Perth Voice Interactive

“PERTH’S a ‘yes’,” Labor’s federal MP for Perth Patrick Gorman says after having doorknocked local suburbs to drum up support for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

While most national polls have shown the Yes vote dipping below 50 per cent over the past year, Mr Gorman says he’s confident local sentiment is firmly in favour of the Voice.

“More people are saying ‘yes’ than ‘no’, and that’s really encouraging,” Mr Gorman told the Voice.

“More people are saying that they think it is a very sensible proposal.”

Mr Gorman’s hopeful that as the date draws nearer the Yes sentiment will see an upwards swing. 

Since the October 14 date was announced a little over a week ago there’s been a notable surge in people volunteering for the local Yes campaign, which now has 506 volunteers out knocking on doors. They’ve hit 8740 doors between them so far.

Pauline Hanson’s No event in Perth filled the seats in Leederville in July (“Protest voices,” Voice, July 29, 2023), and the local No campaign had a sizeable launch last month: The ABC reported more than 1,000 people attended the Liberal party-backed No campaign launch at Ascot Racecourse, where the prevailing argument was that the change would be “divisive”.

While that event got big numbers, Mr Gorman says he doesn’t see the No campaigners out on the ground.

He said while doorknocking “one thing I found quite funny is a couple of people have said ‘I’ll wait til the No campaign knocks on my door’,” before making up their minds.

“Well, I think you could be waiting a while, mate. I call it the No-Show No Campaign.

“They’re just completely absent… the No campaign is just nowhere to be seen, the only place they seem to exist is on Facebook.”

Not every issue gets a federal MP out doorknocking, but Mr Gorman says he’s been out twice a week on this issue because, “I know that we can get better results if we do things by listening to First Nations peoples.”

by DAVID BELL