Great. Then racists can hurl abuse at Indigenous people and use the "Aaaahhh...but they're not a race, your Honour" in a racial discrimination defence. Lol!
Put another way, jg, the referendum is indirectly, but inextricably linked to, race. There's no escaping it.
It's like a stapled security e.g. units in a REIT, consisting of one unit in a company stapled to one unit in a trust. For accounting purposes, they're separate entities. But when buying and selling units, they cannot legally be separated. We are "buying" (or not) into the idea of Indigenous recognition, but that idea is "stapled" to the fact that Aborigines are classified as a race.
