James Campbell: Is Albo digging himself into a hole with Voice referendum

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese needs to be careful with how he speaks about the Voice’s so called ‘opportunity for national unity’, writes James Campbell

The Prime Minister was asked on Wednesday what he had to say to those Indigenous folk who want to know how his push for a referendum on a Voice to Parliament will interact with the movement towards a treaty with the descendants of the country’s original inhabitants.

It seemed on the face of it, to be an innocuous question, that is unless you understand that “treaty first” is the position of the Greens Party and its firebrand senator Lidia Thorpe, who seem to be getting ready to play the same role sinking the Voice as the ‘direct election’ republicans did back in 1999, when they teamed up with the monarchists to help keep Her Majesty on her Australian throne.

From his answer it’s clear the PM understands the danger.

“The idea that you should, because you’re an Indigenous Australian have the same view as every other Indigenous Australian is not real,” he said, but nevertheless, it was clear the Uluru Statement from the Heart — from which the proposal sprang — has the support of the vast majority of Indigenous people around Australia as well as business, labour and church leaders.

“Is that uniform? Is that homogenous? No, it’s not. But media can choose. Media can choose during this debate to look at — and you have a big responsibility — to look at and promote what unites us and to put that in a coherent way whilst recognising there are different views.”

Prime Minister Albanese appears to understand the recent danger his found himself in. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Oh dear. Less than two weeks after he unveiled the question he plans to ask us, and the lectures about how we’re to report it have already started.

A few days earlier Albo told the Garma Festival in Arnhem Land “I believe the tide is running our way, I believe the momentum is with us, as never before” and the “country is ready for this reform” because the proposed measure was “simple courtesy” and “common decency”.

The problem is what happens if the momentum is not with it and it goes down, then what?

If Albo wants to have a big smoking ceremony where he sets fire to his political capital, that is a matter for him.

But by framing the debate the way he has, if it is defeated, we will be left with a Prime Minister who has made it clear he thinks the Australian people lack simple courtesy and common decency.

And let’s face it, the chances are that this will fail.

Why? You can start with the fact that the overwhelming majority of referendum questions fail.

Then there’s the Opposition.

All last week conservative commentators were lining up to berate Peter Dutton for not coming out and denouncing the Voice already.

He should, we are told, among other things, have seized the opportunity to make a point of liberal principle, that it is wrong for any one race to be given a special status in the constitution.

The arguments have merit.

Firebrand Greens senator Lidia Thorpe. Picture: AAP Image

But the writers are ignoring the political realities that Dutton faces.

The first is that having lost an election – badly – for the next couple of years, the only thing that will make the public take notice of the Opposition is if it’s at war with itself.

There is a minority of MPs – admittedly a very small one – who are open to entrenching the Voice into the Constitution and until they can be convinced that Albanese’s proposition should be rejected, Dutton will play a waiting game.

The group that wants to oppose it on principle are alive to this danger and for now are prepared to wait.

Others think the referendum is doomed to fail anyway so there is nothing to be gained from being seen as the bad guys who killed it.

This group includes some MPs who while they’re personally opposed to the proposal are alive to its capacity to create division.

They want it to fail but are genuinely frightened of the bitterness that will be left in the wake of that defeat.

There are also those who worry how badly a full-throated Liberal opposition to the Voice will play out in the Teal seats they need to win back.

All of which is a long way of saying there is absolutely no chance whatsoever — zip, zero, zilch, nada — the Opposition parties are going to endorse this proposal.

Albanese might be right of course, the tide might indeed be running his way here.

But in these circumstances, history would suggest it has very little chance of passing.

Of course he’s entitled to argue for the Voice, as loudly as he wants.

He needs to be mindful however of what he’s going to say on the Sunday morning after it flops.

Lecturing us that enshrining the Voice in constitution will be “a unifying Australian moment” and calling on “all Australians of goodwill to engage” might play well to the audience that thinks this a good idea.

But since the chances are that a majority of us are going to decline to take this “opportunity for national unity” he ought to be careful about how he speaks about it.

That he’s already blaming the media is a bad sign.