James Campbell: Voice defeat is all down to Anthony Albanese’s mistakes

Anthony Albanese will have to wear the blame for this disaster. It was his decision on election night to put the Voice at the centre of his first term and he made an array of errors on the journey to the polls.

The people have spoken and their verdict is a hard No to Anthony Albanese’s Voice.

This will be a hard result for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Especially as the result isn’t close to being close.

With the votes from Western Australia starting to come in it was looking increasingly likely the Yes case will be lucky to crack 40 per cent across Australia and will fail in every state and territory bar the ACT.

The No campaign’s decision to concentrate on Queensland, SA, WA and Tasmania has been more than vindicated with sweeping victories.

Anthony Albanese put the best face on things saying the decision to hold it was “the fulfilment of their request that we take forward an idea that had been decades in the making, and we would give the Australian people the opportunity to decide for themselves”.

Anthony Albanese will cop much of the blame for the failure of the Voice. Picture: Tim Hunter.

Pushing it back on the Indigenous leadership might make sense politically but it won’t wash. Albo will have to wear the blame for this disaster. It was his decision on election night to put the Voice at the centre of his first term.

It was his decision to hold a referendum without first holding a constitutional convention. It was his decision to tie putting recognition of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders into the constitution to the Voice.

Had he taken the advice to split them recognition would have passed in a canter, meaning something might have been salvaged from this exercise.

It was also his decision not use his authority to persuade Indigenous leaders to accept the Voice’s power to advise the Executive would need to be legislated rather than entrenched in the constitution.

By then it was clear this was the last chance for the Voice to secure the support of constitutional conservatives in the Liberal Party. But from the get go Albo has acted as though he didn’t care whether the Coalition supported the proposal or not.

Mark Merriman, Gadigal elder and key No campaigner Warren Mundine at Randwick Town Hall. Picture: Alexi Demetriadi/The Australian

It may be the case that as a Liberal elder statesman remarked to me earlier this month ‘there was no chance that in opposition the Liberal Party was going to get behind a proposition it had rejected in government’.

But the way he has behaved Albo made Peter Dutton’s task in keeping the Liberal Party together much easier.

Finally, it was Albo’s decision to press on with the referendum vote when anybody could see there was no chance the polls could be turned around in the time available.

This is perhaps the biggest mystery of all. The best explanation Labor insiders can offer is that he and his senior colleagues remain haunted by Kevin Rudd’s decision to walk away from an emission trading scheme after labelling climate change the greatest moral challenge of our time.

But the two things are not remotely comparable politically.

You can argue Indigenous issues should be a matter of greater concern for other Australians but talk to any pollster and they will tell you that year-in-year-out they just don’t rate.

This I suspect was at the cynical heart of Albo’s bet on the Voice from the beginning.