The longer the political year grinds on at its relentless, metronomic pace, the more the grand mistake of having a referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament stands out.
Today the first two months of 2023 come to an end and the case for a form of constitutional recognition of Indigenous peoples is at the edge of failure.
Protests that there is plenty of time and talk remaining, that the wording of any change has yet to be settled, and that the naysayers are simply looking for pathways to failure all may have merit. However, they look more and more like excuses for the ever-growing sense of defeat for what should be a simple, commonsense change.
More than a month ago I pointed out in Crikey that the Voice needed a basic sentence of definition. It’s still the question most asked by all types of people — from those highly engaged with political and current affairs, to interested but detail-deprived devotees of the Adelaide arts scene, to communities as diverse as inner-city Brisbane.
It’s easy to find a clear majority of people who are willing for the proposed change to succeed. They don’t want to wake up the next day having voted down basic recognition of Indigenous peoples. However, just about everyone has their doubts. Can it be turned around? Sure, most things in politics and public life are possible, but the famed Overton window — the range of policies a population finds acceptable at a given time — might quickly shift.
The referendum faces the brutalist double jeopardy of having to succeed with a majority of votes in a majority of states. Territories don’t count. This means having substantial victories in the two most populous states of NSW and Victoria and one other state won’t change a thing if there are narrow or greater losses in the other three.
It’s probable — but like everything else not certain — a referendum question proposing a constitutional amendment to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and giving them a Voice to the national government and Parliament will get more than 50% of the vote in Victoria and NSW.
History is not helpful. The marriage equality plebiscite won support everywhere, but this advantage was at its lowest in NSW, something attributed to opposition within conservative religious communities, usually ethnically based.
The gold standard for the reform-minded is the 1967 question, which was about removing references in the constitution discriminating against Indigenous peoples, including them in the national census and allowing Parliament to make laws in relation to them. It swept home in every state by a majority of about 10 to one, winning 90% of the national vote.
Of course, the times suited the 1967 referendum. All political parties backed it in, all levels of government did likewise, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities spoke as one. It was a political kumbaya moment in Australian politics.
Likewise, the times suited the same-sex marriage plebiscite, but even then there was more measured support than seen in 1967. The backing for change was just under two in three voters, but more than 10% of federal electorates still said No — with the highest rejection coming in Blaxland in Sydney’s inner metro where 74% of people rejected the proposal.
In all, 17 of Australia’s 150 electorates voted no to same-sex marriage, all but five in NSW (three in Queensland and two in Victoria).
This year it doesn’t feel like the times are suiting the case for change. There are rancorous divisions within the Yes side of what passes for the campaign for change. Three camps are emerging.
There is the centrist consensus led by insiders including Tom Calma, Megan Davis, Noel Pearson, Shireen Morris, Gabrielle Appleby and Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney.
There’s a small group of people who want a Yes vote to succeed but can see difficult, mostly legal, obstacles coalescing around Frank Brennan, a Jesuit priest and law professor. This “yes, but” camp argues the wording Prime Minister Anthony Albanese outlined at the Garma Festival should be narrower and sharper to prevent legal ambiguity and head off constitutional court challenges. Any restrictions on the definition of the Voice is strongly opposed by the majority Yes faction.
And then there’s a radical fringe that wants change but on a big bang scale — a full treaty, a truth-telling exercise where history is picked over and wrongs exposed. There’s an argument about who or what comes first, but a common thread sees the Voice not entertained until after a treaty has been adopted.
According to people who’ve dealt with some inside the Yes campaign, there are enough threads of dissent, disagreement and disruption to throw the mission for change off course for a short time or longer. Some veterans of the 1999 republic referendum hear echoes from that doomed exercise when former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s self-belief and fractured tactical meetings trying to deal with the direct election splinter group upended the whole shebang.
If all this plays out to the best-case expectations of the optimists, the Yes campaign could win NSW and Victoria and have a chance in South Australia, where voters have the nascent experience of a state-legislated Voice. Hardly anyone thinks Queensland or Western Australia will back change — not just because of a tendency to conservatism on these issues but the shared experience of high levels of youth crime, much of which features Indigenous teens.
Tasmania has a long and sometimes mysterious history of not going with the mainland flow on these kinds of changes. This could well happen again.
Federal Labor sources reckon Albanese still feels a positive mood for change, based on the vibe of the thing.
After a week in conversation with various people in south-east Queensland, metropolitan Adelaide and regional South Australia, as well as some chats with people in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, it’s safe to say there’s another vibe about — and it’s not such good juju.
That’s entirely believable, but also a sad reflection on those who would vote against on such grounds. If the Voice has any merit at all it is because it would provide necessary insight into tackling such intractable issues, to the benefit of everyone. It could hardly make things worse.
Not often I agree with you SSR, but I think you are spot on.
We must also remember that a lot of the crime currently being committed by young people is not being committed by First Nations young people. It’s very easy to whip out a generalization regardless of it’s accuracy and it doesn’t help anyone or any community.
The real story here is buried near the end of the article – how much of the current hysteria in Qld about the youth crime “crisis” is racist dog-whistling? Are you going to go there?
Of course it is. I noticed in my teens that White groups of teenagers would be reported as, “a group of youths” but if they were not White , they were called “African/Aboriginal/Asian gangs.” In my twenties, I watched politicians endorse White men randomly bashing anyone they thought looked brown on “Leb bashing day.” And then watched in horror as an immense outpouring of sympathy for 5 White men that killed an Aboriginal man. We are far more comfortable with White people killing Brown people than we’d like to admit. https ://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-04-23/five-jailed-for-racist-alice-springs-killing/408320?utm_campaign=abc_news_web&utm_content=link&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_news_web
The trouble with journalists and commentators is that they live within a bubble of their own making. The Voice will succeed because there is going to be the biggest and most comprehensive grassroots campaign in Australia’s history. Backed up by business (even AICD is in favour) and every State Government. As with the Teals this is a reality which most of the media don’t see because they are blinded by their own assumptions about what is news and what’s happening in communities.
“According to people who’ve dealt with some inside the Yes campaign, there are enough threads of dissent, disagreement and disruption to throw the mission for change off course for a short time or longer.”
Surely an article presented to the reader as “Analysis / Indigenous Affairs” should be able to do better than a bit of gossip. This reminds me of one of the first Crikey articles I read claiming to be “Analysis” – an article about the pandemic written by a former lawyer and luxury hotel operator. Both better advertised under the Opinion banner.
Just another negative puff piece trying to talk down the Yes case. Innuendo, gossip and hearsay masquerading as facts. When asked for a simple Yes/No vote, the Yes still hovers around sixty percent. Eighty percent of those under 35 years of age are in favour. This suggests a resounding positive vibe in the community, rather than the pessimism described in this article. Not that it counts, but the vast majority of people I come in contact with are voting Yes. This type of article, based on nothing but a feeling is no better than the similar contributions being made by the major city dailies. In addition, if disarray in the Yes camp ( if it actually exists) is the recipe for failure, then surely the No cause us equally doomed as they can’t seem to agree on why they are opposing it and Price has jumped from one ship to another already.
For what it’s worth, I’m backing a 5-1 vote in favour from the states.
Starting with the rhetorical device to create doubt and confusion:
‘There’s no doubt most Australians want First Nations peoples to have constitutional recognition, but are the numbers there to guarantee that?’
Ditto environmental regulation, immigration etc.
Not that much of a rhetorical device, it’s just pointing to the reality that referendums are not decided on a simple majority of voting Australians.
The right wing parties and enablers in the media do this all the time demanding to discuss issues of the day through their own prisms e.g. ‘immigration’; the latter follows imported US nativist tactics of deceased white nationalist John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton, white Australia admirer and anti-semite.
Cafe con leche Republicans warned normal colleagues in the GOP a decade ago of a PR operation run by Tanton i.e. lobbying Reps and committees, with the objective of encouraging them to get people talking about ‘immigrants’ including dog whistling (immigrants = Democrat), to then encourage immigration restrictions.
Good point. If it was up to the government it would be still born. The last thing they want is to actually have to LISTEN to the population.
“…. national political editor during the Howard government” again?
Nothing about : “In a virtual ‘one-paper state’ at Rupert’s Brisbane Courier Mail from ’95 to June/July 2019 (leaving ‘4’ months before Robodebt was frozen). Including stints as national political editor from 2000-2005; and national affairs editor from 2007 to his departure – including that period from 2017 to when Robodebt was “frozen” in 2019 – when the Coalition government was leaking to it’s News Corp “friendly media”, to spruik propaganda to counter the negative press it was getting elsewhere – reproducing “Robodebt News-style news’ from other provinces (The Australian, Herald Sun, Teletrash etc) to Qld rubes – leaving a couple of months before that ‘freezing’ – when dogs were barking Robodebt’s illegality”?
That editor’s intro “… Dennis Atkins reflects on how each state will vote in the Voice to Parliament referendum.”? ‘Media infallibility’ – based on gossip? …. How big was that ‘sample size’?
…. Whatever happed to ‘speculation and personal opinion(s)’?
What did Mr Atkins do to so aggrieve you that every time he is published you make the same comment about his time as a News employee? Your dislike is evident, move on.
Nothing really, I suppose. Just an interest in “Integrity, accountability and transparency – and hypocrisy”.
I’d like to see Crikey present his history – including the part he’s played as an integral part in News Corps’ abuse of position for ’25’ years (rather than just “… during the Howard government”) – rather than “ignore” it.
“History” – as relevant as anyone else’s.
My repetition might get a bit boring – but imagine 25 years of the same one-sided, one dimensional, narrative of ‘anti-Labor/Greens : Coalition mitigation’ spin from the Curry or Maul, under his influence.
Robodebt :- it wasn’t Minister Stewie “It’s only legal advice” Robert that pulled the pin on the scheme?
It was Renee Leon (Dept Human Resources – before it was shut down, for not doing what the government wanted?) – because the Limited News Party government wouldn’t?
“Verbal bad news briefings” so as to leave no paper trail?
Interesting, to say the least, Holmes’ findings from her RC when she hands that down – from the bottom of that malfeasant cesspit?
And a “propaganda/publicity manager insider” right here … “How that PR working relationship worked”?
“Rupert’s Robodebt Laundry Service”?
“Enabler”.