Western Sydney residents slam Waleed Aly and ABC hosts who said No voters were ‘too dumb’ to understand the Voice to Parliament

TV hosts Waleed Aly and Patricia Karvales have been criticised after they claimed the No vote on the Voice was driven by less-educated Australians who may not have fully grasped the complexities of the issue.

Australia resoundingly voted No to the proposed change to the constitution, with every state rejecting the proposal and only the ACT voting Yes, in a major blow for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who spearheaded the referendum.

During The Project’s analysis of the results on Monday night, Aly claimed educated Australians were more likely to vote Yes.

The Yes campaign suffered a significant setback in Western Sydney, with 10 federal electorates in the area which are critical for the Labor party all voting No. 

They are also home to millions of working class Australians that Aly referred to in his analysis of the referendum outcome.

Ned Mannoun, Mayor of Liverpool Council in Sydney’s west hit back at Aly’s comments, and said No voters in his electorate were ‘not dumb’.

Education levels were the major deciding factor on whether people voted Yes or No for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, Waleed Aly said, adding the referendum was just too ‘complicated’ for some people

‘Commentary that says “we’re not smart, that’s why we didn’t vote for The Voice” is pretty disrespectful,’ Mannoun told 2GB’s Ben Fordham.

‘People here are very intelligent. They get what’s going on, and there are multiple reasons why they didn’t vote yes to the Voice, and it wasn’t because of education reasons.

‘If you’re using tertiary education as a way to judge intelligence then I think that’s (a) very simplistic view of the world.

‘There are people, I’m sure you would’ve met them throughout your time Ben, that work bloody hard. They’re very, very, very smart people – never gone to university before.’

Mr Mannoun said voters in Western Sydney rejected the idea of supporting the Voice due to a lack of detail about the proposal. 

‘Once again, that gut feeling, I think people here can smell bullsh*t a mile away. 

‘It just doesn’t make sense because if there was detail I think they would’ve had (a) much greater chance of bringing people on, but people didn’t know what it was.

‘I couldn’t explain it to people. I had no detail, I think I have a good idea how government works,’ he said.

‘It did not make sense. So just please don’t look down on us out here.’  

Aly, who is also a university lecturer, said people with ‘the lowest levels of tertiary education … were at the low end of the Yes vote’. 

‘The biggest dividing line seems to have been education. If you were in a seat with high levels of tertiary education, bachelor or post, you were at the very top end of the Yes vote,’ Aly said.

‘And that’s not to say people who are educated know what they are doing, people who don’t have tertiary education don’t, it’s about the style of the message.’

Aly said he ‘can totally see why you would propose (the Voice). If you go through the history, you go through the experience of the people who designed it or came up with the idea, it actually makes perfect sense.

‘But most people haven’t been on that journey, and when you come to them with this idea that’s actually quite abstract and complicated, they’re going to respond with an instinct and that instinct is it just doesn’t feel right.’

Meanwhile, ABC host Patricia Karvelas came under fire after she analysed how people’s education and income reflected their vote with Fran Kelly on the ABC podcast, The Party Room.

ABC Radio National and Q&A host Patricia Karvelas (pictured) came under fire after her and Fran Kelly analysed how people’s education and income reflected their vote

‘The yes vote, if you look at it has been achieved in places where voters have a bachelor’s degree or have better than average wages Fran, right?’ Karvelas said.

‘If you’ve got a bachelor’s degree, chances are you know something about government structures, you’ve taken an interest in the kind of way these things happen, not because you’re better, but just because you’ve got the opportunity to have done that.’

The Radio National host stressed that she wasn’t ‘judging people’s achievements’ and only suggesting that those with a bachelor’s degree more likely came to a ‘different conclusion’ about the Voice.

‘I think about you know, who and where remote, Indigenous Australians kind of probably get it, because they live it,’ she said.

‘And then where people have been educated, they’ve come to different conclusions.’

‘And then you get a whole swathe of people working very hard can I say, and probably having very little time to focus on reading constitutions, or proposals, and making pretty quick on the hot decisions, where I do think quick social media campaigns probably have had a big impact.’

‘And so I think that is the bigger part of the demographic story. And the Yes campaign didn’t get to those people.’

Both Waleed and Karvelas’ comments have been slammed by Aussies as ‘out of touch’.

One said: ‘When ABC journalists like Karvelas wonder why the No campaign’s message of saying “No to Division” cut through so much, they should look take a long hard look at themselves.’

Another added: ‘That comes from a talking head working in a sheltered workshop.’

A third said: ‘I’ve met so many university indoctrinated drones who confuse an education with intelligence! They’re walking irony and will never know it’.

‘Education doesn’t make you intelligent; critical, independent thinking is part of intelligence,’ a fourth agreed.

A fifth added: ‘These elite people in their rich suburbs also live far, far away from the issues, people and places that the Voice was for. 

‘Perhaps we less educated in the regions have a better understanding at a grassroots level as we live it, see it and understand it from a different perspective.’