I’m voting yes on the Voice, but the preachy lefties risk causing it to fail | David Penberthy

I should be able to walk down a supermarket without being preached at, writes David Penberthy. It’s these pointless, feel-good tactics that will destroy the Voice’s yes vote.

As a ratepayer of the Unley Council area I have a clear memory of the last piece of correspondence I received from my council.

It was a rates bill, and left my wallet just over a thousand bucks lighter. I have no recollection though of receiving the council-wide mailout asking if I wanted this third tier of government to take it upon itself to abolish Australia Day.

I am sure that the ratepayers in Mitcham, Port Adelaide or the Adelaide Hills have no such memories, and suspect ratepayers in Prospect and Onkaparinga are playing no direct role as their councils ruminate over whether January 26 should be shunned forever more from any citizenship ceremonies or council-backed celebrations on the national holiday.

Mitcham Council’s Australia Day celebrations. Picture: Supplied

I don’t make these criticisms as a fan of Australia Day. January 26 has always been a silly and divisive day to celebrate our nation. Our nation deserves to be celebrated but it makes no sense as a force for unity to do it on the day its original inhabitants were invaded.

But I am also a fan of democracy, and cannot see why the job should fall to the least representative and most unprofessional arm of government to act on something which is clearly a national and federal issue.

It is especially insulting when you consider their actions remain out of step with majority opinion on this question. While the popularity of Australia Day is declining, every poll I have seen on the topic suggests that most people still support January 26 as the date. But more’s the point – why is that the people entrusted to take out our bins should become the vanguard of national change, especially when voter turnout for these trumped-up councils is so pitiably low.

The timing of Adelaide Hills Council’s decision this week to scrap Australia Day citizenship ceremonies, and the resultant Advertiser report about these jumped-up and undemocratic councillors, is seriously unfortunate for anyone who wants to see the “Yes” vote prevail in the Voice referendum. Many people on the Yes side are blaming the conservatives for muddying the waters and frightening and confusing people. I’d say the biggest enemies of the Yes vote are white progressives in boardrooms, local councils and on social media who couldn’t be doing a worse job to win hearts and minds if they tried.

I was down at Big W in Cumberland Park last Wednesday buying a piñata for my youngest son’s birthday when a statement was broadcast over the PA.

“We remain committed to actively contributing to Australia’s reconciliation journey through listening and learning, empowering more diverse voices and working together for a better tomorrow,” it said.

“We reaffirm our support for the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and its calls for a First Nations voice to parliament enshrined in the Constitution.”

It was school holidays and there was an elderly man standing near me in the stationery aisle buying some colouring pencils with his grandson. He looked at me and rolled his eyes as the statement was blaring out, the same statement which the very next day Big W announced it would be scrapping on account of what was described euphemistically as “feedback” from customers and staff.

Now, I am a Yes voter. I am voting Yes for two reasons – because the Voice is nothing more powerful than an advisory body which will hopefully deliver better results in the often-wretched lives of the first Aussies, with parliament free to reject that advice. I am mainly voting Yes because it feels that to vote No would be taken by Indigenous Australians as a rejection of them as a people, especially given that the Voice was their idea and most of them support it.

But I also reckon that I should be allowed to buy a bloody piñata in peace without some corporate entity issuing preachy statements over the PA, after the fashion of George Orwell’s 1984, telling me how I should think and vote.

And if I think that as a Yes voter, imagine how it must go down with undecided voters and No voters, like I suspect my older mate buying the coloured pencils who was shaking his head and harrumphing as the Big W people gave him a bit of steer for polling day.

It would be easier to cop this posturing nonsense if it wasn’t coming from the same retail giant that spent five years fighting in the courts for its apparent right to open a Dan Murphys liquor store within walking distance of three dry Aboriginal communities in Darwin, suggesting that for whatever feel-good gesture politics is signed off on at the board level, the main game ultimately remains making as much money as possible.

Sadly again, the best local insight into how doomed the Yes vote is comes courtesy of lawyer Greg Griffin and the misguided attempt by former Port and Crows players and brothers Shane and Troy Bond to seek recompense for the use of their image on the Showdown Cup.

This rank bit of legal opportunism has achieved two things. First, to diminish the legacy of two good blokes and handy footballers by making it look like they are simply trying to bludge some dough off their former clubs.

Second, Griffin’s ill-advised and baseless assertion that the use of their images is typical of the broader mistreatment of Aboriginal people. Their images are clearly being used with the intention to celebrate and commemorate, not denigrate. And given how many other athletes’ images are used in similar ways – as per the statues of Robran and Blight and Ebert around Adelaide Oval – how can the mere casting of a trophy be seen as a race-based attack on the pair?

Read the comments on that story and just shake your head about the chances of a Yes vote prevailing.

If – when – it fails, it will be less the result of concerted right-wing attacks than the impertinent, preachy tactics of those on the left, trying to bring the mainstream with them by telling anyone who won’t vote Yes that it’s probably because they’re racist and stupid.