A lack of detail about an Indigenous Voice to Parliament could leave an information vacuum to be filled by misinformation and hateful content by the far right and other bad-faith actors, experts warn.
On Saturday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed the three draft sentences that would be added to the constitution if next year’s Voice to Parliament referendum is successful. The next day, however, Albanese said that his government would not provide the legislation for the structure of the body before the referendum for fears that it would split support for the proposal.
“What I am not going to do [is] to go down the cul-de-sac of getting into every detail because that is not a recipe for success,” he said.
Previously, Albanese has said his government is committed to implementing the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full. The statement calls for a “First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution”. Professor Marcia Langton and Professor Tom Calma’s Indigenous Voice Co-design Process report delivered to the last government lays out a comprehensive model for what it could look like — but the current government has not committed to following the proposal. Instead, the details will be decided by federal parliamentarians if the referendum is passed.
Institute for Strategic Dialogue analyst and misinformation researcher Elise Thomas said she already expects to see a rise in hate speech, disinformation and race-related conspiracy theories ahead of the vote.
“The fact that we currently have a big information vacuum around the exact form and nature of the Voice will make the problem worse,” she said.
Information Futures Lab Asia Pacific director Dr Anne Kruger agreed that the Voice to Parliament is a topic vulnerable to misinterpretation and misinformation. She said that proponents should learn lessons from vaccine and climate change misinformation: “Messaging should be simple, but you need to explain it.”
Kruger said that early information vacuums about COVID-19 fuelled a lot of misunderstanding and fear. Similarly, the types of arguments that undermined the scientific consensus could be repurposed to cast doubt on the Uluru Statement to the Heart process, she said.
Already misinformation and sensationalist content about the Voice to Parliament is circulating online. These range from statements that this would create an “apartheid Parliament” to false claims that the body would be given veto over legislation. Crikey has chosen not to share or name the creators to avoid giving them more oxygen.
Thomas said she’s already seen anti-vaccine, sovereign citizens and far-right groups latch on to the topic. Both Thomas and Kruger agree that clear and effective information campaigns are necessary to pre-empt bad faith campaigns.
“Rebutting this and other disinformation and distortions about the Voice will require clear, effective communication from the Yes campaign about what the Voice is, and what it isn’t,” Thomas said.
Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. The particular constituency Cam references are not constrained by either the presence or absence of details; they will make stuff up either way. The haters are going to hate no matter what.
A referendum will succeed when all the major political parties and media outlets support the proposition. Albanese is trying to create a united front by keeping the proposition simple and leaving the details to be debated by a subsequent parliament.
The challenge for the opposition is to avoid the temptation to inflict an electoral defeat on the government – because they can. The challenge for the government is to separate the referendum from the normal point-scoring argy-bargy and offer a genuine place on the platform, framing a genuine win-win opportunity. Who knows, they might even be able to carry the attitude across to all the other pressing issues facing our community.
Woohoo Griselda – love your attitude!
A referendum question without detail as to the change proposed? Not designed to fail at all.
So the advice to Albo is: fill the airways with controversial detail about legislation that will be necessary only if the referendum is successful so that racist scum have less bandwidth and thereby create the ingredients for failure in the way Howard engineered the certain death of the republic referendum. The circularity is making me dizzy!
Absolutely correct about the deliberate and successful attempt by the Howard government to divide and conquer the pro-republic vote. And the Voice opponents want to do it again.
When LBJ signed the US Civil Rights Act of 1968, following the initial 1964 Act, he said, correctly as history proved, “This is going to lose the Democrats the South for a generation” and did so nontheless, showing a courage and commitment to principal which is now unknown to modern politicians in most western countries.
What chance of Labor having the same integrity?
(Hint – that’s a rhetorical question.)
I cannot understand this. The Constitution requires a proposed amendment to be made available to voters in a referendum. Common sense says don’t expect people to vote for something which has not yet been decided upon.
There is an increasing number of issues where Albanese seems timid. He displayed it before the election with his small target approach. Now he is doing it in government. Stop it. The people voted for a new Government – go out and govern.
“go out and govern” Sounds simple and straightforward. It isn’t though. We live in a Democrazy that has turned into a never-ending daily popularity contest where the electioneering runs an entirely too short electoral term of 3 years. No wonder not much of substance actually gets finished. Too busy trying to keep their jobs and placate the Media.
Part of this is we have allowed the Media to think they have the right to decide what is right or wrong rather than just reporting events.
Everything is hyped up and, in most cases, blown out of proportion.
I am a swinging voter so I listened to a lot of Labor people complaining about Albanese’s timidity and how it would lose the election. I also heard a lot of people complaining about Labor’s bipartisan support of those govt COVID measures which were sound. Turned out he’d read the room right on both of those. Maybe he’s reading the room right again?
I think the draft question he’s proposed to generate meaningful discussion is a good one for that purpose. You just have to read the Crikey comments to see that there are intelligent people with strongly held opinions based on misunderstandings and falsehoods. Some people won’t shift from those positions, others are perfectly capable of listening and learning through facts and rational discussion, and to others this will all be brand new stuff to consider.
I feel that logic would say, Albanese Government, should have prepared for the opportunity of
dissidents, to generate negative government responses to his simple statement.
Without prepared arguments, to counter extremism position and activities, the Government has opened
an opportunity for mass disagreement. The opening will be filled by right wing dissidents, looking for a reason to o destabilize
the government, and add to the many other problems such as wages, housing, hospitals and schools.