North Sydney, Warringah defy national referendum trend
The Voice to Parliament Referendum may have failed, but adjoining seats North Sydney and Warringah both returned a strong ‘Yes’ vote.
Independents represent both seats, with Kylea Tink and Zali Steggall active campaigners for Yes in the last few months. North Sydney returned a majority of 59 per cent, with Warringah at 58.8 (at the time of writing). Ms Tink told North Shore Living that she was ‘incredibly proud’ that North Sydney was one of the few seats that voted Yes. “That outcome directly reflects the amount of effort our community put into this referendum. We literally had hundreds of people from right across our electorate, put in hundreds of hours on the phones and on street corners.
“What took place in North Sydney was democracy at its best in people creating space to have conversations with their friends and family.”
Both politicians posted emotional videos after the result on Instagram, with Ms Steggall saying how ‘incredibly disappointed’ she was with Australia, citing misinformation as a key issue.
“The (Voice) message has been twisted and contorted with conspiracy theories and rubbish around Australia,” Ms Steggall said on her post. “If there’s one thing (the result) shows is that we need so much more education about what constitutional recognition means. And how much disadvantage there is (for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people).
Ms Steggall said ‘political opportunism’ by Federal opposition leader Peter Dutton was also to blame. “This was all about scoring a political point, not about doing the right thing.”
Both women spoke about how engaged their communities were on the issue, with Ms Tink telling North Shore Living that the community independence movement. was about communities ‘taking back their democracy and having the capacity to express their own democratic thinking and their own democratic rights without it having to be filtered through a party ideology’.
Ms Steggall echoed a similar sentiment on her post, saying: “My fellow teals have shown what a community movement can do. People are informed and understand and are engaged in their democratic process.
“Politics of fear get us nowhere. We have to find positive solutions.”