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How has Australia forever changed the world? What is the most notable dinky-di invention ever: Google Maps, penicillin, Vegemite, ultrasound scanners, the electronic power drill? It’s an interesting question, but all of the above antipodean achievements are outranked by the secret ballot.
Now adopted all over the democratic world, this concept of anonymous voting and simple make-an-X instructions was introduced in Victoria and South Australia in 1858. It is a uniquely Australian invention and rightly celebrated as the ‘Australian ballot’ — although not, it seems, by YES vote supporters happy to declare their voting intentions via bumper stickers, lapel pins, T-shirts, tattoos, posters and Facebook profiles, even Qantas jets. The suggestion that voting in secret is a freedom to be respected is apparently so much antiquarian twaddle, according to my proud YES-voting neighbours, whose terrace houses on their leafy inner-city Sydney streets are now peppered with YES posters.
The first Yes poster popped up a few weeks ago, giving the occupants significantly woke first-mover 
status. Other neighbours soon joined the visual chorus, but what started as a trickle has not developed into a full flood. A drive through local streets indicates this little pocket of Paddington may be a hotbed of YES activists but their enthusiasm seems not to be widely replicated in less conspicuously virtuous suburbs..
The polls tell me the YES vote may be struggling, although we are still in early days of the campaign, and we may still end up with streets filled with YES YES YES. The local councils are already doing their bit with resident-funded street flags fluttering from main street flagpoles in support of the YES campaign.
Those who are voting YES are so confident in their progressive virtue they most definitely see themselves as being on the right side of history. So confident are they of their moral superiority that they feel deeply obliged to display it via a prominently placed poster.
‘Look at me! I’m Voting YES! Aren’t I just fantastic! It’s the right thing to do! You should vote Yes too!’
One excited neighbour has taken advantage of their house’s street corner position in order to display a YES poster to each of the cross streets, thus earning double woke brownie points and ensuring whichever direction you approach the house you are in no doubt as to their civic virtue.
So far there are enough YES posters in my street to be annoying, but they still only occupy a small minority of front doors. And this, mind you, in a suburb that elected the woke trinity of Allegra Spender as federal member, Alex Greenwich for state MP and Clover More as Mayor. One could expect that in such a neighbourhood the non-YES households would be so marginalised that they might feel under threat, perhaps nervous that their first-born offspring could be threatened unless they appropriately marked their front door with a YES sign and the blood of a sacrificial kangaroo.
Anyway, enough of Paddington. Let me tell you about a drive to the western suburbs of Sydney on the 
weekend for Father’s Day, taking Nan from her nursing home to the Catholic crypt at Rookwood cemetery. It is, I suspect, well beyond where Ms Spender and messrs Greenwich and Moore have ever set foot.
All was going well until we took a wrong turn that landed us into the Muslim section, where a large gathering of families was waving Palestinian flags.
Leaving Rookwood behind, we drove to where my wife grew up in Blacktown: Joseph Street, Theresa Street, even Kurrajong Crescent. There were no YES posters, just ordinary Sydneysiders in fibro, weatherboard or brick-veneer houses mowing their lawns or hanging out on the driveway cracking a few beers.
Apparently, there are around 10,000 declared Aborigines in Blacktown. Some of my in-laws are apparently in some mob due to an ancient indigenous grand uncle, although they are more whitebread than Tip-Top. They don’t put dots on their faces or wear possum coats, just eat Maccas and drink Toohey’s. But they do get advanced entry into uni courses and public service jobs.
After our drive, we knocked off some excellent local drive-through at a Blacktown McDonalds in the carpark opposite the goat farm that survives on Reservoir Road. Closest thing I have had to a country picnic for some time.
I thought of asking the Somalian and Indian girls working the Maccas’ drive-through how they were planning to vote on the referendum but thought better of it. Doubt they would have been interested.
My daughter-in-law is a country girl from western NSW. She put in a call to a mate on the weekend to ask how the Voice chatter was going in her town. The response was that there wasn’t much talk, but her indigenous neighbours were voting NO.
I bet they don’t have a poster out front.
It’s nice to have the people we know we need to avoid at all costs, identify themselves, as they flaunt their “regressive” virtue signalling for all to see.
Haven’t seen any NO stickers or signs – that could be regarded as either courage or stupidity, given the nasty repercussions that may well follow.
We kind of expect nastiness from these lefties who seldom tolerate disagreement.
There appears to be a few yes Voters loose in your top paddock Walter.
VOTE YES!
A quick rummage through my dangerous goods manual indicates that the
ex- clamation mark signifies that what is on offer is dangerous and YES it is actually a pollutant – a constitutional pollutant (!).
And lastly Walter the Yes groupies are all wearing sunnies- must be embarrassing going public standing behind the Yes case.
Tacit psychology the YES case supporters are also trying to distance themselves from the First Nations First page statement in the interests of irreconcilable hindsight’s .
ITS GOTTA BE NO FOR PADDO – NOSE GOT MY YES VOTE.
No surprises Walter I live in Paddington. The election of Allegra Spender and the Yessers are of the same mind set. Very intolerant of any contrary view with a sense of righteousness rivalling the Old Testament.
Wait until a few of the 1,500,000 immigrants Labor has in transit lob on their doorstep or cut into their entitlements and sense of self importance.
Unfortunately that will never happen. Occupants of the inner suburban renovated shoeboxes will never rub shoulders with new arrivals. Instead those hordes will end up in the suburban fringe of Melbourne. Places like Tarneit . Truganina and Melton. I say this as one who belongs to a hated and despised minority. White male middle aged working class and born and raise in the Western Suburbs.
I spent my early years as an architect designing school buildings in the outer west of Sydney. The people weren’t my cut, but I found them almost universally practical, generous, accepting and honest. So, I’m not surprised that they also see through the BS of the Yes mendacity. BTW, in later years I worked with Aboriginal communities. Same lack of BS there too. And nice scones for afternoon tea at meetings.
I came to Australia from Italy with my family in 1958 aged 5 years. We lived in the house that dad had bought in Paddington in 1955. I went to the local parish school, played with other kids in the lanes, drove our billy carts down the streets. Got into a couple of fights. You sorted it out.
I still live nearby. One of my daughters and her family live in the original house. The grandchildren go to the local school, as their mother and her siblings did. As their cousins do.
Not one of the four Paddington houses in the extended family has a YES or NO poster.
September 7, 2023
I get disgusted with all these Yes people too. However, I have to ask–is it wrong to ever put up a political notice? Would the author think it no more than virtue signaling if he saw a Vote No sign on someone’s house? What about all those bumper stickers that were advertised on this site?
I imagine that plenty of the Yes supporters ARE showing off; but what is wrong with encouraging people to vote a certain way? Isn’t that the duty of all of us No supporters? Why not the Yes ones, if they really believe they are right?
I agree with you Rebekah re the bumper stickers idea. As I read the article I thought it would be useful to place stickers on the posters along the lines of : “Aren’t you wonderful”, or “Are you saving the planet as well?” or “Aren’t you virtuous” etc. Paddo has certainly changed since my great-grandfather got married at the Sacred Heart church there, not far from St Vincents. Even more change since I went to a cousin’s birthday there with my mother and younger sister during the War when Dad was up in New Guinea. It was a big but exciting change to visit a terrace house with the back lane for the dunny carter after coming for the day from where we were living in a then outer suburb chez my grandparents, complete with the boring statutory fowl yard and veggie garden.
Sacred Heart Darlinghurst is still a marvellous parish and Father Brendan who attends regularly is a fine priest. “Aren’t you virtuous” is an excellent T-shirt or bumper sticker suggestion, I may have one made up for myself.
Oops. The Sacred Heart Church is in Darlinghurst close to Paddington.
Can we trust the AEC to tally the votes correctly?
That’s what I’ve been wondering – institutional capture by the radical left seems so complete that it’s a real concern. I have very little trust in the process nowadays.