Voice campaign still in with a chance despite poll numbers
Polls suggest undecideds have the potential to tip things towards the Voice and these are who the Yes campaign is counting on winning as it remakes itself into a kinder, gentler model, James Morrow writes.
Opinion
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If the polls are right, “yes” campaign posters will soon be this decade’s answer to the “Kevin ‘07” and “I Give a Gonski” bumper stickers one still occasionally sees plastered on the back of ancient Volvos.
Not only are the overall national numbers looking grim for the Voice but, with Queensland and WA all but sure to vote it down, it is hard to see “yes” coming up with majorities in South Australia, Victoria, Tasmania and NSW to win the preponderance of states. And yet.
While the “no” campaign was able to consolidate early and get its messaging right — in contrast to “yes” campaigners who preach either modest change or revolution, depending on their audience — there still remains a chance Australia will be saddled with a constitutionally enshrined race-based bureaucracy by the end of the year.
Tony Abbott was correct this week to note that there was still plenty of time on the clock and, more to the point, millions upon millions of dollars waiting to be spent that could, as he put it, “buy a referendum”.
These millions, easily in the eight figures, are already being deployed in a great act of gaslighting that is less Voice than vibe. Readers may have already noticed this playing out.
Gone is the Noel Pearson of just a few months ago who (just before Good Friday, no less) accused Peter Dutton of being an “undertaker preparing the grave” for the Voice and the Liberals of committing a “Judas betrayal” of Aboriginal Australia.
This made a big impression on those who tuned in early to the debate but the Yes camp clearly hopes to be able to undo that by presenting a nice, respectful, conciliatory Pearson who says all the abuse is in the past to those who are only now just switching on.
Activist Thomas Mayo has undergone a similar rehabilitation.
Some weeks ago it was revealed Mayo, as recently as two years ago, was making appearances praising the Communist Party of Australia, calling for reparations and demanding white Australia “pay the rent.”
As recently as 2020 — so one cannot say he was a younger man who should have known better – Mayo was tweeting: “Reparations, land back, abolishing harmful colonial institutions, getting ALL our kids out of prisons & in to care, respect & integration of our laws & lore, speaking language, wages back – all the things we imagine when we demand.”
Yet this past weekend Nine newspapers published around 2000 words largely devoted to cleaning up Mayo’s old comments and tarring anyone who thinks differently with the dreaded R-word.
Marcia Langton, who worked alongside Mayo on the referendum working group, told the paper that in contrast to some of the vision that surfaced of his old speeches, Mayo is “never angry, always calm and logical”.
“He is not, and has never been, a communist,” she said. “In my opinion, their attacks on him are racist and also outright lies.”
To be fair to the journalist who wrote the story, prominent No campaigner Warren Mundine was also given a chance to have his say but the point of the piece was clear. Herein lies the danger for the No camp.
At this stage in the debate, enough people have made up their mind to kill off the Voice.
But there are still, polls suggest, many more undecideds who have the potential to tip things the other way, and these are who the Yes campaign is counting on winning as it remakes itself into a kinder, gentler model.
Yet no matter how much spin is put on the matter, the Yes campaign still has some pretty fundamental questions to answer.
Like, if the Voice is all about listening to communities, what is the constitutional or legal barrier to that happening already?
And, what exactly is the model for this thing going to look like: It is not enough for the government to keep pointing to the Calma-Langton report when this is nowhere close to being the agreed model for the thing.
And, of course, what comes next?
While Anthony Albanese is fond of describing the Voice as a modest and gracious request, some of its biggest advocates want much more.
The PM may deny that his “Voice, Treaty, Truth” t-shirt has anything to do with the future course of the Voice but before he ascended to the Lodge he was backing that very sequence in as opposition leader.
In 2021, speaking on the floor of parliament, Albanese said: “As a priority, Labor will establish a Makarrata Commission with responsibility for truth-telling and treaty. It will be established through a process of open nominations and review. The Commission will facilitate local truth-telling and advise on a national framework for treaty-making, and it will work with a Voice to Parliament.”
And documents that came out of the process that wrote the Uluru Statement reveal that this commission could sit above both parliament and the executive and native title bodies as an “umpire”.
As long as the PM and the Yes camp has to keep explaining this, they are losing.
But the No camp should not imagine the battle is already won.
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