VOTING on the Voice referendum on October 14 is just a fortnight away, and it does not look promising that it will get over the line.

With all the nonsense about it on social media and from the mouths of some politicians, it would be so easy to dismiss the Voice referendum as just another battle between political parties. 

That’s what Liberal leader Peter Dutton would like us to believe.

It is so easy to forget that it are the First Nations People who are asking for a Voice to Parliament and recognition in the constitution, when they wrote the Uluru Statement from the Heart. 

It is easy also to ignore that these were the elders and leaders representing about 80 per cent of the Indigenous population of Australia.

It’s easy for those who oppose the Voice to claim the referendum is all about prime minister Anthony Albanese and the Labor party, when the federal government listened to the wishes of the majority of our Aboriginal people. 

It seems that for the Liberal Party ‘No-sayers’ it is not about what is best for our First Nations People, but about political point scoring through misinformation and sometimes outright lies.

If the referendum fails it will harm the PM’s reputation, so that is the target.

It is simplistic to claim that the Voice is racist and would divide Australia by race, when the fact is that this country has been divided by race since the English settled here. 

The invasions of the east and west coasts created racism and the loss of basic human rights for those who have lived here for over 50,000 years. 

People were removed from their land, children were taken from their parents, and many of them were assaulted and raped by the priests and nuns who were supposed to care for them.

The children were not allowed to speak their native language, were used as slave labour and were easy sexual prey for men when they worked as servants in the homes of the wealthy.

Aboriginal people died en masse from the European influenza and were killed in massacres, but supposedly that did not do them any harm. 

To claim that colonisation did not have a negative impact on our First Nations People is absolute rubbish. 

Many are still suffering from it, as the traumas has been passed on from generation to generation.

The No camp say Indigenous people already have sufficient representation, but all those ministers of Aboriginal Affairs in our parliaments have not made enough positive change for Aboriginal people. 

They want a better system, where they have a real voice, that will hopefully see real change for the betterment of their people. 

Is that really too much to ask for? What are we non-Aboriginal people afraid of?

The condescending colonisation will continue if the No vote wins and the referendum fails. 

It will mean that non-Aboriginal people will have again decided what is best for those ‘poor primitive natives’, although 80 per cent of them are pleading with us to finally give them a real Voice to Parliament. 

That is why I consider voting YES my only option!

Roel Loopers/Freoview