The prime minister predicted months ago that this would set back reconciliation, that it would create an international reputational risk for us, but did he stop? Did he change the wording? Did he tighten the wording? No, he did none of that, because Alan Joyce and others were telling him not to.
Peter Dutton, October 4, 2023
Peter Dutton is keen to make sure not only that the Voice to Parliament referendum fails, but that Anthony Albanese wears the blame for it. Indeed, the former outcome without the latter is virtually useless for Dutton — especially if he himself wears the blame.
But Dutton isn’t the only one peddling a counterfactual narrative about the referendum, an alternative history in which a different, better referendum takes place and is successful. It’s a narrative that many share right across the spectrum — from No voters who claim to support constitutional recognition but not a Voice to Parliament, to people like Dutton (if there are any people like Dutton) who want a legislated Voice, to Yes and No supporters who think the wording should have been different and there should have been more detail (or a delayed referendum to give it a greater chance of success), to progressive No voters who think a Voice isn’t a priority or doesn’t go far enough.
But the “different referendum” idea is a fantasy. It’s nonsense, peddled by people who are either self-serving or self-deluding. And it should be knocked down before it takes hold as the given explanation for a defeat, the conventional wisdom that the press gallery adopts as groupthink in the aftermath of October 14.
The idea that a different referendum question would have been successful entirely defies what we’ve learned over recent months. After witnessing the lies and systematic use of misinformation and ignorance by the No campaign, the unrebuked involvement of open racists in it and the emergence of an explicit assimilationist campaign led by Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and her News Corp boosters, who seriously thinks a different question would have elicited a different response? The idea that some tweaks around wording, or addressing arcane and far-fetched legal claims about the power of the Voice to Parliament, as called for by many conservative Yes supporters, would have headed off the systematic racist campaign of opposition, is nonsense.
And after Peter Dutton’s opportunism in opposing the referendum, who can seriously claim that a referendum purely around recognition of First Peoples — white people’s recognition, imposed on First Peoples in defiance of their stated preference about what form recognition took — would not have prompted exactly the same kind of hostility and opposition? Would Dutton not have manufactured a reason to oppose that, too, given that his position is dictated purely by the need for political advantage over Labor?
And look at the arguments of Price, outfits like the Institute of Public Affairs, and News Corp commentators (not including Chris Kenny, who deserves praise for his hard work of campaigning for a Yes vote deep in hostile territory): that the very principle of recognition of any kind is divisive and racist, there is no need for specific Indigenous policies, let alone constitutional recognition.
Does anyone credibly think we wouldn’t have heard 90% of the same rhetoric deployed against the Voice deployed against recognition of any kind — let alone a Voice carefully tweaked so as not to offend Liberal sensibilities, or one with the extra “detail” demanded by Dutton and other opponents? The call for more detail was only ever a pretext for opposition, and the basis for a campaign of obscurantism and appeals to laziness and ignorance — if you can’t be bothered to know, vote no.
Ditto with arguments that a delayed referendum would have been more successful — as if the same powerful and wealthy elite opponents wouldn’t have poured the same volumes of money into a 2024 referendum, or one in 2025, or 2026. Constitutional recognition has been around as a proposal since the Howard years — how much longer do “different referendum” types think we should wait?
It’s noteworthy that even Dutton admits that a failed referendum — i.e., a display to the world that the majority of Australians are indifferent, or even hostile, to the people who were dispossessed in the foundational act of the Australian state — would damage our international reputation. This, he says, is on Albanese — and not, by implication, on Dutton himself.
But it’s not on Albanese, or anyone in the Yes camp, or for that matter Dutton or anyone in the No camp. It’s on voters. At some point in a democracy you have to recognise that voters have agency. If the majority of voters reject recognition of First Peoples, they’re indicating what the nature of Australians truly is, however unpleasant that may be. All Anthony Albanese has done is give them the opportunity, the platform, to show their real nature to the world, and to First Peoples. The consequences are ours to own.
Sure thing. After all Dutton’s attempts to sink the referendum with lies, fear, confusion, threats, distractions and so on, Dutton is now moaning, ‘Look what you made me do’: the line so often used by those who have done something dreadful and yet refuse accept responsibility for their actions.
Infinite up votes for this comment SSR
Yes I think Bernard is absolving Dutton and his fellow travellers a bit much in the article. I have no doubt that had the LNP said Yes, then it would have sailed through for Yes. Littlepride, Price and other fellow travellers would hav not had th same leverage with out Dutton.
Refuse to accept ADULT responsibility
If ‘No’ prevails, beyond Dutton’s ambitions, it’s an even worse problem for the LNP or the Liberal Party, relying on older voters and whiff of nativism, the Libs will become extinct in SE Australia?
Dutton has done everything he can to sink the referendum. If he wanted it to succeed, he would have supported it. His opposition, especially over that Christmas period, was designed to spread discontent about it. Beyond that, we’ve just seen the widespread importation of the same tactics that have bedeviled elections world wide – misinformation, lies and blame shifting.
At the end of the day, Dutton was in government for a decade. They had ample opportunity to run the referendum he wanted. However, the LNP never wanted a referendum and definitely never wanted it to succeed. Dutton, the racist white cop from Queensland is now the brand for the LNP.
Quite so – just wanted to score a point against Albo. if the referendum goes up or down it will NOT enhance Button’s standing or popularity . . .
Well said, Bernard, but this is not unique to this referendum. I have realised that no-one under 40 (or thereabouts) has ever voted in one before: this has been the longest gap between constitutional referendums in Australian history. I’m sorry, folks, but they’re nearly all like this. The difference this time has been the opportunity for racism to intrude its ugly face, plus this is the first social media constitutional referendum in Australia. I’m starting to wonder if the 1967 question would be carried today with the racists running amok on social media.
This is an electorate which previous conservative oppositions could persuade to vote against (inter alia) freedom of religion and democratic elections. I know it must be shocking to younger voters, but as someone who has voted on eighteen questions since 1973 (for three wins), I can tell you that it is depressingly bloody normal! End of rant.
Yes – they are nearly all like this. And the forty year gap between them means that few learn any lessons.
Yesterday details were released of the likeness of Charles III to be used on coins. I lost count of the number of comments I read that asked why we still had the effigy of a monarch of a foreign country on Australian currency. That question was the point of the last referendum for which a majority voted No.
It is depressingly normal. Please do not stop ranting.
Interesting comment and I agree. I am interested as why we bother to put King Charles’s effigy on cash coins when they are being phased out?
Yes, why bother putting Charles’ much younger looking face on coins, the old fellow looks like he won’t make it much older than 80 years. I know his father lived to 99 and mother to 96. Doesn’t mean he will.
And he looks better in his older age – not such a norm
Gormless . . not norm
While it is true Charles III is the monarch of a foreign country, and indeed of more than one foreign country, he is also the monarch of this country; and there are abundant examples throughout history of persons who were monarchs of more than one country. It is quite common. It is not at all obvious what point is supposed to be made by the observation that he is the monarch of a foreign country.
I would have thought the point was blindingly obvious but allow me to make it clear. If a constitutional monarchy is such a good idea (as so many on the right claim) then we should have our own monarchy. A monarchy specifically for Australia. Otherwise we are just like Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, areas of land claiming to be a country but in reality just subject to rule from outside the country.
No, it is blindingly obviously that is not so. Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland — somehow you forgot England, but it’s there too — are all part of the country which is formally known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. They are obviously not ruled from outside that country because they are in it, and Charles III is the King of that country.
But it is notable that the real objection you raise is that ‘we should have our own monarchy’. Well, good news for you: we do! It is the Australian monarchy, it is specifically for Australia (kind of obvious) and the King of Australia is known as Charles III. You can look it up if you don’t believe me.
Nitpicking nonsense.
The point infered but not expressed is that the the British monarchy are FOREIGNERS, not native either by birth or by adoption into the country, therefore ALIENS.
The monarchy may be technically monarchs of Australia, but are not Australian monarchs.
Get rid of all hereditary privilege, including inheritance of any kind above an agreed figure, and certainly of title and influence.
No they are not, and none of it is nitpicking nonsense, but thanks anyway for plainly putting the xenophobic basis of the complaint on display.
Throught history and in most places there has never been any requirement for a monarch to be of the local ethnicity and/or born in the relevant country; and requiring a monarch to be a citizen, or, more accurately, a subject, is nonsensical. The English crown provides a fine example, as the last truly English King of England was Edmund Ironside, who died in 816. Since then the Kings/Queens have been Danish, Norman, Norman-French, Welsh, Scottish and Dutch. After that England disappeared into the UK and the throne passed to Germans. Charles’ father was Greek. Who cares? Why care?
Then you argue against inheritance. I’m with you on that, but then if the Australian Head of State is not to be determined on an hereditary principle, we need something else, and various questions and potential problems inevitably arise as a different system will give the position of HoS a different character and shift the balance of power. The current system is so manifestly absurd that it ensures our HoS has no significant authority and is a mere figurehead. The GG has slightly more authority and a recognisable job to do, but then the GG is chosen by our government and is Australian, so presumably you are happy with that. All this can be viewed as a great strength of the system. It makes it extremely unlikely our government faces any real interference from this corner. The one exception is of course the dire events of 1975, but any change to the current system would almost certainly make that sort of crisis more likely, not less, the HoS would very likely be more able to interfere. Maybe that would be good, maybe not, but let’s be sure the current system is broken before we try fixing it. And let’s not do it just because we hate FOREIGNERS and ALIENS, eh? Even if you do.
The uk is not a foreign country,it is my second home. Remember the old poem from my school days.Grandfather lived there long ago,grandfather called it home,so I shall call it home.By the way I am a rusted on old style Labor voter who has voted Yes in the referendum.
The republic referendum was 24 years ago.
“ At some point in a democracy you have to recognise that voters have agency.”
Exactly. I’ve been saying this for months.
If (when) it fails it will be because Australians don’t want it to pass. And if that turns out to be a poor decision we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves.
Failure won’t raise us up in world opinion, that’s for sure.
As I said the other day in yet another unpublished letter to the editor of the SMH (on a different topic, but it’s apt):
If Australia is so divided on this, what makes you think that ‘world opinion’ is unified?
Right on the money JK.
There are a lot of voters who sadly are using the referendum as a chance to give the government the finger. The seeds were sown for the Voice’s downfall 12 months ago.
Quite right ! Very decent of B Keane to post this report now. Fact is; that much of the media , including some Crikey correspondents and many at the ABC, have been punching down on the government and the Yes campaign for the whole duration. While not actually expressing an anti-Yes view they have been critical of the Yes campaign and participating in a generally negative & undermining narrative. Who knows where we might be at this stage if the coverage had been more muted & less opinionated. There have been many other newsworthy events which have struggled to get attention because so many journalists have been taking the easy route to content creation, often reporting on each others stories.
What annoys me is the ABC giving equal time to some of the ridiculous arguments coming out of the ‘No’ campaign. When such arguments can easily be shown to be false, flawed or just plain silly, so called journalists have no excuse. There is a point at which balance becomes disinformation.
Some of the journalists doing this are deliberately musddying the waters, but quite a few are just following the standard operating procedure that journalists have been told to folow since forever in the cause of ‘balance’. So whatever anybody says gets reported the same as anything else anybody else says, giving us endless ‘he said, she said’ reports. Perfectly ok when everyone being reported is speaking in good faith, but when one side is going all out to ‘flood the zone with siht’, as Steve Bannon recommends, it is not balance at all. When the media circulates lies, conspiracy theories and so on as though they are respectable views it is collaborating with Bannon and those who use Bannon’s tactics. Giving equal weight to lies on one hand and truth on the other should not be mistaken for balance.
What is needed is journalism which has some basis in and respect for objective reality, so that when somebody is blatantly lying it is reported as ‘Today this person repeated their lies that have been comprehensively debunked’ or maybe ‘Today this person made a bunch of claims that bear no relation to established facts and are not supported by any evidence’. This would be journalism reporting facts, rather than assisting the spread of propaganda, lies and confusion.
Or the old example.
If one person says it’s raining, and the other person says it’s not, your job as a journalist is not to report what they both said, it’s to look out the window and tell us which one of them is wrong.
During WWII the BBC had a problem with Churchill (he of “In war, truth is often the first casualty.”) demanding that they report untrue government bulletins “in the national interest”.
They simply had the newsreaders say “Today the government issued a statement which said…”.
Thatcher was so furious with the World Service (still a distinct & separate entity to the domestic Beeb) reportage on the Falklands that she ordered the repeater on Ascension island to be placed under Army control so that only properly sanitised “news” could be heard by the troops and listeners in Latin America.
Sounds like many here want the same – only their view to be heard.
If you’ve not already seen it, you might be interested in The First Casualty, a great book written quite while ago by the excellent Aussie journalist Phillip Knightley, which covers the history of war reporting and censorship from the Crimean War to the late 20th C. Entertaining and disturbing in equal measure.
Thatcher’s dislike for objective reporting also surfaced in regard to the low-intensity civil war raging in Northern Ireland. She had laws passed which made it illegal to broadcast the voices of representatives from Sinn Féin and several other Irish republican and loyalist groups. This become a nice little job creation scheme for voice-over actors in the UK, who were used to parrot anything newsworthy said by somebody subject to this ban.
But all of this is way short of the control of all media in various other countries, where the government has an iron grip and state media has a monopoly, such as Russia. It is very depressing that in surveys it can be shown that the populations in such countries have much higher trust in their media than in countries where the media is relatively free. It seem that trust in reporting is inversely proportional to diversity of sources.
That’s a very odd segue from my comment.
So you would be happy with a Censor to decide/hide Truth?
Anyone in mind?
Yourself, mayhaps?
Pretty sure I haven’t said anything at all like that.
They’re so called “balance”. what a crock. with Moloch opposed, why th ehell isn’t this the time to defy the opposition (with Labor in power) and come down firmly on the “what is RIGHT side.
Agree. And there’s no upside to it for the ABC. No amount of appeasement will be enough, they will always remain branded by the No campaign as lefty enemies.
I’ve been wondering if that’s happening in all kinds of issues because the ABC don’t have the staff to check things out anymore? I’ve seen them report pretty much verbatim the press releases of groups with a one eyed view, taking those press releases as truth without examination. Plus when it comes to government, we’ve seen what happens to them when the ABC calls out government lies and misinformation – they lose even more funding. That makes them between a rock and a hard place. It would be interesting to see them instead become the source of truth, justice and the Australian way – and yeah I was laughing at the paraphrasing.
Yes. An important point.
There is no doubt in my mind that Australian media coverage has played an enormous role in the division and tenor of the Voice campaign debate. Does anyone else feel that ABC headlines now come across as if written by a former NewsCorp Exec?