James Campbell: Stop the madness, Albo
Why is Anthony Albanese pressing on with a referendum which every piece of evidence shows is going to fail badly?, asks James Campbell.
Opinion
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Why is Albo doing this? Why is he pressing on with a referendum which every piece of evidence shows is going to fail badly?
With a little over a month to go, every poll says not only is the Voice not going to get a majority of votes nationally – it looks like it is going to flop in every state with the possible exception of Victoria.
The best indicator of how much strife this thing is in is not the results for voting intention – as bad as they are – but the results in the latest RedBridge poll which asked people to identify compelling reasons for voting Yes and No.
RedBridge offered respondents a list of reasons to support the Voice.
The results were a devastating indictment of the government’s failure to sell it.
The most compelling reason to vote Yes – “the idea came from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people” – was identified by 16 per cent of voters, followed by “it will bring our country together” and “constitutional recognition for concrete results” which both scored 11 per cent.
In contrast, 29 per cent offered “other reasons”.
In other words, nearly a third of voters do not regard the reasons for the Voice pushed by the government as compelling.
In contrast, 23 per cent of all voters have identified “it divides us” as a compelling reason to vote No while 15 per cent can point to “there are no details” and “it won’t help Indigenous Australians” as compelling arguments against.
Only 9 per cent of people had “other” compelling reasons to votes No.
What this shows is despite being outspent and virtually no third party endorsements, the core message of the No campaign has penetrated far more deeply into voters’ consciousness.
What, you have to ask yourself, is the realistic chance of turning this around in five weeks?
If you answer that honestly, the question that inevitably follows is why is the Prime Minister pressing on?
Because make no mistake, if this goes down badly, it isn’t going to be like Hawkie’s failure to enshrine local councils in the constitution which everyone had forgotten about three months later.
A failure on the Voice will leave a bitter taste in the mouth, one that will last years.
The cynical view in Canberra is that, from the get go, Albo has always reckoned he’s flipping with a double-headed coin.
If the Voice gets up well and good: he’ll be a Whitlamesque Labor hero.
If it flops, that won’t be a problem because it won’t hurt the government’s chances of being re-elected, indeed it might even help because Teal voters are likely to blame Peter Dutton and the Liberal Party.
The problem with this strategy, if that’s what it was, is that to blame defeat on the Coalition, the Voice needed to fail narrowly.
But on current trends it isn’t just going to miss the tape by inches, it’s going to lose by the length of the straight.
As a colleague remarked to me recently, Albo appears to have forgotten that when you set out to wedge your opponents, “it’s not set and forget”.
Moreover, as much as Liberals will claim the “victory”, the fact is if that RedBridge poll is right, it will have flopped for reasons that are very different to the ones Dutton is advancing.
Peter Dutton is, in theory anyway, open to some kind Indigenous recognition in the constitution and would legislate local Voices.
He is not against the idea on principle, far from it.
But if RedBridge is right, the main argument people have fastened on to as a reason to vote No, is the fear the Voice will be divisive.
In other words, they’re more afraid of it in theory than the practical concerns about court challenges and the like, that Liberals have been talking about.
Now if this idea has taken deep root in the mind of the public, there’s probably little that can be done to turn it around, even if Dutton and Albanese were to find some form of words they could agree on.
But that doesn’t mean Albo shouldn’t try.
As things stand, the Voice is heading for defeat and that defeat is going to further sour relations with Indigenous Australians – and for a very long time.
There is no escaping that cancelling next month’s vote and going back to Dutton to find something they can agree on would be a massive humiliation for Anthony Albanese.
But a big defeat for the referendum at the hands of the voters will also be a massive humiliation for him.
There are no good options here.
The best that can be said is that by pulling back now, this humiliation will be confined mainly to himself and his government.
If he presses on he will be forcing the rest of us to share the shame of his failure.
Come on, Albo, stop this madness before it’s too late!
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