Racist letter left in Sunbury Yes supporter’s mailbox as Indigenous Voice debate turns ugly

By Padraig Collins for Daily Mail Australia

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Racist letter left in Sunbury Yes supporter’s mailbox as Indigenous Voice debate turns ugly READ MORE: Andrew Bolt attacks Yes campaign’s Aboriginal boy ad Share or comment on this article:

Published: 2:38 a.m. EDT, September 19, 2023 | Update: 2:38 a.m. EDT, September 19, 2023

A leadership mentor was left shocked after receiving a vile and racist letter criticizing him for supporting the Voice referendum.

Dr Richard Hodge found the letter in the mailbox at his home in Sunbury, in Melbourne’s northwest, on Monday.

The letter was filled with a number of vile racist slurs calling Dr Hodge a “fake c**n” and a “virtue signaller” before hurling several insults at Indigenous Australians.

“What are the A***s doing for Australia other than sucking $34 billion out of the Australian taxpayer every year,” it reads.

Dr Hodge was shocked after learning the letter had been sent from Northgate, a Brisbane suburb 1,800km from his home.

A leadership mentor who has a Vote Yes sign on his lawn (pictured) has been the target of vile racist abuse for showing support for an Indigenous voice in Parliament.

Dr Hodge was shocked to realize the letter (pictured) had been posted to his home in Sunbury, Victoria, from the Brisbane suburb of Northgate, 1,800km away.

“So this is an organized campaign,” the former Australian Defense Force scientist told Daily Mail Australia.

“He’s not some upstart getting angry in the neighborhood.

Dr Hodge believes a disgruntled resident told someone in Queensland he had put up a Vote Yes sign, leading to the distressing letter being sent to his home.

The letter was postmarked September 13 – a week after Dr. Hodge put up the sign.

He said the letter made him feel like he had been “kicked in the guts” and compared it to how he felt years ago when his house was broken into.

“At that point, things were destroyed in the house, and that empty feeling was the only other time I felt that,” Dr. Hodge said.

“But it was actually even worse because of the despicable nature of the abuse.”

Dr Hodge contacted police over the letter and criticized the post in a fiery Twitter post.

“The behavior we exceed is the behavior we accept,” he wrote.

He said the kind of debate that leads to people being sent abusive letters to find out their views on a referendum question “was taken from the Trump playbook in America”.

“It makes people shout all the vile things and ignore common sense. I will cite Peter Dutton in particular, he only amplified it by continually adding fuel to the fire.

“It’s a symptom of the lack of leadership at the political level,” he said.

With 25 days until the referendum on October 14, there are fears that hostility between residents with opposing opinions will worsen.

The Yes campaign is hoping its latest ad campaign featuring a young Indigenous boy asking simple questions will change the way people intend to vote, as all recent polls indicate it is heading for a big defeat.

Dr Richard Hodge (pictured) tweeted the anonymous letter, which called him a “fake c**n”, to show the abuse used during the campaign for the October 14 referendum.

Union-aligned advertising expert Dee Madigan said the advert “empowers the viewer” and that using a child in a TV advert was “smart because parents instinctively listen when they hear the child’s voice.” ‘a child – so it gets through’.

The last line – “yes, this makes this possible” – is “particularly powerful”, she said, before dismissing it as “good publicity”.

The most recent Resolve Political Monitor survey showed that only 43 percent of voters supported a plan to enshrine Voice in the Constitution, a drop of 20 percentage points from last year.

It remains to be seen whether the advert featuring the young boy has the same effect as one using John Farnham’s song You’re The Voice: people like the advert, but it doesn’t make them more likely to vote yes.