as I remember it the distinction is being downplayed somewhat for Perl 6. People need to use references so often that in Perl 6 you're going to tend to get references to things by default, rather than as a special case that you need to ask for.

There is some truth in what you say, but I'm not sure it really applies in this context. Perl6 will still have the distinction between the reference and the thing being referenced. Yes, the basic shorthand dereferencing notation will dereference as many levels as necessary to get down to the referenced object (though I assume there will be a way to dereference just one level, if that's what you need to do), and yes, some builtins will handle things a bit differently, but the distinction between a reference and the thing that it references is certainly not going away. Perl6 will not be Perl5, but it will still be Perl.