Woke, PC cop out on Voice reveals big problem with modern Australia | David Penberthy

The inability to be confronted with an alternative opinion is another bleak hallmark of discourse in 2023, writes David Penberthy.

It is a remarkable list of names from men who achieved greatness at the highest level in their chosen field in South Australia. And its emergence comes at a time of intense and often irritating national debate around a proposal to alter our constitution.

Over the past few weeks we have heard strong claims from opponents of the Voice that it is wholly inappropriate for sporting organisations and sports stars to express statements in support of a yes vote.

The criticisms also extend to corporate Australia, as if business should operate in a social vacuum and butt out of any major issue of the day. Apparently journalists should shut up too, even in pieces such as these which are not news items but defined as comment, and come with the rejoinder of both letters to the editor and online comments to tell people like me that we are wrong.

The critics say that all these public statements should have no place in society. They regard them as a new thing, a modern impertinence, another sign of “woke” culture.

The rejoinder to their assertion comes from, of all places, the May 20 1967 edition of the SANFL Football Budget.

It involves a bunch of men who are about as far from being “woke” as you could find, who simply decided to put their hands up with a public statement in favour of a constitutional change Australia was considering that year.

“To the football-loving public of South Australia…” the advertisement in the Football Budget begins.

“A ‘YES’ vote to the second question in the Referendum next Saturday 27th May will give Aborigines a better deal. We urge all fair-minded Australians to vote “YES” for Aboriginal rights.”

The signatories on the letter were John Halbert, John Cahill, Don Lindner, Peter Darley, Fred Bills, Don Roach, Haydyn Bunton, Peter Obst, Ken Eustice and Neil Kerley.

SA footy great Neil Kerley might have been decried as woke in 2023. Picture: Sarah Reed

The 1967 proposal was to count Aboriginal people in the Census (that is to recognise them as people) and to give the states the power to make laws on their behalf.

The statement by these men and the question they were urging support for blows a significant hole in two of the key assertions put by the No camp today in the context of the Voice.

The first is their assertion that we are all somehow being bullied and browbeaten by this “new” trend of people taking a stand in favour of constitutional change.

The second is the idea that the Voice proposal is a frightening new development in that it injects race into the Constitution for the very first time.

The 1967 referendum was the biggest electoral smash Australia had ever seen. Blessed as it was by bipartisan support - the question was put by Harold Holt’s Liberal Government with the support for the Labor Opposition - it easily satisfied the requirement of an absolute majority in at least four states. All six states voted yes and the national vote was just shy of 91 per cent in favour of the change.

Fifty-odd years on, with doubt surrounding whether the Voice will pass, it feels to me that its defeat would say less about its content than the fact that we are simply less good at talking about things thoughtfully than we once were.

It’s a criticism you can level at both sides in the current debate. There have been some on the Yes side who have made all sorts of sweeping and unpleasant generalisations about No voters, or people who are simply unsure as to how they want to vote.

Being confused or wanting clearer reassurances about the workings of the Voice does not make you a racist. Indeed voting no doesn’t make you a racist either. You are allowed to vote no. This is a democracy. People can do what they like.

But on the No side, I would be equally critical of those who think everyone in the public arena should shut up about the Voice, as if it’s an unfair form of pressure to advocate for change.

Again, as per our diminished capacity to agree to disagree, this inability to be confronted with an alternative opinion is another bleak hallmark of discourse in 2023.

People such as John Howard and Peter Dutton have led the charge against sporting groups in the context of the Voice. They say that politics and sport shouldn’t mix. (In passing I’d say that if politics and sport didn’t mix we might still have an apartheid regime in South Africa today, one of the high points of human evil).

Groups such as the AFL, and AFL sporting clubs, are in a perfect position to offer their views about the Voice. That’s because the national game is one of the few fields in this country where indigenous people are massively over-represented for the good. In almost every other category - life expectancy, infant mortality, illness, literacy, employment and incarceration - they outstrip the rest of us by a country mile. Yet in the world of football, they represent playing lists at more than double the rate of our indigenous population. For a lot of these men and women who play the game, professionally or at the amateur level, football has been the redemptive force that helped them dodge being over-represented in all those aforementioned statistical categories.

There is nothing new about people having a say.

You don’t have to agree with it.

But you don’t have to feel pressured or belittled by it. It’s their opinion, feel free to form your own.

But we should be mature enough to recognise that people and organisations do have different opinions, and not treat the delivery of those opinions as wokeness, gesture signalling or that hoariest old chestnut of all, political correctness gone mad.

And as polling day approaches, I might approach the ballot box at this referendum with a strange question: just ask yourself, what would Neil Kerley do?