Andrew Bolt: A radical plan to divide the country on race was not wise

When I received an abusive and misleading tirade of an email, I couldn’t believe it was from the barrister who defended George Pell from false claims.

I thought the signature on one of 650 online replies to last Thursday’s column on the Voice must be fake. “Robert Richter KC”, my foot.

It rang false from the very first word: “Dear Andrew, you are despicable.”

No, Richter, my fellow George Pell defender, couldn’t have written this moralising fact-free abuse, a perfect example of all that’s wrong about the Yes campaign.

After all, he’s the barrister who defended Cardinal Pell from false claims that he had sexually abused two teenage boys.

Richter had dared defy a self-righteous mob. He seemed to know the critical difference between a feel-good falsehood and the truth. He knew you couldn’t be more moral by doing something stupid and unjust. Surely!

But I was mistaken, as I found when I sent Richter the post in an email headed “impersonation alert”.

He indeed wrote this abusive and misleading tirade, thus reminding me Yes crusaders could still hurt Australia even when the Voice gets defeated in three weeks:

“Dear Andrew,

“You are despicable in your deliberate twisted and deceptive effort to set back the cause of fair and honest discourse about race and good sense. Why should not the most discriminated and oppressed First Nation people be constitutionally recognised and at least given a hearing when they make a representation to parliament or the heads of governmental powers, about matters directly affecting only them!

It was first thought that the email someone impersonating Robert Richter KC. Picture: Zak Simmonds

“All that’s asked for in this referendum is that they — who according to the High Court are the only people who have never ceeded sovereignty — are at least listened to.

“You, of all people, should know the difference between listening and mandated obedience.

“Whether the parliament or executive accepts their advice or not is a matter for the parliament or ministers of the day; but at least that advice will be proffered by people most intimately knowledgeable of the issues and problems of our grassroots victims of racism and oppression.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself for dissembling and knowingly false misrepresentations about the voice when you actually know, or should know, better.

“Robert Richter KC”

This was my online reply, before Richter told me he was indeed the author:

“This emotive, abusive, tribalist and deceitful rant — filled with straw men and devoid of any example of my ‘knowingly false misrepresentations’ — does not strike me as the careful work of Richter, who I admire for defying exactly this kind of bad-faith attack in defending George Pell.

“This, for instance, is false: that the Voice would give ‘them’ a say ‘about matters directly affecting only them’.

“The words in the referendum proposal nowhere include those critical words ‘directly’ and ‘only’…

“And this is a straw man: ‘You of all people should know the difference between listening and mandated obedience.’ I have never said the Voice would compel ‘mandated obedience’…

“I have said only what even a pro-Voice constitutional lawyer, Greg Craven, has admitted: that the High Court could very well compel politicians and public servants to heed or even seek the representations of the Voice before acting, leading to delays, at the very least.

“Another misrepresentation: you falsely imply Aboriginal Australians are not consulted already. I direct your attention to the more than 30 big land councils, the Council of Peaks, and the National Indigenous Australians Agency, just for a start. The Council of Peaks, for instance, is in formal partnership with all governments in closing the gap…

“So no to dividing us by race. No to giving a selected group of activists the potential power to delay government decision-making.

“No to enshrining a body in the constitution without even knowing how it would be selected, what it would do, how it would improve matters and how it would work.”

Here’s the problem, When even a Robert Richter argues as he does, the danger is clear.

Too many Yes campaigners think in crude stereotypes, the worst of which is that No supporters are just lying, ignorant racists.

We can’t let this become the accepted explanation when Australians do reject the Voice. Telling that lie to our children and the world would be hugely damaging.

So a plea to Yes supporters?

Treat fellow Australians instead with respect. When they vote No on October 14, accept that as their considered judgment — not the twisted work of Nazis, racists, fools and a lying media.

Accept that Australians simply thought about this radical and formless plan to divide us by race, and decided it was not wise.

That would be safer and more honest — and much more civilised.