Tim Blair: Vote ‘No’ to the Voice for fewer welcome to country ceremonies

Still not sure about how to vote in the Voice referendum? Tim Blair believes he has a consideration that will help you make up your mind.

Our national Voice debate sure has taken a strange turn or two.

In a stunning weekend move, one leading Yes campaigner reversed course to give Australians their best reason yet to vote against Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Voice to Parliament initiative.

“I imagine that most Australians who are non-Indigenous, if we lose the referendum, will not be able to look me in the eye,” Marcia Langton told The Weekend Australian.

Moving quickly past the fact that academic Langton — being not completely Indigenous herself — would in the case of a referendum defeat have difficulty meeting her own gaze, the veteran Aboriginal activist then presented a uniquely powerful anti-Yes argument.

“How are they going to ever ask an Indigenous person, a Traditional Owner, for a welcome to country?” Langton asked.

“How are they ever going to be able to ask me to come and speak at their conference?

“If they have the temerity to do it, of course the answer is going to be no.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese holds up didgeridoo (yidaki) during Garma Festival 2022. Picture: Getty

People, this changes everything. As The Weekend Australian’s headline put it: “Vote ‘No’ and you won’t get a welcome to country again.”

Fine by me. Fine by many of us, judging by massive responses online. Let’s lock that No vote in good and proper right now.

This, of course, is not to diminish the need to enhance Australia’s racial harmony.

The good news is that we continue on that noble course, largely without compulsion and free of government insistence.

Australians, almost every single one of us, are all for practical and meaningful measures to improve Aboriginal wellbeing. Nor do we turn away from the desperation that demands those measures.

For recent evidence of this, consider the intense and appalled attention paid by so many Australians to heartbreaking circumstances in Alice Springs.

Tokenistic, mock-solemn and essentially pointless welcome to country ceremonies, however, do nothing to boost wellbeing.

At most, they’re a politely endured formality prior to the real action (or inaction — welcome ceremonies are now sometimes scheduled prior to even routine workplace events, especially in the public service).

Academic Marcia Langton. Picture: TWAM/Nic Walker

They’re also a way for pretentious urban white folk to publicly celebrate their Indigenous-ally status by carefully deleting any pre-country “the” or “our”.

Something nobody will ever say: “It wasn’t much of a grand final, but the welcome to country was a ripper.”

Anyway, that unexpected promotion for the No vote aside, the Voice campaign is proceeding much as many had anticipated.

Which is to say that, in the name of national unity, we’ve been coldly and expertly divided.

Albanese cranked things up again last week after Liberal leader Peter Dutton announced his party would campaign against the Voice.

This was even before that impressive welcome-to-country-removal bonus was thrown in.

“It is so disappointing,” Albanese wailed, complaining that Liberal Opposition was “all about politics”.

That is one hell of a pot-kettle claim from Albo, who’s been all about politics himself ever since he learned how to talk.

(Unfair example, obviously. But you get what I mean.)

“This is not about me and Peter Dutton or any other politician,” Albanese continued.

“It is about Australia. How we see ourselves. Whether we give respect and recognise we share this great island continent of ours with the oldest continuous culture on earth.”

In a national first, we apparently elected last year as Prime Minister a late-1980s Qantas ad with extra cringe on top. Way to go, us.

A number of our weaker, Teal-stalked Liberals are no doubt presently worried they’ll be judged as historically wicked if they stick with the No team.

This is due to another unity strategy that paints all No voters as evil.

Yet there’s always a way out — at least if you’re inclined to the Left.

Gay Labor icon Penny Wong voted against gay marriage for years, only switching support when her party permitted it.

“I decided to fight this discrimination from within the political system,” Wong said in 2017, when voting for gay marriage finally meant she’d no longer lose senior ALP authority.

“I chose to stay,” Wong added, “and accept the solidarity to which I had signed up as a member of a collective political party.”

There you go, Yes-inclined Liberal wimps. Simply play the each-way Wong card and, somewhere down the line, insist your No vote was a tactical ruse requiring that you fight “from within the political system” and accept “the solidarity”.

It’s worked a treat for Wong. As this topsy-turvy Voice to parliament debate continues, perhaps Penny will provide the next twist.

Let’s welcome her defence of Liberals who vote against the trend.