Mike O’Connor: If the Voice is such a good idea, why the hard sell from Labor?

Opinion: The more Anthony Albanese and the Yes camp try to pressure me in their direction, the more I will push back, writes Mike O’Connor.

Mother always told us to say “please” when asking for something, but if the members of our political class were given similar advice by their respective mothers then they appear to have forgotten it.

I’ve yet to hear anyone ask voters if they would please, when they have a moment, consider both sides of the argument surrounding the proposed Indigenous Voice to parliament.

Instead of a respectful, reasoned approach, there is an ever-increasing volume of rhetoric demanding that we just do as we are told and accept it that now verges on bullying.

We once regarded individualism and a healthy suspicion of authority as elements of our national psyche.

But the vote Yes camp has obviously decided that these qualities have become so diluted that we can now be herded into a passive approval of something we don’t understand for no other reason than that’s what the government wants us to do.

Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Sydney. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Jeremy Piper

Increasingly, I feel that I’m being pushed into voting Yes rather than being asked to consider the proposal.

The same mother who taught me to say “please” also despaired of that part of my make-up that ensured that if someone tried to force me to follow a particular course, I would invariably do the opposite.

I feel the same urge now and the more Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Yes camp try to pressure me in their direction then the more I will push back against them.

I resent the fact that corporations and sporting figures and a grab-bag of what are known collectively as “celebrities” are being conscripted to promote the Yes cause.

How they came to be possessed of the absolute wisdom that empowers them to comprehend something that has not and will not have its powers and reach comprehensively defined remains a mystery.

Tennis legend Ash Barty is among Indigenous celebrities to be recruited to support the Yes campaign. Picture: Getty Images

I have met many celebrities in my career and can say with absolute confidence that to a profoundly worrying degree, many did not appear to possess anything approaching a reasonable level of human intelligence.

Are we thought to be so stupid and so easily led that we will accept that the ability, finely honed though it might be, to repeatedly catch or hit a ball makes that person an expert in constitutional law?

If you were thinking of buying a house, would you show the contract to a cricketer or maybe a rugby league player and get them to run their eye over it before you signed it?

If you answered “yes” to this question, stop reading immediately and google “Brisbane lawyers”.

If the Voice is such a good idea then why the hard sell?

Those who dare to question what they are being told by the government, which is essentially “trust us, we’re politicians, we know what we’re doing” are being denigrated in the most appalling fashion.

Olympian Cathy Freeman is a long-time supporter of the Yes vote. Picture: Nick Wilson/Allsport

There are so many unanswered questions and claims and counter claims being made by highly qualified legal persons, some of whom have no partisan view but who are concerned at the damage which could be wrought on the workings of our government that it is difficult to see how anyone can embrace it with any confidence.

Never before have so many been asked to approve something about which they know so little and which is designed to benefit so few.

We are being told that we’ll feel good if we vote for it as if we are so emotionally and intellectually crippled that we need to roll over and have our tummies tickled by an ever-caring government that at the end of the day, just wants everyone to “feel good”.

Lance “Buddy” Franklin is among Indigenous celebrities to be recruited to support the Yes campaign. Picture: Phil Hillyard

The inference is that if you vote No, you’ll feel bad.

I do feel bad, but because I see the inevitability of my country being forever divided by race if the Voice is approved with Indigenous people being accorded a special status not available to others by virtue of their ethnicity.

It’s not what this nation is supposed to be about.

It will split us forever and we will all be the poorer for it.

It’s Anzac Day in a week’s time and the ghosts of those who gave their lives in defending our homeland will once more be visited upon us.

They died defending a democracy that guaranteed that we were all treated equally.

I cannot help but wonder how they would regard this current debate.