An angry old white bloke had a go at me the other day. He didn’t like my “Free Assange” T-shirt. His reaction took me a little bit by surprise. I’d forgotten I was wearing that shirt. And I’d also forgotten about that other country, the alternative Australia that exists alongside mine but where things look different. Of course I visit that old colonial outpost every day, but I slip across the border like a ghost in disguise, conduct my business and head home again.

“What do you mean, ‘Free Assange?’”, he snorted at me. I had no time to answer before he demanded: “Why aren’t you wearing a ‘Shoot Putin’ T-shirt?”. I wasn’t going to say anything because I know they don’t speak my language in this man’s country, just as I don’t understand theirs. But because our dialects intersect enough for business purposes, which is what matters here when it’s all said and done, I had a rush of blood and blurted out an unrehearsed reply.

“Yes, you’re right. Of course Julian Assange belongs in jail. It was wrong of him to expose the crimes of powerful people, and as for publishing footage of soldiers in helicopter gunships blasting innocent people to pieces, well of course those soldiers deserve medals. You’re absolutely right”, I snapped.

Adopting the faux-camaraderie of his kind he back-pedalled a little. “No, well, it’s true he’s been in jail long enough,” he conceded, evidently for the sake of continuing the dialogue. In the next instant he switched to his topic of choice: the approaching Referendum on the Indigenous Voice to the Australian Parliament. I imagined I could see this cranky old bloke rubbing the marks on his shin where the ball and chain had chafed him. He explained that the “No” case in the official referendum brochure said Indigenous people already had so much money spent on them and when he heard some colonial official being asked on the radio about this they had only managed to say that perhaps the statement had not been fact-checked. What did I think about this, the angry man demanded.

Clearly he had identified me as an alien. I was a T-shirt slogan show-pony wannabe rebel, he concluded. Somebody who imagined himself better and smarter than the rest of the convicts chained together in the hulk or breaking rocks on the new King’s highway. I felt the scar on my own shin tingling as my next unrehearsed reply boiled up. I started trying to argue the topic on its merits, but quickly decided that was pointless. This was a man whose opinion was almost certainly set in concrete.

“I don’t need to read the brochures and neither do you,” I said. “Mr Murdoch’s newspapers are pushing the No vote, and so is Peter Dutton. There is nothing else that needs to be said or considered. That is all I need to know and I am sure it is all you need to know.”

The angry man looked away. He didn’t listen to Murdoch or Dutton, he told me – unconvincingly – and our conversation was over. Our transaction was concluded and I slipped back, relieved, across the border into my own country.

Safely home I compared notes with my wife. She’d been in that country too, and had the same story to tell. An old friend, moved to comment on the Referendum, opined that the Blackfellas were already getting too much largesse from the colonial coffers.

So much largesse. They are certainly monopolising prison cells, troubling the loyal troopers with their wild native antics and generally failing to appreciate the indulgence of the Governor and the Colonial Administration. Why won’t they just be equal, for goodness sake?

Here it is: all the drivel from the colony’s squalid racist past, repurposed for the job at hand.

Unfortunately, that rancid soup of racist claptrap is there, bubbling away and ready to be stirred. The great disgrace in 2023 is that the Murdoch press, Dutton’s Coalition and all the other apparatchiks of the lords and masters are so eager to reheat that rotten old soup for no greater purpose than to embarrass and weaken the Labor Government. Did you think they might have been genteel enough to consider the long-lasting damage that mean-minded pawn-pushing will do in this case? Not a bit of it. Not in these ugly times.

Saying No to the Voice, to this most simple and reasonable request from the First Australian members of our national family would be an atrocious and unwarranted slapdown that would echo through years to come.

What is the idea of the Voice?

A committee of Indigenous people whose job it would be to advise the government about how policies and laws would affect Indigenous Australians. A clause would be added to Australia’s creaking old constitution – doing nothing more than enabling the Voice to exist.

Parliament will have complete control over the Voice committee: how it is formed and what it can do. The Voice committee will have no power to make laws in its own right.

It’s that simple. Just a Voice to try to wind back some of the harms of the past and to help governments avoid amplifying and multiplying those harms by failing to think about possible impacts of policies and laws on Indigenous people.

It’s like if somebody in your family had a really rough trot and is having a lot of trouble getting back on their feet. Of course you want to pay special attention to how family decisions are going to affect them in future. Of course you want to avoid thoughtlessly making things worse for them by failing to consider how family plans are going to affect them.

You might say that Parliament should already do those things for Indigenous Australians, but the fact is it often forgets or fails. Sitting the Voice on its shoulder like Jiminy Cricket will help it remember.

The No case is just about making the simple sound scary, and to make gullible people believe that Indigenous people are trying to get something they shouldn’t have and don’t deserve. It’s a dirty lie.

I see how it plays in that other country I visit every day. That country is still a penal colony, at heart. Up on stage are two-faced tub-thumpers – politicians and press barons – keeping the beat and making the old lags, their ladyloves and their heirs and successors angry with blackfellas, gays, trans people, crusading journalists, Putin-apologists, woke-ism, the Yellow Peril and whoever else comes up on their weekly fatwah list.

As long as those ball-and-chain-gangs just keep swinging their hammers for the lords and masters and never look past the daily hate then all will be will in this lucky country, is what the tub-thumpers are thinking.

Don’t be fooled into letting the blackfellas pinch some gruel from your bowl, they warn. And most of all, don’t think about the lords and masters doling out that gruel, Robodebting you to death, nickel-and-diming you in a hundred ways, ripping untold billions of your Holy Dollars from the colonial coffers for their friends and cronies while you mew about the weevils in the flour.

Don’t think about that. Don’t think about thinking about it. Don’t look behind that curtain.

Listen to Mr Murdoch. Look at that nice Mr Dutton. They know what’s best for you.

Nah, stuff that.

Vote bloody Yes.

Make yourselves proud: and your children and your children’s children. Make them remember that time you told the lords and masters to stick it where it fit and you held out your hand for decency and fairness, honesty and kindness.

Vote Yes.

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My heart tells me we should change the date