Thomas Mayo’s old tweets emerge about the Voice to Parliament

A prominent ‘Yes’ campaigner described his vision for life after a Voice to Parliament is introduced – including reparations for Indigenous people, ‘rent’ being paid to live on Australian land and the abolishment of ‘harmful colonial institutions’.

A series of tweets dating back to 2018 that were published by Thomas Mayo, an architect of the Voice referendum question and signatory of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, show his push for an eventual treaty that would see land handed back to First Nations people.

This vision for a Voice to Parliament appears to directly contradict Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s hope for a ‘modest’ concession to assist the nation’s most vulnerable.

He listed ‘all the things we imagine when we demand’ a Voice, including ‘reparations, land back, abolishing harmful colonial institutions’.

Additionally, Mr Mayo said his sights were set on ‘getting ALL our kids out of prisons & in to care… integration of our laws & lore, speaking language, wages back’.

Mr Mayo said a ‘guaranteed representative body’ was ‘needed [to]… properly pursue the rent that is owed and an abolishment of systems that harm us’. 

In 2020, Mr Mayo got into a heated online exchange with Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe – a vocal critic of the Voice to Parliament.

She has long argued a treaty is more important than constitutional recognition, denying the legality of the constitution and expressing concerns about the sovereignty of First Nations people if the referendum passes.

Mr Mayo told her a constitutional Voice will give Indigenous people a platform to ‘negotiate’ with the Commonwealth on their ‘obligations’.

‘Australians already will support a referendum to recognise our Voice,’ Mr Mayo said. ‘They are much less likely to support what we may claim in a treaty (reparations, land back, etc).

‘A constitutionally enshrined Voice is important to establish to use the truth to support treaty negotiations.’ 

Mr Mayo described the advisory body as a ‘vital step in the fight for justice’. 

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Mr Mayo for comment. 

The unearthed tweets come days after footage surfaced of Mr Mayo making inflammatory comments about his vision for the future.

In one clip from 2020, Mr Mayo spoke about the proposal being a step towards making compensation for Indigenous people a reality.

Mr Mayo was speaking about the Uluru Statement from the Heart, some two years before the Albanese government announced there would a referendum on a First Nations Voice. 

‘Pay the Rent for example, how do we do that in a way that is transparent and that actually sees reparations and compensation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people beyond what we say and do at a rally?’ he said.

The ‘Pay the Rent’ movement wants homeowners to voluntarily pay a percentage of their income to Aboriginal elders without any government oversight or intervention.

Mr Mayo said in another unearthed video posted in 2021 that politicians would be ‘punished’ if they ignored advice from the advisory body.

‘The power in the Voice is that it creates the ability for First Nations to come together through representatives that they choose, representatives that they can hold accountable,’ he said. 

‘And then be able to campaign for that, and punish politicians that ignore our advice. That is where the power comes from.’

In Question Time on Tuesday, Minister for Indigenous Affairs Linda Burney was unable to condemn Mr Mayo’s comments. 

‘I am not responsible for what other people say,’ she said.

‘At the end of the day, this is about doing things differently so we can move the dial on a national shame in this country.’ 

Meanwhile the Prime Minister said Australians will be afforded a ‘once in a lifetime opportunity’ to improve the lives of First Nations people between October and December. 

‘Where’s the downside here?’ he asked. ‘What are people risking here?

‘From my perspective this is all upside.’ 

Mr Albanese said ‘the truth is for most people watching this it will have no impact of their lives’, but that it ‘might make things better for the most disadvantaged people in Australia’. 

After years of doing things ‘for’ Aboriginal people, often with the best of intentions, the PM said a Voice to Parliament would allow Indigenous people to take the front seat on matters crucial to them.

There have been many concerns about what exactly this means. Critics of the Voice say there is not enough detail provided on just what matters the advisory body will have input in.

Attorney General Mark Dreyfus tried to clear up that confusion during the press conference.

He listed five key issues which will become the core focus of the advisory group: health, employment, education, housing and justice.

‘No harm can come from this referendum, only good,’ he said. ‘The parliament has done its job and now it’s up to the Australian people.’

Both the Yes and No campaigns will now ramp up efforts to connect with voters ahead of the referendum, which will likely take place in October this year.

The Liberal Party, Nationals and One Nation will all oppose the Voice and contribute to official No pamphlets to be delivered to every household.

Labor and the Greens, along with several independents, will collaborate on a Yes pamphlet. 

Who is Thomas Mayo? The humble ‘wharfie’ at the centre of the Yes campaign  

Mayo has become one of the most prominent campaigners in the Voice after contributing to the creation of the Uluru Statement from the Heart in 2017. 

His career started as a humble ‘wharfie’, first as a maritime trainee at the Darwin Port Authority, followed by 14 years as a crane operator. 

He eventually landed a job at the maritime union, propelled forward by his strong sense of justice.

He worked as a branch secretary and now, 19 years after arriving as a bright-eyed teen on the wharf, he’s the union’s National Indigenous Officer.

In March, Mayo stood shoulder to shoulder with a tearful Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as the official wording of the referendum question was announced.

For the first four decades of his life – including for the publication of his first books – Mayo went by Thomas Mayor. In 2022, he changed his surname to Mayo. 

The decision was one to honour his heritage and revert to the name of his forefathers, revealing a priest a generation earlier ‘decided our last name was spelt wrong and changed it to Mayor’.

Speaking at the Sydney Writers Festival last month to promote his new handbook to the Voice to Parliament, which he co-authored with veteran journalist Kerry O’Brien, Mayo said he’s throwing ‘everything he has’ at this referendum.

‘I’m not going to stop working until the referendum,’ he said. ‘We must win.’

Mayo was born on Larrakia country in Darwin, and has previously claimed he learned to hunt foods with his father and island dance from the local Torres Strait Islander community of which he was a member.

Speaking to the Judicial College of Victoria earlier this year, Mayo said he was a ‘really quiet fella’ who ‘never expected to be doing what I’m doing’.

He said he is motivated by a ‘dislike of injustice’, and learned most of what he knows ‘about solidarity and acting collectively’ during his near two decades on the wharf.

‘My mum and dad weren’t engaged in politics in any way,’ he said. ‘My dad is the type that just wants to get on with it and says what’s all the complaining about.’

‘It was from the older wharfies [who inspired me]. I learned a lot from those union elders.’

By 2010, he was offered an opportunity to ‘step up’ in his advocacy work. He said: ‘I loved working on the wharfs, driving on the cranes, sweating it out in the heat. But… I thought it was time to start using my brain a bit more.’

Mayo argues a Voice to Parliament would enhance the nation’s democracy and boost our social standing among the rest of the world.

Despite criticism from the right, Mayo said Indigenous Australians ‘are not heard right now… not a priority because we have no democratic effect’.

He argued gaps in life expectancy and higher incarceration rates further prove his point.

‘For me, it means justice,’ he said. ‘It means recognising what should have been recognised from the very beginning when Cook arrived.’

He helped to create the Uluru Statement from the Heart, arguing that his people have ‘always put through proposals to have political representation – a voice, essentially’.

‘We did the hard work. All of that consensus building, the debates, the passionate discussions to compromise amongst ourselves. The nature of consensus is never getting everything that everyone wants.’

Back in November 2022, Mayo called journalist Kerry O’Brien, asking if he’d be interested in collaborating on his next book.

The book, recently published, would be a ‘guide’ to the Voice to Parliament, designed to answer the questions of the general public and filter out the unnecessary political infighting.

O’Brien told the crowd at SWF he’d never done anything like it, but that it didn’t take him long to agree. 

He said he has no doubt the Australian public largely want to see the referendum succeed. 

If it doesn’t, he said, ‘it’ll be a matter of confusion and fear – which is the entire strategy’. 

‘How obscene is it that some people stoop to the lowest of the low to claim that Aboriginal people will use the voice to feather their nests,’ he said.

‘Look to the character of the people holding these conversations to determine who is speaking truth and who isn’t… who do you believe?’

The primary argument of the ‘No’ campaign’ is that there is not yet enough information about how the Voice to Parliament would work.

Peter Dutton previously said the referendum could ‘have an Orwellian effect where all Australians are equal, but some Australians are more equal than others’ – a direct reference to George Orwell’s satirical novella from 1945, Animal Farm. 

The vote will need support from the majority of Australians in the majority of states to be successful. 

The Voice will establish a body that can ‘make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’. 

This body – comprised of Indigenous people from a range of ages and demographics – would give advice to the government.