Uluru Dialogue calls No campaigns tactics misleading, dishonest

Prominent "Yes" campaigners have criticised the "No" campaign for engaging in deliberate fearmongering tactics after an online training session was leaked to the media.

The leaked session revealed the "No" activist group Advance's strategy to make people suspicious of the Voice to Parliament.

According to the leaked tape, "No" campaign volunteers were told not to identify themselves as "No" campaigners while conducting phone calls and raise false reports of compensation being paid to Indigenous Australians should the "Yes" vote gain momentum.

Uluru Dialogue representative and "Yes" campaigner Roy Ah-See called the act "one of the most un-Australian acts in political history".

"The Australian people are being taken for mugs by the 'No' campaign in a tactic that is distinctly un-Australian: they are telling their campaign workers to be dishonest to Aussies, stay anonymous, and not identify themselves as belonging to the 'No' campaign," Mr Ah-See said.

"And they expressly teach their volunteers to lead with fear, not facts, creating doubt by throwing around issues they have 'heard' which are not what Australians will be voting on.

"Is there any worse insult than discrediting the intelligence of our fellow citizens?"

In a previous interview with The Examiner, opposition spokesperson for Indigenous affairs and prominent "No" campaigner Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price called the "Yes" campaign misleading.

"I think Australians are, in general, good people with good intentions. There is no shortage of goodwill in our country toward marginalised Indigenous Australians," she said.

"I think the Prime Minister and proponents of the 'Yes' campaign have sold to some people the idea that this is the only way to move forward, that there is no other way, effectively exploiting the goodwill of Australian people."

Mr Ah-See said the "Yes" campaign "believes in the best of our fellow Australians".

"The 'No' campaign has no interest in running a fair and open conversation, just like they have no interest in improving the lives of First Nations Peoples and all Australians," he said.

"They have no solutions or alternatives. The 'No' campaign seeks to entrench the same old policy failures that haven't improved the lives of Indigenous Australians for decades.

"We call on all Australians to recognise the 'No' campaign tactics for what they are: designed to deceive and mislead."

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