SPEAKERS opposed to an Indigenous Voice to Parliament dominated rallys across Australia on January 26 despite key Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander figures backing the proposal.

At Sydney’s Belmore Park, Wiradjuri woman Lynda-June Coe told the thousands-strong crowd the proposed voice was a ‘fallacy’. 

“White Australia, this is the reckoning – 235 years and we ain’t going nowhere,” she said. 

“They tried to wipe us out, still here. “They tried to breed us out, still here. “They tried to commit genocide on us, still here.”

Canberra’s Garema Place was packed with people opposed to the national day as well as the Voice to Parliament, the public square littered with posters reading ‘f*** your voice – manufactured constitutional consent’. 

Crowds around the nation demanded land rights and an end to deaths in custody, while calling for the national day to be abolished as January 26 marks the start of British colonisation. 

Many speakers called for treaty before constitutional recognition, one describing truth-telling as ‘the spear in the leg Australia needs’. 

The ACT protesters marched through town to the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, below Old Parliament House, to cries of ‘no pride in genocide’.