groups also supported a Yes vote; the No campaign was predominantly conservative and received significant funding from wealthy donors, with a handful of political operators as key voices and a more marginal role for political actors from other backgrounds.

This was also reflected in the media coverage. The present project examined especially the coverage of the referendum by the conservative broadsheet The Australian and the progressive The Guardian Australia (both of which have long had extensive coverage of Indigenous affairs, especially in The Guardian’s case also often by Indigenous writers). Such coverage also often included coverage of opinion polls, at least since the publication of the Uluru Statement in 2017. Both outlets have their own commissioned polls (Newspoll and Essential, respectively, with Essential Media also acting a partner of the Yes 23 campaign).

This study coded articles from both outlets on the Voice for the presence of major and minor actors, and for the benefits and risks of the referendum proceeding, operating, succeeding, or failing that such articles outlined. Patterns in such coverage over time are variable: from preliminary data, The Australian appears to feature a somewhat greater number of conservative politicians and No campaigners and groups than Guardian Australia, though the differences are minor and government actors are generally more prominent in both papers. No campaigners appeared more prominently only from around mid-2023, as the Voice campaign intensified.

Benefits of the passing of the referendum are considerably more prominent in Guardian Australia, though it also addressed potential risks (especially a lack of impact on the life of Indigenous Australians; The Australian highlighted especially the risks of a Voice that was too powerful. Risks in the referendum process were addressed by both, though The Guardian was highlighting misinformation and verbal attacks more strongly.