At the convenience of racists

There is one and only one reason none of the measures proposed over the last century or so to improve the situation of Indigenous people in Australia have not worked: 

RACISM

Racism on the part of settlers who deny reality, cherry pick facts, and generally do whatever they can to avoid having to stop wallowing in their cesspit of hate - including some comforters as using terms like “unconscious bias”.

There have been plenty of great suggestions for improvement - and ATSIC was one of the best things I’ve seen in my life, and the widespread use of Reconciliation Plans has been a very good step, but the white supremacist settlers won’t have a bar of measures that some other nations implemented decades ago - well, centuries, in the case of some treaties (incluing some here that have been ignored, conveniently "forgotten about", or flat out overruled). 

And now we have the Voice to Parliament - a proposal that, as I understand it, came out of a consensus of many (not all) Indigenous people, based on where Australia is now, including what has and hasn’t worked on the journey to here. 

It is not the be all and end all: treaty, truth-telling and constitutional recognition are just part of the other measures that are required, along with things like transitioning Closing the Gap to Ending the Gap.

However, from a social and political point of view, opposing the Voice, in my opinion, plays into the hands of white supremacist and “lazily racist” (going along with social conditioning because they aren’t prepare to examine their lives or themselves) settlers. The neoliberal parties are able to seize on normal variations of opinion that include worthy views such as arguments that other matters should be given higher priority and use that as an excuse to oppose Voice, with absolutely no commitment to any of the other actions that are vital. 

Even worse, they may be able to build on the differing views to create a backlash. (As it is, there are fears of racism and lies on the pamphlets.)

This is something I have seen in the trans and gender diverse (including nonbinary) (TGD) communities. For the reforms of the anti-discrimination laws in Victoria in 2000, the TGD communities united to achieve the most urgent reform - something that would give weight to education efforts and get TGD people off the streets and into jobs. 

There were many other reforms that were needed - especially around documentation and medicalisation, but the one thing that could be done and would make a difference was what was focused on, knowing that the opportunity was there then. Lose it, and it would be years before we could raise it again, and we would probably never have the same set of favourable political circumstances. 

We were a relatively small community then (bigger now), so we could coordinate reasonably well - especially on messaging. To achieve a reasonably consistent and uniform messaging meant that we had to bottle up our pain and anger, and find ways to cope with doing so - and we still had differing opinions on priorities and approaches. Nevertheless, the advocacy created an overall impression of sufficient unity to work. 

We were opposed by transphobic bigots, but they were a much smaller volume than those who supported us. 

We were even able to have the “toilet issue” removed from the proposed bill - the transphobes wanted only post-operative TGD people to access the correct toilets, which would have led us to advise our allies and supporters to oppose the bill. 

Things went off the rails for a while after that, however - and in one case an utterly stupid proposal was advanced that failed and cost the TGD communities a lot of credibility. 

The bigots have also been energised and supported by the ultra-backward elites, and they have capitalised on wedge issues and the fears of the uninformed/ignorant/wilfully deaf, and we're now facing a transgenocide in the UK and USA, with potential for that to spread elsewhere. 

I won’t speak on the Indigenous aspects of the Voice, but I do know a fair bit about successful lobbying, and my biggest fear in terms of opposing Voice is the chance of differing views being used by racists to create a backlash.

Another example of how things can go awry is the stupid (word fits) decision to reject bills to put a price on carbon in 2009 - see here and here - in the hopes that Copenfloppen would come up with something better. It didn't, and it took 13 years to get even the opportunity to have some sort of climate change legislation.