PM Anthony Albanese has shown voters Labor is the party of the elites, of the arrogant and entitled
Anthony Albanese’s Voice loss exposes him as a dreamy utopian with poor judgment — rather than a man of the people — after blowing nearly $400m on a referendum backed mostly by elites.
Andrew Bolt
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Labor should be scared. Anthony Albanese has made his government beatable because Australians on Saturday didn’t just vote against his Voice.
They also voted against the elites who noisily backed this Labor Prime Minister’s plan to divide us by race.
Yes, the outsiders revolted against the insiders. Against Labor’s new mates.
Nothing sums that up better than this: the only state or territory which voted for the Voice was the ACT, home of the federal government.
Yet the seat with the highest proportion of Indigenous Australians, Lingiari in outback Northern Territory, totally rejected Albanese’s Voice, with 57 per cent saying no.
To make things worse for Labor, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, the superstar politician who did most to destroy the Voice, gave a sensational speech on Saturday night hinting how the Liberals could now win the election, too.
I know, Labor figures claim the debacle of the Voice — thrashed in every state — won’t hurt the government. This was just a one-off issue, they say.
Wake up. Just for a start, Albanese now stands exposed as a dreamy utopian with disastrous political judgment. He blew nearly $400 million selling a Voice which 60 per cent of Australians just said they hate. Unforgivably, his disastrous crusade just left us more divided than ever.
Labor MPs will lose confidence in their leader, and will challenge him more. Voters will look twice at whatever he’s selling.
What’s more, Albanese has shown voters that Labor is the party of the elites. Of the arrogant and entitled.
It wasn’t just that the elites backed his Voice. It’s that Albanese actively recruited them to lecture to the rest of us.
“Faith groups and sporting codes and businesses and unions have embraced it.,” he boasted at the launch of the Yes campaign.
Look who he got on board: 13 of our top 20 companies, union bosses, universities, celebrities, almost every top religious leader, the big sports codes, and 24 of the Australians of the Year who get hand-picked to lecture us.
In fact, the campaign’s most tone-deaf stunt was Albanese posing with now gone Qantas boss Alan Joyce, the multi-multi-millionaire sacker of 1700 workers, in front of Qantas planes painted with a Yes.
That’s why Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s speech on Saturday night was so potent, and the best of any politician.
Price is a Nationals Senator and a leader of the No campaign, and the irony is that Albanese made her the most electrifying figure in politics.
If Albanese hadn’t called this referendum, Price, a first term Senator, would never have been made the Opposition’s Indigenous Australians spokesman. She would never have made so many speeches and given daily interviews.
Albanese created Price, and now she could destroy him, especially if the Nationals get smart and make her their new leader and Deputy Prime Minister-in-waiting.
In her speech. she rightly hailed the Voice’s defeat as a great day for racial equality, but also looked ahead: “We are one of the, if not the greatest, nation on the face of the earth. It’s time for Australians to believe that once again, to be proud to call ourselves Australian.”
That’s how the Liberals should pivot from this referendum to fighting the next election.
Albanese sold the Voice by implying Australia was shameful and damaged, and needed to be united by, er, dividing by race. He already shows three flags at his press conference – not just the Australian one but two racial ones, of Indigenous Australians and Torres Strait Islanders.
This vision of shame and division is preached by the elites, who’ve forced on us, among other indignities, endless ceremonies to welcome us onto our own land.
The Liberals and Nationals should now campaign for national unity instead, and that means national pride. National strength, too.
They should also study the map of how Australians voted on the Voice. Most Labor seats rejected it, while Teal seats — former Liberal ones in rich suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney — voted for.
Dutton should not make re-winning those Teal seats, elite heartland, a top priority, but instead remake the Liberals into the party of the battlers. Of forgotten people, on the margins of power. That also suits him better, as a former copper.
The Liberals must represent Australians who are doing it tough, in contrast to Labor’s hectoring elites, who seem so out of touch with the concerns of their poorer fellow citizens.
Pride, strength and inclusion. These must be the Liberals’ watchwords, against a Labor Government that seems ashamed, weak and elitist.
Let the Liberals now exploit Albanese’s grotesque mistakes.
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