Canberra 'yes' Voice to Parliament campaigners vow to take efforts interstate

People chanted "from Curtin, heal the hurting" and "from Hughes, yes we choose" at the Linked Hands for Yes event on Saturday in the city's south.

Campaigners claim the ACT's Yes23 camp has more registered volunteers, totalling about 1000, per capita than any other state or territory, and that they have more tactics than just singing songs in a Curtin park.

ACT campaign co-ordinator Rob Baillieu, former volunteer campaign manager for Kooyong independent MP Monique Ryan, said that includes door knocking and cold-calling people in other states.

He said Canberrans volunteering for the "yes" campaign ranged from CEOs to supermarket workers and Uber drivers.

"The only thing uniting them is a willingness to listen and uplifting Indigenous voices," Mr Baillieu said.

An Essential poll reported 65 per cent of Australians supported the voice in August 2022, but this dropped to 47.8 per cent a year later.

This is despite the "yes" team outspending the "no" campaign nationally, and being Facebook's biggest advertiser.

For the government to be able to alter the constitution by implementing an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, the majority of Australians and at least four of six states would need to vote yes.

Labor MP Alicia Payne was at the Curtin event. She said even though the ACT does not count as a state, "every vote counts" in the national poll.

"Every vote that we get brings us closer to getting that 'yes' result," she said.

Wiradjuri man and artist Boomanulla Williams said he travels around Australia campaigning for the "yes" vote.

Mr Williams said he grew up on a mission, destined to "a life of oppression and poverty".

He said a constitutionally enshrined Voice would help empower Indigenous people.

"If you relieve the oppression, and give us an equal opportunity, then people wouldn't be going in jail, the unemployment rate wouldn't be as right, we wouldn't be homeless, [or] on drugs. We'll be able to be self sufficient," he said.

Mr Williams talks to undecided voters about his life in the hope it will inspire them to "vote with their heart".

"I tell them what it's like growing up on [an] Aboriginal mission. I'll say to them after the conversation ... would you like your children to grow up on a mission the way I did? Then I'll leave it at that," he said.

The "no" campaign's official Australian Electoral Commission document says a Voice would be "legally risky ... divisive and permanent".

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"Enshrining a Voice in the constitution for only one group of Australians means permanently dividing our country," the document says.

"There are currently hundreds of Indigenous representative bodies at all levels of government, along with the National Indigenous Australians Agency ... A centralised Voice risks overlooking the needs of regional and remote communities."

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