As we get closer to October 14, one question has been lingering on lips and has been largely unanswered. Until now.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
Whatever the result, after this long path to holding the referendum and the current bruising campaign, what happens next?
Granted most "yes" and "no" campaigners either don't have the answers or they are worried about muddying the waters for already confused voters.
In a last days intervention, the "father of reconciliation" and Yawuru man, WA Labor senator Pat Dodson, has appeared from his cancer recovery, sans his trademark beard, to state that Indigenous people are "bogged down in a cul de sac of going nowhere" and this does not end for Australia when the referendum votes are tallied.
Win or lose, he told the National Press Club the nation will need to heal.
"After the vote on October the 14th people are going to have to look in the mirror and say, 'What have we done? And why have we done what we did? And where's it going to take us?'" he said via video link from his home town of Broome.
"The truth of our integrity as a nation is what is at stake here. The truth of that. And we will need to face up to that on the 15th of October."
Technically, if there is a "yes" result, the special envoy for reconciliation and implementation of the Uluru Statement from the Heart said Parliament would dive into the Voice's creation.
The apparent void of precise Voice detail - as Senator Dodson reminds the Constitution is about principles - would be quickly filled with a lot of "hard work" from the government. Negotiations, he said, would also begin with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the cross-benches and the opposition despite their current opposition to an enshrined Voice and Peter Dutton's observation that they would not have the numbers so the process is "stacked."
"Hopefully before the next election," Senator Dodson added.
If the "no" side wins, he warns there will be a "toxic" debate about "assimilation and co-option".
But for all his experience, and his own expectations of a backlash against the Voice, he has been stunned by the clear, substantial public division between Aboriginal leaders campaigning on either side of the Voice.
Without naming anyone, but clearly referring to Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Senator Dodson wryly said the division was over whether it was accepted that Australia was colonised and Aboriginal people were forcibly subjugated or whether the view was that Indigenous people were taken into a "winter wonderland and we lived there forever in some sort of a rose garden."
He is dismissive of opinion polls. "It's more about money making and creating fear," he said, while decrying what he said was as a lack of analysis of the "no" campaign's effectiveness.
A poignant note was struck when he quoted AFL legend Michael Long when he met Mr Howard all those years ago in Canberra after his Long Walk.
"Where is the love for my people?" he asked in an echo of 2004.
"There are many people in our society that need to know they are loved and cared for. The Aboriginal people need to know that from the Australian people. And that's why I'm hoping they'll vote "yes" on the referendum."
A moment of national unity coming or not, the mirror is being readied.
