Where Did All the Voice Money Go?

We all know that the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum, which cost around $450 million of your taxpayer money, was a complete flop with Australians collectively voting No, but it wasn’t from lack of trying! A number of major Australian companies donated millions of dollars towards the Yes campaign. What these businesses have to do with pushing for constitutional amendment, I don’t know. It seems rather absurd, if you ask me.

In this video, we take a look at the Australian Electoral Commission’s Transparency Register. The AEC is obliged to publish financial information such as donations and expenditure before the end of 24 weeks after voting day. Noting this was updated 3 April 2024. It should also be noted that the disclosure threshold for this referendum was $15,200, This means many donations are not visible, because only those above the threshold need to be disclosed. It can be a little bit dodgy in that there is nothing to stop anyone making multiple small donations to avoid disclosure. Luckily, our big woke companies wanted people to know what they were donating. That was the whole point of their donations – Virtue signalling! It certainly wasn’t a very good business decision.

Anyway, we’re interested in the Transparency Register. Specifically, Referendum Returns. The organisation Australians for Indigenous Constitutional Recognition, which ran the Yes23 campaign, received a massive $47.4 million or so, of which it spent around $43.8 million, by far the biggest beneficiary of donations during the referendum campaign. The University of New South Wales, which housed the Uluru Statement from the Heart group, received around $11.1 million in donations. Australians for Unity were the largest No campaigner receiving around $10.8 million in donations. With the Liberal Party of Australia, who backed the No campaign, coming in a distant fourth with $1.9 million. There’s dozens more entities listed, which we won’t go into here, but no matter how you look at it, the Yes campaign easily outspent the No campaign, and they still lost.

Interestingly, if you sort by Referendum Expenditure, you’ll see that there were two major No campaigners, Australians for Unity, who we saw before, who spent $11.8 million, and Advance Australia, who worked with Australians for Unity, who spent $10.4 million. So together they spent around $22 million, but together they only received around $12 million. So where did the extra $10 million come from? Well, it didn’t. In its disclosure documents to the AEC, Australians for Unity said that many of its expenses were double counted, because it passed on donations to Advance Australia. I don’t know what the AEC are trying to pull, or if it’s just an accounting mistake, but either way, the Yes campaign way outspent the No campaign. According to the Guardian, “Yes campaign groups received more than five times as much in donations as no side in voice referendum”.

When it comes to individual donors, we’ve got the Paul Ramsay Foundation who donated $7 million. According to their website, their purpose is to “help end cycles of disadvantage in Australia by enabling equitable opportunity for people and communities to thrive”. Coming in second at $4.4 million was Givia, the Yajilarra Trust. I can’t find much information about them. Australia’s fourth-largest bank I think, ANZ, donated $2.5 million of your deposits towards a socially divisive issue. Oil and gas production company Woodside Energy, $2.1 million. One of Australia’s largest listed companies and the largest bank, Commonwealth Bank happily spent $2 million of shareholder money trying to divide us up along ethnic lines. The third-largest bank Westpac, obviously didn’t want to be left out, and donated $2 mil, as did Wesfarmers, owners of Bunnings, Kmart, Target, Officeworks, just to name a few.

My personal favourite, Woolworths, who donated over $1.5 million. Why would a supermarket involve itself in trying to promote constitutional change?

Anyway, I think you get the idea. These companies spent millions of dollars trying to sway your opinion. It didn’t work, but they tried.

What if these companies instead donated their millions directly to Indigenous causes? Wouldn’t that have been a more effective use of their money if they were truly interested in helping Indigenous people? I don’t know, maybe that would have been wasted too, but these donations, this money, was definitely wasted. It essentially went to advertising, right?

Coalition’s Indigenous Affairs spokeswoman Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price also made comment on the funding, telling those larger corporations to focus on providing for their customers, not telling them what to think.

“Where did my money go?” I hear some Indigenous people ask. Bluntly speaking, it was flushed down the toilet.

AUSTRALIAN ELECTORAL COMMISSION’S TRANSPARENCY REGISTER
https://transparency.aec.gov.au/

MUSIC
Allégro by Emmit Fenn