When the High Court's Mabo judgement in 1992 gave traditional indigenous people rights to their land, critics claimed that Australians would lose their back yards.
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When Kevin Rudd as prime minister apologised in 2008 for the stolen generation, opponents argued it would trigger huge compensation payments.
These were complete furphies. Now we are seeing another scare campaign in an attempt to derail the referendum to be held in a few months on a proposal to change the Constitution, the document drawn up at the time we became a nation in 1901 and which sets the basic rules on how we are governed.
The referendum is the result of a request by indigenous people to write into the Constitution a guarantee that they will be able to make representations to the government and the parliament on matters affecting them.
They argue, and there is evidence to support them, that involving them more in decisions will produce better outcomes for First Nations people.
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In the past this right to give advice has been taken away, such as when the Howard government, with the support of Labor, abolished the AborigInal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC).
Carrying the referendum also would be a long overdue act of recognition by all Australians of the unique place that indigenous people have as our first inhabitants who have occupied this continent for 60,000 or more years, compared to the 235 years since white settlement.
Indigenous leaders went to great lengths to achieve the co-operation of prominent conservatives for a proposal that could gain support across the political spectrum. This is why many Liberals, in parliament and outside, together with conservative academics and lawyers, support the change.
There is nothing complicated or radical about the referendum question. It simply asks people to vote yes or no on whether to alter the Constitution "to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice".
If approved, the new section of the Constitution would say the Voice "may make representations" to the parliament and the government.
The structure of the body that becomes the Voice would be determined by parliament and it is the government and the parliament that would decide how to respond to representations from the Voice.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart, the product of years of consultation with thousands of indigenous people, says: "We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future." It is a plea for unity - the very opposite of the claims of division that opponents are trying to scare us with.
Mike Steketee is a former political correspondent in Canberra and Sydney and now farms near Goulburn
