‘Growing resistance’: Where it all went wrong for struggling Yes campaign

Aussies are gearing up for “the most important vote in a generation” – but polls show the Yes campaign is seriously struggling.

COMMENT

The beauty of democracy, its very essence, is that by definition, it cannot produce a wrong result.

If you believe that government must derive from the will of the people — rather than heredity, autocracy, criminality, brute force or all the other mechanisms devised over the millennia of human existence — then you must accept that the people are always right.

This is the most basic and yet perhaps the most forgotten fact.

And in an extraordinarily stable, prosperous and egalitarian democracy like Australia, we must accept that fact or seek residence elsewhere – as so many activists regularly threaten but never seem to actually do.

This is why it is so dangerous for public figures or political parties to declare elections stolen or unfairly won, be it Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Donald Trump in 2020. Complaints about dirty tricks – as made by Malcolm Turnbull against Labor in 2016 and Labor against the Libs in 2019 – are not much better.

Elections, regrettably, are often dirty. But as long as they are legal and legitimate, they always produce what is ipso facto – by their very fact – the correct result.

Things started to go wrong for the Yes camp on election night. Picture: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

This brings us to what I believe is the most important vote in a generation and what for Indigenous Australians is arguably the most important vote since the rest of us started arriving here two and a half centuries ago.

The referendum for constitutional recognition for First Nations people via a voice to parliament will be held in a few months’ time, and if the published polls are to be believed, it is clearly in trouble.

The temptation for many Yes supporters – of which I am proudly one – is to blame the No campaign for all manner of offences. This is no better than a losing football team blaming the other side for scoring too many goals.

Instead, like any team that is down at halftime, we simply have a job to do. And, if we are to be completely honest with ourselves, it is a job we have not done particularly well thus far.

The Yes proposition is incredibly simple and elegant and utterly devoid of risk. In truth it should sell itself.

Most Aussies want to do the right thing – and it’s up to the Yes campaign to ‘show what the right thing is’. Picture: Jeremy Piper

A representative body of Indigenous people will be able to offer advice on the issues most affecting them to the parliament or government of the day. That parliament or government will have absolute enshrined authority to reject that advice or act upon it.

That is spelt out literally in black and white in the constitutional amendment proposed. So why is there so much confusion and growing resistance?

Firstly, when Anthony Albanese made his impassioned victory speech on election night more than a year ago, there was no formal wording of the proposed amendment nor even a referendum question.

Many fears were raised from that moment about what powers such a voice might have. All of those fears have been utterly quashed by the wording of the amendment produced since.

All it says is that the voice “may make representations” to the parliament and government. There is not even a requirement that either body has to consult the voice, let alone do anything that it says.

Moreover, the parliament can chop, change, dismiss and reform the voice as it sees fit at any time for any reason as the amendment spells out: “The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures”.

This is razor-sharp and crystal-clear. If there is any body empowered by this amendment it isn’t the voice, it’s the parliament we already have. It has absolute authority – which means you, the voter, have absolute authority – over any proposed voice.

This brings us to the most common complaint about the voice, which is that it lacks detail. In fact, that is the whole point.

The very purpose of the amendment is to give parliament – and thus the voters – such overriding power over the voice that it can be changed or rearranged if it isn’t doing what it is supposed to do, which is to give better representation and advice on the first and most disadvantaged people in our country.

Yes campaigner Dean Parkin. Picture: Liam Kidston

If it did what the No camp wanted and enshrined a particular model that didn’t work, that would be the very outcome they are arguing against.

It is equally odd that many No campaigners are arguing for something as important as a voice to parliament to be simply legislated without the will of the Australian people.

And this brings us back to that precious little thing called democracy. Yes campaigners must ultimately bear the burden of whatever win or loss we are facing, because if the Australian people are not with us on this, it is we, not them, who have failed.

The vast majority of Australians always try to do the right thing and it is up to the Yes campaign to show what the right thing is.

But perhaps most importantly, the majority of Australians are now confronting an economic crisis that for many comes down to the roof over their heads. They are right to ask why a symbolic issue is dominating public debate when their house is on the line.

And to this there is the most difficult answer.

While most of us now live in fear of our next rent day or mortgage repayment, many First Australians have never known secure housing at all.

Voting yes might just be a chance to fix that. A chance for the many to show kindness to the few. And maybe that’s what democracy is for.