Pat Farmer is a household name throughout Australia. The famous ultra-marathon runner is probably best known for his record-breaking 14,964-kilometre (9,298 mi) Centenary of Federation run around all of Australia in 1999.

Pat ran for 191 days raising considerable funds for charity.

One of Pat's goals was to run from the North Pole to the South Pole, a distance of about 21,000 km. He set off on April 8 2011, and completed the journey on 19 January 2012. Side note, Pat did need transport at certain sections of his run.

Pat's Pole to Pole run raised $100,000 for clean water programs for Red Cross International.

He has also run the length of India for girls' education, the length of Vietnam for clean border projects, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. It makes you tired just thinking about the thousands of kilometres Pat has run in his 61 years.

Pat is once again running across Australia but this time for another cause close to his heart, the Yes Vote for the upcoming Voice Referendum.

Starting on June 17 from the Hobart Town Hall in Tasmania, Pat has run around Tasmania, run from Perth to Darwin, Darwin to Townsville, then south to Lismore and ending day 113 at Casino, where he will speak tonight. Pat runs about two marathons per day.

Pat Farmer is a man on a mission. He won't be drawn into a conversation about how he feels, running in the rain or his aches and pains. He wants to talk about the Voice Referendum and why he supports the Yes Vote.

(Pat Farmer, in the middle with white shirt, surrounded by fellow Yes vote supporters at Oakes Oval)

Pat ran to Oakes Oval this morning and told the Lismore App about his affiliation with Australia and its land.

"It's not until you've been beaten by the rain, as everybody here in this community has been, dealt with floods and dealt with searing heat and dealt with storms and everything else that this country throws at you, that you realise that's what makes this country very special.

"It brings out the best in all of us; it brings out this sense of resilience. And that's what the indigenous people speak about when they talk about their connection to the land. And you know, we all experience it. We don't stop to think about it often enough. But when you stop fighting the elements and start to work with them, that's when you get that real respect for the country that you live in."

Pat was inspired to run, as many Australians were, by the gumboot shuffling Cliff Young, who won the inaugural Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon in 1983 at the age of 61.

"I was 18 years old. That's when I first got into the Sydney to Melbourne races, and all because the little potato farmer Cliff Young ran past where I worked as a motor mechanic. He inspired me, and as a result, I've raised literally millions of dollars for worthwhile causes and charities during the course of my lifetime to this point. And so, I say to everybody, if you just commit yourself to actions rather than words, you never know who's watching you, you never know who's been inspired by you and you never know the change that you're going to make. And I'm hoping that's the case too with this run."

"I'll run on into Casino this afternoon, and then I've got a public forum that I'll speak at tonight about the Voice. I come from a very unique position. One, to be able to physically run around the country and capture people's attention through that and two, from being a member of parliament."

Pat Farmers was a member of the Howard Government between 2001 and 2010 when he held the seat of MacArthur in Sydney. He was the Parliamentary Secretary for Education, Science and Training and later the Shadow Minister for Sport and Youth

"I was with the Liberal Party. I laid to rest all of this argument that it's a political thing, and it's only the Labour Party that is supporting this. That's certainly not the case. I mean, Julian Leeser, who was the Shadow Attorney General, was sacked from his position, and he now sits on the back bench. He's going to run with me as I race on into Sydney because he believes in supporting the Yes campaign and believes in a Voice to Parliament. So to Ken Wyatt, who was the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, he lost his position because he wanted to support the Yes campaign."

"That's why I think that the coalition really failed their members because I think they should have just given him a conscience vote and an opportunity to be able to support their local community and whatever decision they made. They shouldn't have made this political. They could have easily just stayed out of it and just let the people decide, which is what a referendum is all about."

"Let the people decide and then scrutinise the policy once it comes to the house, which is what they are supposed to do. That's the job. Scrutinise it to the nth degree so that we come up with the best possible arrangement for what the Voice would look like."

"Many people have said to me, we would support the voice, but we don't have the detail. And I said, look, there's not a great deal of detail to worry about. The bottom line is that every single portfolio in Parliament has separate groups that are managed, and they work as advisory groups through to that portfolio to that particular minister. In this case, it will be through to all of the ministers and to the prime minister."

"If I could just use an example, one that everyone could know and understand. The sports portfolio for instance."

"There's the Australian Sports Commission, it's made up of, I think, about seven or eight members, and there's a chairperson that changes every few years. So, every three years, they get a different chairperson, and they get a different board. Those board members determine where the funding will go for sport, right down to the local government level for your local netball clubs and to the elite level, Olympic level. So, you know, that's what they do all the time. The same sort of model will work for the Voice as well, and I'd imagine that's how it will come together."

When asked about the No campaign and the latest polling, which has every state in Australia trending toward a No vote, Pat said that people are just not switched on to it.

"Like most elections, they don't get switched onto until it gets closer. The second thing is that they don't know enough about it. And one of the key points that all Australians need to know and understand is there's a difference between the Constitution and legislation."

"We have had legislative bodies, put forward by governments in the past that have represented both the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and those bodies have been changed or abolished once a new government has come in. So, you're not getting that continuity of service. That's legislation."

"The best way for me to explain that to everybody else is, imagine there's one government in place, and they say we're going to fund a highway bypass for your town, and then they lose government. They get halfway through, and they've spent millions of dollars on the scoping process. They've started work, and then a new government comes in, and they say, Oh, we're not going to do that now. We're not going to do that road, that was the old government. So they cancel it."

"That money's been wasted instead of a continuation to services. That's the problem with legislation. With the constitution, it's the book of rules that says that they can build roads and they can do these things in the best way."

"It says in the Constitution that the government has the ability to raise taxes to be able to support programs throughout the country. That's all it says. It doesn't say how much those taxes are. It doesn't say what they will be applied to. It doesn't say whether it's going to be a fuel excise or whether it's going to be a tax on imports or whatever. What happens is somebody from Parliament will say, I'd like to introduce a new tax, and I'd like that to be on motor vehicles that come in from overseas, and I think it should be 14%. The opposition turns around and says, well, I think it should be 10%, and so they have this argument backwards and forwards, and they end up with a tax on cars that come into the country, probably 12% or somewhere in between."

"Just using those simple analogies is the best way I can explain to people how the system works at this point in time and how this system will work moving forward as well."

The Voice Referendum debate will continue for quite some time until the Prime Minister calls a date for it to be held.

In the meantime, while we get up and go to work or go about our business tomorrow, Pat Farmer will be tying the laces on his running shoes and heading south for another 70 to 80 kilometre run spreading his Yes message.