James Morrow: Referendum a chance to tell greedy, woke corporates and pollies where to go

In the middle of a cost of living crisis, when distrust of the corporate sector is at record levels, it’s a wonder anyone is voting “yes” at all, writes James Morrow.

It’s rare, but every now and then a politician screws up and tells the truth.

Even if he doesn’t realise what he’s just admitted.

In Monday’s Question Time, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese let slip this little gem that may do more to explain why the push for an Aboriginal Voice to Parliament has hit the rocks than just about anything else.

“It might be news to the Member for Bradfield that every major business in Australia is supporting a Yes campaign,” Mr Albanese told the House of Representatives.

“Woolworths, Coles, Telstra, BHP, Rio Tinto, the Business Council Australia … the Australian Football League, the National Rugby League, Rugby Australia, Netball Australia are all supporting a Yes campaign in this referendum.”

With a list of supporters like that – in the middle of a cost of living crisis, when distrust of the corporate sector is at record levels – it’s a wonder anyone is voting “yes” at all.

CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA, NewsWire Photos. SEPTEMBER 11, 2023: The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra Monday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Frankly it’s amazing Albanese didn’t throw in PwC for good measure.

Now, with the Yes campaign floundering and voters connecting the dots between Qantas and the Yes campaign and Albo and Qatar, the referendum debate has begun to take on a new element.

That is, it is becoming a chance for voters struggling with rising grocery and housing and energy bills to tell greedy, woke corporates and pollies and sporting bodies where to go with their moral preening.

And this is also why, whichever of the government’s half dozen excuses for knocking back Qatar’s application for more flights turns out to be the real one, the whole question of mateyness between the PM and Alan Joyce suddenly caught fire.

The question of whether Qatar Airways was blocked for political reasons continues to dog the Voice. (Photo by PASCAL PAVANI / AFP)

It cut to the heart of the all too cozy way Australians, often correctly, sense deals are cut at the elite levels of society: Everyone sings from the same songsheet to get a share of the spoils.

Later that day in parliament, Albanese underlined the problem when he was forced to list who got a ride back to Sydney on the VIP jet after his Jobs and Skills Summit.

On the manifest were Joyce (who would have known enough about Qantas’ cancelling flights out of Canberra to take up the PM’s offer), ex-Business Council chief Jennifer Westacott, the heads of Transurban, BHP, and Wesfarmers, and corporate gender equality advocate Sam Mostyn.

All declared, all paid for, all above board … but also, all a bit unseemly and Porpoise Spit.

It was a moment that crystallised Australia’s broader economic problem where dynamism has been replaced with a sort of corporatism.

Under that sort of system, the big players and interest groups get together and divide up the spoils.

Corporate gender equality advocate Sam Mostyn was among those who got a ride on the PM’s jet. Picture: Richard Dobson

And big companies get to do things like reap record profits after firing most of their checkout staff and treating their customers like crims as soon as they walk in the door (I’m looking at you, supermarket giants).

All is forgiven so long as they tip in to the right causes and remind you to “Vote Yes!” at the bottom of your docket.

And by the way, that’ll be 25 cents for the paper bag, mate.

That these massive companies are now Albo’s new progressive heroes for the Voice is a large part of why the Yes campaign has failed to land.

And it suggests something must have happened to the PM’s political inner ear as he rose from being Leichhardt mayor Larry Hand’s backroom fixer in Rats in the Ranks to occupying the lofty heights of the Prime Ministerial Suite.

How else could the Camperdown boy who grew up learning to “fight Tories” wind up on the same side of history as the board rooms of the ASX100?

Albo recruiting corporates has backfired. Picture: NCA NewsWire/ Monique Harmer

It’s almost as tone deaf as a bunch of big name pollsters and campaign strategists thinking it would be a grand idea to roll out Farnsey and a bunch of old footage from the ABC in a last big push for the finish line.

Meanwhile there is increasing evidence that the very clever elite dumping tens of millions of dollars into the Yes campaign have little clue what they are doing, and indeed have relied mostly on the vibe.

Polling outfit Redbridge, which has strong links to Labor, revealed that in its most recent survey Yes voters were far less clear about why they were voting that way than No voters, who coalesced around the strong messaging of division, lack of detail, and lack of evidence it would do anything to help.

This is something to bear in mind as the Yes campaign and many of its proxies in the media start to ramp up a campaign suggesting that if the referendum fails, it will have been because racists and rednecks used misinformation to con the gullible into voting “no”.

Rather, it will have been that the progressive left pushing this thing were doing so not as grassroots activists agitating for a change whose time has come but rather a bunch of rich puritanical bossy-boots telling the little people – ordinary voters – what to do.