David Penberthy: The No campaign deals with fabrication – the Yes side with insults
Stating simple facts about the Voice gets you shot down as a liar by the No campaign. But the Yes side is all preachiness and insults, writes David Penberthy.
National
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Back in 2019 the great political philosopher Taylor Swift declared: “You need to calm down.” While the song was a mediocre one by Swift’s normally excellent standards, it still served as an impassioned call for ideologically obsessed culture war warriors to take a chill pill and pull their heads in./
The words of Swift should guide our nation over the next six weeks as we approach referendum day.
We are told that this is one of the most bitterly divisive episodes in the history of Australia.
I am not sure if it’s that divisive. It can certainly feel quite tedious. It is circular, filled with overstatement, hysteria, and marred by an abundance of abuse.
As is always the case, I reckon most Australians sit somewhere in the middle on the questions at hand, and are sick of the end-is-nigh tone of the more impassioned advocates of either Yes or No. Those trying to mull over the issues with a sense of detachment are having a tough time of it thanks to those who struggle to calm down.
There is a view on the Left that if the Yes vote fails it will be on account of some vast right-wing conspiracy to confuse and frighten people about the apparently menacing nature the Voice. If the Yes vote fails I’d be more inclined to blame the Left itself for its stellar combination of preachiness and insults.
By preachiness, I mean the No-vote driving tactical stupidity of big corporations telling us how to suck eggs, as per the hilarity of watching Rio Tinto take time out of its schedule blowing up sacred Aboriginal caves to tell us how to fill in our ballots.
It feels like the Yes vote is being lost one painted aeroplane at a time. To that point, which genius thought a press conference starring one of the least popular CEOs in Australia would be a vote winner?
And when it comes to insults, where do you start in such a target-rich field? Two of my favourites came from someone I admire in Jack Thompson, and someone I regard as a windbag in former journalist Mike Carlton. It pains me to mention Thompson in a negative way, but the brilliant actor gave a terrible answer when interviewed by David Wenham on the ABC about what he thought the fate of the referendum would be. “A No vote would mean that ill-will, prejudice and sheer bastardry had won,” Thompson said.
He is of course entitled to hold such a curmudgeonly and derogatory view, but it is so demonstrably counter-productive, a point which holds less true of Thompson himself than the many Yes vote advocates on Twitter who keep posting his quote as if it’s helpful to their cause.
As for Carlton, I noted in passing the other day that he’s drawn up a handy list of the four categories of people who are voting No to the Voice, the first of which simply reads: “F … wits.” As we used to say at school, takes one to know one.
With friends like these the Voice needs no other enemies.
But when you look at the contribution being made by the Voice’s actual enemies, so such of what passes for criticism is so conspiratorial or baseless that it appears to have been made up. The Voice is by definition a modest proposal, in that it has absolutely no binding power over the parliament. None. The government of the day is free to say thanks, but no thanks, to anything it recommends. All if asks for is for the government to listen.
Stating these facts gets you shot down as a liar by the No camp (or a hand-wringer, a pinko, a luvvie, a woke idiot). The Voice, they argue, will even have the power to influence decisions on interest rates and national security. This vast army of Aboriginal bureaucrats could stop the AUKUS deal dead in its tracks. This isn’t factually-based, rational argument. It is invention and fabrication.
My favourite example of some of the tosh coming from the No camp is the assertion that the Voice is a new form of apartheid. A quick squizz at a history book would tell you that apartheid was the system of government in South Africa that prevented Black people from voting, and used state-sponsored violence to suppress their every attempt to have an electoral say.
Now, unless the Voice means white people will lose the right to vote, and be herded into impoverished homelands and shot at for disagreeing with the Voice, the comparison seems somewhat overblown. And the funniest thing about this historically bereft line of argument – hearing grim warnings about this so-called new form of apartheid from people who had no real problem with the old form of apartheid.
One of the smartest things any Voice advocate has said in this entire campaign was the South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas speaking ahead of last Wednesday’s campaign launch.
“I enjoy talking with people who are voting No,” Malinauskas said.
“I don’t think voting No means you are racist or ignorant. That’s only going to drive people away. People have every right to ask questions. We need to engage with them and address their concerns.”
What a measured and sensible approach, yet lacking in so many quarters.
Australians are not bitterly divided. The people who are bitterly divided are those on the extremes who care far too much about absolutely everything. Australians have historically been good at agreeing to disagree. The only thing that threatens our ability to do so are the implacable and angry rantings of those on the polar ends of politics, who dehumanise their opponents and lower the tone for the rest of us.
We are not like the United States. We should make sure that over the next six weeks we maintain our even-temperedness. To quote Tay Tay again, haters gonna hate. The rest of us can shake it off.
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