Voice Refuseniks
The elitist rhetoric from Yes campaigners is not dissimilar to the narrative developed by the left to explain away the phenomena of Donald Trump or the Brexit referendum. BY NIck Cater.
First published on skynews.com.au
If the Prime Minister was a door-to-door salesman, he’d be shuffling, chin-drooped, his worn socks rubbing against the concrete through the holes in his shoes.
Few Australians appear to be genuinely convinced of the need for an Aboriginal Voice to Parliament.
Most are struggling to understand the point of it.
With the trend in public opinion running against the proposed constitutional amendment, Anthony Albanese’s main preoccupation appears to be avoiding the blame for defeat.
Whatever the result, however, the PM deserves to own it.
Should it succeed, he will justly claim the accolades due to leaders who rescue victory from the jaws of defeat.
If it fails, then he must recognise that the judgement of the Australian people is impeccable.
He must humbly accept that the Voice to Parliament proposal, no matter how noble, was defeated by his own hubris and poor judgement.
It was Albanese who framed the terms of the debate, approved the question and forced the timing of the referendum.
Yet even before the date has been set, the efforts to pin the donkey’s tail on others has already begun.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is an obvious target, since no referendum has succeeded without full-throated, bipartisan support.
In January, Peter Dutton wrote to the Prime Minister in reasonable terms to warn that the failure to provide accessible, clear and complete information would damage reconciliation efforts and ensure a dangerous and divisive debate grounded in hearsay and misinformation.
Albanese’s less than respectful reply came in the form of a tweet.
“People are over cheap culture war stunts,” he tweeted.
In February, Albanese accused Voice opponents of pushing online “misinformation” in order to drum up outrage and start a culture war.
“There are always those who want to create confusion and provoke division, to try and stall progress,” he said in a speech to the Chifley Research Centre.
The shape of the post-defeat narrative is becoming clear.
Dutton is the bottom-feeding, dog-whistling, false-hearted conservative villain from central casting whose opposition to the Voice is false-hearted and cynical.
A cruder form of that same narrative is taking shape within the circle of Indigenous thought-leaders who first came up with the unsellable concept of the Voice.
Their frustration is entirely understandable.
They have invested much in the ideals framed in the Uluru Statement from the Heart, an initiative of good faith designed to break successive cycles of policy failure stretching back to 1788.
Yet their invitation to Australians to join them in a walk for a better future faces rejection.
The unfinished business of Australia’s nationhood may have to wait for another day.
Should the referendum fail, they would be entitled to hold the Prime Minister responsible for botching the opportunity to achieve the inseparable goals of a First Nations Voice, a Makarrata truth-telling commission and treaties.
Their rhetoric to date suggests that, like the Prime Minister, their instinct is to lay the blame on the supposed ignorance of the Australian people and faithless leaders who exploit populist sentiment.
It is not dissimilar to the narrative developed by the left in the US to explain the phenomena of Donald Trump or the one developed by the cosmopolitan British elite to explain away the Brexit referendum.
Trump’s deplorables, Boris Johnson’s Brexiteers and the Voice to Parliament refuseniks serve as common archetypes.
They represent the personification of the essential backwardness of liberal democracies, as seen through the eyes of the intellectual left.
They serve to demonstrate that no matter how many social justice battles have been won, there is still much more work to do before the never-ending progressive project is complete.
Having immersed themselves in one-sided conversations with those of similar moral persuasion, Albanese and other prominent pro-Voice advocates seem genuinely affronted by anybody who has come to a different conclusion.
They have painted themselves into a corner by sanctifying the Voice, turning it from a practical proposal that others are welcome to take or leave into a righteous cause.
As they see it, those who refuse to take what Albanese describes as a step in our nation’s journey of healing must either be stupid or acting in bad faith.
Noel Pearson accuses the federal opposition of “playing a spoiling game”, warning that if the referendum fails, they will be responsible “for destroying the three-decade quest for reconciliation".
Pearson’s disappointment that his own moral fervour for the Voice is not universally shared by everyone is visceral, evidenced by the sharpness of his tongue.
He accuses Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price of being caught in “a tragic redneck celebrity vortex” as the puppet of two right-wing think tanks, the Institute of Public Affairs and the Centre for Independent Studies.
“They’re the string pullers – they’re the ones who have lined up behind Jacinta … and their strategy was to find a Blackfella to punch down on other Blackfellas.”
Marcia Langton joins Pearson by assigning race-based motives to Voice opponents, writing that “it would be terribly unfortunate for all Australians if the debate sinks into a nasty, eugenicist, 19th century-style of debate about the superior race versus the inferior race.”
The refusal of intelligent leaders to accept that there are no other morally responsible paths towards reconciliation other than the choice narrowly prescribed in the Uluru Statement from the Heart will ultimately be the Voice’s undoing.
Even with the best will in the world, it will be hard for those characterised as deplorables not to take offence at the implication that they are borderline racist.
If the mere request for more information is a discreditable act of bad faith, then they stand shoulder to shoulder with Dutton in the ranks of deplorables.
If Senator Price’s common-sense response to the Voice is carelessly dismissed and her character maligned, the appreciation for her courage will only grow.
Ironically, in a lopsided debate in which the advocates of the “no” case struggle to be heard, the growing impatience and indiscipline of the Voice’s most passionate advocates is proving to be a blessing in disguise.