Australia

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Already, however, the public debate around those 92 words has grown like an invasive weed, generating ill-will and dispute over issues that are far removed from the question at hand.

"Prior to 1967, census asked a question about Aboriginal race to establish numbers of 'half-castes' and 'full-bloods'," reports this very handy research brief from the excellent folk at the Parliamentary Library.

So the failure to count Indigenous people in these calculations skewed all sorts of things, with particular ramifications for states and territories with larger First Nations populations.

If the Yes campaign in 1967 had been "Vote Yes To Remove The Ban On Making Discriminatory Laws For Aboriginal People and Also To Fix A Nagging Administrative Matter In The Calculation Of Federal Payments And Electoral Boundaries" – how do you think it would have fared?

You'll see that the proposed Voice "may make representations" to the parliament and to federal departments "on matter relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples".

That's how constitutional law works; the High Court chucks out legislation that doesn't accord with the spirit of what the Australian voting population has agreed to have enshrined in our national document.

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