A LOCAL group has formed to campaign for the ‘Yes’ vote in the lead up to the Voice referendum, and will be out and about in the district making their case.

Sometime before the end of the year, Australians will be asked whether they approve of altering the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

That timeline was set in process a month ago following a vote in the Senate, and since then the 15 or so people that make up ‘Portland and Heywood for Yes’ have been meeting to plan how to help the affirmative vote locally.

Co-convenor Andy Govanstone said the chief aim was to inform the public about what the Voice would mean.

“We're here as individuals, not representing organisations, we think it's just too important not to be involved in encouraging the Yes vote and making sure that people have got the information they need to come to that conclusion,” he said.

“We've got about 100 days or so to the vote, so in that time will be distributing information and talking to people in all sorts of ways…just really providing opportunities for people to become involved in the discussions to broaden the community's understanding of referendum and why it's so important.

“The Voice has potential to be really positive turning point in Australia's democracy, to work with government to close the gap.

“Polling indicates there's about 18 to 20% of the electorate that are undecided, and we'd like to provide the opportunity for those people to become better informed about why the Yes vote is so important.”

The volunteer group, aligned with the national YES23 campaign, plans to hold sausage sizzles and community events across the district over the coming months to encourage conversations about the referendum, along with a letterbox campaign.

That all kicks off this Saturday, July 15, with a Worthwhile Conversations event from 10.30am at the Portland Library, with Mr Govanstone and Gunditjmara man Uncle Michael ‘Mookeye’ Bell, talking on the subject ‘why we’re voting Yes’.

Uncle Michael was recently re-elected to represent the South-West Region on the Victorian First Peoples’ Assembly, essentially the State’s version of the Voice, and put his weight strongly behind the Yes campaign.

“I think it's just a natural progression to move into this space,” Uncle Michael said.

“It's a pathway that I've been on all my adult life, and a continuation from the Elders before me to get here.

“To be enshrined in the Constitution is empowering for Aboriginal people.”

The form that the Voice will take is up to the discretion of the Federal Government of the day, but Uncle Michael said to him it is important that its members are elected representatives, like the Assembly.

The Victorian Government has had a recognition of Aboriginal people in its Constitution since 2004, before forming the Assembly in 2019, and Uncle Michael said it gave a good example of what could be achieved by the Voice beyond just recognition.

“Moving into the phase of an elected voice was quite significant, because one of our first things we've done as a chamber, the First Peoples’ Assembly, was to lobby for the Yoorrook Justice Commission, and the government heard loud and clear the need to have a truth and telling truth telling commission to go alongside a treaty process, so we made that happen,” he said.

“The opportunity to have a Voice to the (Federal) Government will ensure that we have our elected people to present some terms to the Government.”

While the conversation is centred around Aboriginal and Torres Straight Island people, Mr Govanstone said they are largely content to trust local Indigenous people to be informed and make their own mind up, and so the group will be attending to the rest of the voters with their campaign.

“We recognise that the majority of voters in the electorate are not Indigenous and they're the ones that we are really focusing on,” he said.

“Indigenous people have got a lot of pressures on them, we don't want to add to that.”