Campaigning for both sides of the question started in early 2023. Some of the groups and individuals involved are listed below. ; a key figure for the Yes campaign
Yes • Uphold and Recognise (2015) was founded by lawyer Damien Freeman and Coalition spokesperson on Indigenous Australians,
Julian Leeser (who is no longer with the group). and has been a member of the
First Nations Referendum Working Group, • Parliamentary friends of the Uluru Statement (launched on 13 February 2023) is a
non-partisan group co-chaired by Labor's
Gordon Reid; Liberal
Bridget Archer; and Independent
Allegra Spender. • Jack Beetson, co-founder and executive director of Aboriginal education initiative
Literacy for Life sat on the referendum working group.
No : a key figure for the No campaign •
Advance (formerly Advance Australia), a conservative lobby group, set up a
No campaign which included new social media advertising campaign titled "The Voice is Not Enough" (or just "Not Enough"), aimed at a young demographic and targeting the "progressive no" vote, suggesting that the Voice would be too weak, or is not the main priority for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. A number of people have accused Advance of misrepresenting their views and using photographs of them in its campaign without their permission. Advance has been funded by millionaires such as Jet Couriers founder Brett Ralph,
Kennards Self Storage head Sam Kennard, building material scion Rodney O'Neil, health company chief Marcus Blackmore and fund manager Simon Fenwick. In addition, the group has created a "Referendum News" Facebook page showing anti-Voice posts, and has advertised on Facebook and
Instagram. According to
University of Technology Sydney political scientist Jeremy Walker, Advance also collaborated with fossil fuel companies and
Atlas Network affiliates including the
Centre for Independent Studies,
Institute of Public Affairs, and
LibertyWorks (founded by entrepreneur
Andrew Cooper) to promote the
No campaign. • Australians for Unity, created on 11 May 2023, led by
Warren Mundine and
Jacinta Nampijinpa Priceboth Indigenous Australians. This is a merger of two key former campaigns: • , a key figure for the No campaignRecognise a Better Way was led by Mundine and included former Nationals deputy PM
John Anderson, and former
Keating government minister
Gary Johns. Price officially deleted her membership of the Voice
No Case Committee from the Senate register of pecuniary interests on 13 August 2023 (although she had never disclosed her interest before). • Fair Australia was a
No campaign led by Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (who was originally part of the Recognise a Better Way group including Senator
Lidia Thorpe, who spoke at the
National Press Club on 16 August.
Advertising and media The government launched its official advertising campaign about the referendum in May 2022, to provide information about what the proposal is, what the Voice would do and how it would be set up, and to encourage Australians to prepare themselves for it. The AEC (which is an independent
statutory authority) launched its major education phase in August 2023, aimed at helping and educating voters to prepare for the referendum. An analysis of various contributors to the campaigns published in early August suggested that the
No campaign represented by
Advance Australia were using
fear as their underlying message, and focussing on prominent
Yes campaigners such as
Thomas Mayo and Teela Reid. The
Blak Sovereign Movement argued that a treaty should be negotiated ahead of establishing the Voice. The Uluru Dialogue was using a sense of pride to show how the nation would be a better place with the Voice in place. Yes23 emphasised fairness and integrity. The report analysed the relative levels of success of the different approaches. The
Yes and
No campaigns started advertising on social media in early 2023, and although both had spent around on advertising on
Facebook between mid-March and mid-June 2023, it was found that each had targeted different audiences. The biggest spenders were Fair Australia and Yes23. From 3 September 2023, with
John Farnham's support, "
You're the Voice" was used to advocate for the
Yes campaign as a soundtrack to a video ad. The video for the
Yes campaign, which aired on several platforms, includes the 1983
America's Cup yacht race (won by an Australian yacht); the handback of
Uluru to its
traditional owners in 1985; and the
landmark Mabo land rights case in 1992. At the end of August, the top five items on Facebook and X included several that were critical of the Voice and served the
No campaign. Their analysis showed how negative stories can have the strongest impact on people's attention, and also how far articles on
traditional media could reach on social media. At that time, the Yes23 campaign had spent more than any other campaign group; however, they were less geographically focused than spending by
No campaigns. It concluded that while there were many more
Yes than
No ads published, its message was spread over 33 disparate themes, whole
No ads predominantly covered only seven, which were all negative. By the end of September, online advertising by both camps was heavily focused on the Tasmania and South Australia, which were regarded as "battleground" states. Fair Australia started using
TikTok in May, and was using it far more extensively and proving more successful than the
Yes campaign by October.
Yes campaigners on other social media such as Facebook, X, and
Instagram had large followings. This may reflect the fact that the younger demographic on TikTok were more likely to be
Yes voters, and the
No campaign wanted to reach them. There has been considerable activity in news and other traditional media from both sides of the debate, including TV news (used by around 58% of Australians in 2023), news published online (51%), and in print (19%).
Mass media in Australia are highly concentrated, with Rupert Murdoch's
News Corp Australia dominating the landscape, owning over two-thirds of leading newspapers along with most online news websites; three News Corp outlets occupy the top three positions in the nation, based on popularity and viewership. An interim report commissioned by the Australians for a Murdoch Royal Commission group as part of its "Murdoch Referendum Accountability Project" was published in September 2023.
University of Adelaide academic Victoria Fielding and a team of researchers analysed data on reporting and
commentary by News Corp about the Voice between July and August 2023, covering
The Australian,
Herald Sun,
Daily Telegraph, and
Sky News Australia. It found that on the whole, news reporting was unbiased and accurate, but the opinion pieces were almost all in favour of the
No vote. The majority of News Corp's content was commentary, not reporting, so when the various articles and videos were examined together, around 70% of the coverage favoured
No arguments.
Andrew Bolt and
Peta Credlin were the top contributors in favour of a
No vote.
Incidents In July 2023, a cartoon ad promoting the
No campaign in the lead-up to the referendum was published by
Advance Australia in the
Australian Financial Review, featuring
caricatures of
Thomas Mayo a signatory and advocate of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, along with, MP and
Yes advocate
Kate Chaney, and her father businessman
Michael Chaney. This led to bipartisan condemnation of the ad as "racist". The
AFR later apologised for the ad. In July 2023,
Big W, an Australian chain of
discount department stores, announced it would stop its in-store announcements that expressed support for the Indigenous voice to parliament. In early October, the AEC asked the
Yes campaign to remove a social media post that contained a misleading graphic that could cause
No voters to cast an invalid vote. In early October, the AEC asked the
Yes campaign to move their signage away from theirs to avoid confusion, because both were of a similar purple colour.
Misinformation and disinformation Some opponents of the Voice, primarily
right-wing and
far-right politicians and commentators,
internet trolls, and members of the
sovereign citizen movement, have spread online
misinformation,
disinformation and unfounded
conspiracy theories regarding the referendum. This activity is most prominent on
Telegram,
Twitter and
WeChat. According to independent monitors and
fact-checkers, online debate has focused on
race, particularly on Twitter. Ben James, editor of the
Australian Associated Press FactCheck team, which monitors content on Facebook,
Instagram and
TikTok, says that the amount of misinformation and disinformation had by early September exceeded that which had been observed on social media ahead of the
2022 Australian election. Leading Indigenous campaigner
Thomas Mayo has been subjected to a great deal of
racial abuse. While some misinformation has been observed from people on both sides of the discussion, there was generally more on the
No side – although it is noted that not all of the claims emanated from the official No campaign. Social media experts have observed "
bot-like behaviour" that spread the same content across social media. A
preprint study in September 2023 showed
Yes tweets dominating the Twitter platform, including amplification of misinformation and conspiracy theories created by the
No side, with the
Yes voters trying to fact-check and correct them. Politicians and media were also increasing the themes of "racial division" and "hidden agenda" on Twitter, in particular
Sky News Australia. Many of the
No accounts appeared to be recently created and suspicious, although there was little evidence of social bots. The preprint concluded "Overall, our findings reveal a media ecosystem fraught with confusion, conspiratorial sensemaking, and strategic media manipulation". It was reported that much of the misleading information and disinformation has been promoted by internet trolls linked to the
Chinese Communist Party, with China being accused of
espionage, attempting to undermine Western influence and attempting to silence Western criticism of
human rights abuses in China. An analysis by Recorded Future confirmed the findings of
Australian Strategic Policy Institute in this regard but found no evidence that Iran or Russia were trying to influence the debate. However, it continues its work and is regularly published by
ABC News. Until 2025 when RMIT FactLab (later rebranded as RMIT Lookout) was permanently shut down quietly in February 2025.
Quality of public debate Concerns were aired about the quality of public debate, by both campaigns and private individuals on both sides of the debate, in some cases describing it as divisive and "toxic". Political commentator
Laura Tingle described the debate as "bitter", criticising the
No campaign in particular. Marcia Langton was accused of calling
No voters "racists", after
The Australian published an article headlined "Langton brands
No voters 'racist, stupid; she claimed she was referring to the tactics of
No campaigners, not the voters, which she said were "based in racism and stupidity". There has been racism directed against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, including criticism of unrelated topics such as
Welcomes to Country, claims that Indigenous people have special treatment, and promulgation of racist stereotypes. "Progressive No" campaigner
Lidia Thorpe, who herself has been subject to racist abuse and death threats, exposed a video of a hooded man making racist remarks, burning an
Aboriginal flag, and giving a
Nazi salute. ==Opinion polling==