Oh look, another confidently incorrect Australian putting their piece into a gun debate.

Australia banned guns,

Australia definitely has not banned civilian firearm ownership.

it was the right thing to do

Very debatable. Letting the government have the monopoly on lethal tools is giving a lot of trust to the people a fairly significant portion of the population consider corrupt.

people who need guns still have them.

Considering you think civilians can’t have firearms I’d be surprised you even know what people can own in your own country

But not bloody assault rifles.

Americans can’t even own (new) assault rifles. AR15’s are not assault rifles, and civilians do own them in Australia too, ask me how I know.

These idiots need to look at themselves in the mirror and realise that they have an obsession with a tool designed on a single purpose, killing and most of which designed for killing humans.

They definitely do not have a single purpose, anyone who blindly says this has no idea how huge shooting sports are. In most western countries it’s literally the biggest sport participation wise by a huge margin.

No criminals won’t follow the law but everyone has the potential to break the law or steal guns from someone who does abide by the law.

Don’t need to do that these days, submachine guns are super easy to manufacture at home, rifles and pistols are just around the corner. You’d probably be surprised how many illegal firearms are already out there, the ADF has lost a lot of stuff over the years too.

It’s tough but they are killing machines and if you can’t see that you are a f*cking idiot

You can say that about so many more things than firearms, the end use is what always matters though. I’d be able to argue the opposite when shooting sports are the safest sport to participate in, in Australia anyway.

I agree that it may have been bungled, but I think that some of what you said isn’t quite right.

Fair point, I’d missed that in the pamphlet, it’s still a super vague change though. Where are the definitions of what this body will look like, what powers it grants to said body and how do they define ‘matters relating to indigenous australians’? Changes to our constitution can’t be vague, they have to be clear and concise in what and how they grant powers otherwise they’re ripe for abuse. I can think of about half a dozen ways it can be abused with the current wording.

The precise text of the constitutional amendment is already set forth. You can read it online. They put it in a physical booklet which was sent to every household in the country. You’re right that the messaging was far from perfect, especially near the start, but saying that the “yes” side can’t state what they want to change is a bit disingenuous.

I think my point above still stands, there is zero assurances or guarantees that ‘listening to indigenous voices’ and ‘giving recognition’ will lead to better outcomes for indigenous Australians, which is kind of the whole point of all of it.

Why I think it may have been bungled is that it’s the sort of change that needed to be made from a position of political strength, and I’m not sure that Labor were quite there. The “no” side was always going to have an advantage in that it’s usually easier to maintain the status quo than it is to change something.

They’re probably burnt for the next election cycle if the LNP get their act together honestly, assuming it doesn’t pass anyway.

This means that the “yes” proponents have to do a lot more work to argue their case, and when combined with the big problems that Australia is facing (cost of living, housing affordability, etc) I think a lot of folks who would be “in the middle” on the issue are understandably a bit irritated that the government can appear to be putting more work into this than those other issues.

Yeah that’s basically the nail in the coffin for them, it’s all well and good to do this but maybe don’t time it when a not insignificant chunk of our population is having to choose between a roof over their heads and being well fed.

It’s been bungled pretty badly by the yes side, when you can’t actually say exactly what you want to change in our constitution it’s not a great sign of a decent change. If they could say exactly what they wanted to change (assuming it was reasonable) and Labor explained exactly what policy they wanted to back it up with I think they’d convince a lot of conservative Australians to vote yes as well. As it stands it isn’t likely to get through, I haven’t talked to an indigenous person who is going to vote yes for it yet either.

I also find it a bit ironic that Tasmania, the state that practically wiped out it’s indigenous population that they’re most in support of it.