David Ellery | I live in the bush and I'm voting 'yes' for the Voice to Parliament

The main reason I'm voting "yes" is that I see this as the only chance a constitutionally recognised Voice has of getting up in my lifetime.

That's the obvious take out from the republic referendum almost a quarter of a century ago. That issue has been a dead letter ever since, even after the passing of the Queen.

I'm certainly not voting "yes" because I think the government has handled the Voice with anything approaching a degree of competence.

In 45 years as a journalist, this has been one of the biggest failures of leadership I've seen from a prime minister.

For the record, I voted "no" in the republic referendum. Nothing was broken so nothing needed fixing. We're no worse off, and possibly better off, for voting "no" than if the nation had said "yes".

That's demonstrably not the case this time around. Efforts to close the gap have failed dismally and a new approach is needed.

In the early 1980s, as a young reporter, I bore witness to the deplorable living conditions on Aboriginal "reserves" in Bourke, Enngonia, Brewarrina, Walgett, Gulargambone and Wellington.

Jerry-built houses, many made of corrugated iron with bare concrete floors, often housed two, three or more families. Air conditioning? Forget it. Fly screens? No way. Running water and sewerage? Tell 'em they're dreaming.

Even though I had grown up in Central Western NSW I would not have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. This was not the country I thought I knew. It was straight out of the third world.

I remember the shooting of three young Aboriginals - two men and a woman - in Moree in 1982 and the riots that followed.

Ronald McIntosh, 19, was killed and Stephanie Duke and Warren Tighe were shot in the street after a brawl in the Ned Kelly Bar at the Imperial Hotel. Mr McIntosh was two years younger than me. If he had lived he would be 60 this year.

Whether or not he would have reached 60 is, of course, problematic. The life expectancy for an Indigenous male in a regional or remote community in 1982 was under 50.

It has now risen to 65.9 years but is still well short of the 79.7 years life expectancy for a non-Indigenous male in the same community.

During my travels around the inner outback for Dubbo's The Daily Liberal I witnessed racism, including Aboriginal friends being turned away from hotels on the basis of their skin colour.

While less overt, such attitudes were still entrenched when I edited The Northern Daily Leader in Tamworth from late 2006 to 2010.

Indigenous housing was in poor repair, relations between that community and the local police were - at best - strained, and levels of unemployment and disadvantage were all too high.

After I published articles detailing some of these issues a superior cautioned me against putting Indigenous news on the front page because circulation suffered as a result. I chose not to follow this gratuitous advice.

I relay these experiences because I am profoundly disappointed at the lack of progress on closing the gap on so many fronts for more than a generation.

Decades have been wasted and billions of dollars have been spent to achieve very disappointing results.

The Indigenous "system" is broken and needs to be fixed. I'd never claim the Voice will be a silver bullet but it is an opportunity to try to do things differently, with a higher degree of consultation, and - hopefully - better.

All of that said, I do understand, appreciate and accept why the majority of voters in my small town will say "no".

The only person who, to my knowledge, is actively promoting the "yes" case is the principal of the central school through his newsletter.

One thing that I, and many other rural residents, resent is the description by Marcia Langton and others of "no" voters as racist and ignorant.

Her remarks echo an infamous passage in Macaulay in which the historian sneers at the rural gentry during the reign of Charles II.

"It was very seldom that the country gentleman caught glimpses of the great world; and what he saw of it tended rather to confuse than to enlighten his understanding ... [his opinions] were the opinions of a child," Macaulay wrote.

That has a very familiar ring.

People who live in rural and regional Australia are neither ignorant, overtly racist or stupid. Farmers who listen to hours of news while ploughing, harrowing, planting and harvesting over the course of a year are some of the most informed people on current events I know.

Podcasts, streaming and ABC's iView have brought the world to the country cottage and the farm gate.

Because country dwellers are, in the main, practical and pragmatic folk they are less susceptible to spin than most. That's why feel-good arguments and advertisements for the Voice aren't cutting through.

My friends and neighbours want to know what the Voice will look like, what it will cost, how it will work and what it will do. They regard the Prime Minister's insistence on "my way or the highway" - which destroyed any hope of bi-partisanship - and his refusal to answer these questions with a well-justified suspicion they won't like what comes next.

In my neck of the woods negative views towards the Voice are also informed by the fact disadvantage in regional areas is not just an Indigenous issue.

People in my small community live shorter lives than folk in the cities.

They are also on average poorer, more prone to multiple health conditions and experience greater difficulty in accessing essential services.

There is a gap between country and city Australia - regardless of race - that needs to be closed as well.

Regional Australians are not necessarily being racist when they express resentment against what they perceive as special treatment for one small group on the basis of ethnicity.

Their point is that there are many non-Indigenous people in rural and remote communities who are just as hard done by.

That is something the Albanese government has done little or nothing to address.

That said, it is important to vote "yes" because if the Voice gets up politicians will need to listen and to act, not just kick the can down the road for another 100 years.

And let's debunk the furphy that a national voice would mean local Indigenous communities would lose theirs. The Voice will be a megaphone for those communities, especially those with ideas and solutions.

By involving Indigenous Australians in setting policy we make them stakeholders in the pursuit of better outcomes.

If the Voice is passed First Nations people will be responsible for shaping their own destiny and closing the gap for the first time in decades, if not centuries.