No campaign’s squalid tactics will pollute politics long after referendum day

Anthony Albanese has just endured his worst two weeks so far as prime minister, largely thanks to the Qantas-Qatar controversy.

It doesn’t qualify as a crisis, but there will be one, some day, and if the government manages it in the same way, it will end with the elimination of the prime minister and or whichever minister is involved.

Anthony Albanese has had his worst two weeks since he became prime minister.Credit: Dionne Gain

It is an indictment on the government that it allowed the issue to consume debate for so long. The evasions not only encouraged conspiracy theories to flourish. They fuelled concerns about the cost of living and fed suspicions about cronyism and the Voice.

Albanese has been plagued for months by criticism that he has failed to provide enough information on the Voice and here he was again showing an obstinate reluctance to give straightforward explanations about a fairly routine decision.

If the move to block Qatar Airways’ bid for extra flights into Australia was to ensure Qantas survives and Qatar is punished – eminently defensible – the government should have said so, while making clear to Qantas it must treat its customers and staff with respect, or else. Yes, Qantas are bastards but if they go down it would be disastrous.

Qatar has taken far too long to resolve the matter of the women who were strip-searched in 2020. It was undoubtedly a factor.

Some of the women remain traumatised by their treatment, which was suggested as one reason why Transport Minister Catherine King was reluctant to draw them into the issue initially. A few of them met the Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, the day after she called her Qatari counterpart to raise their case – among other things.

Blocking Qatar seemed a reasonable decision, yet the handling of it was incredibly, unbelievably dumb. And damaging.

Laughing in disbelief, one Labor insider remarked that telling the truth upfront usually worked. Gosh, who would have thought.

Senior members of the government insist the decision was above board. OK, say opposition frontbenchers, that leaves incompetence as the primary cause for the furore. Which is fine by them.

Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Lidia Thorpe have been subject to abuse.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen, Rhett Wyman

The whole episode invited the question: what else are they hiding? All in an environment where lies, misrepresentation, the incitement of division and – yes – racism have splattered the landscape.

Indigenous politicians Linda Burney, Lidia Thorpe and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price have been subjected to awful abuse from left and right on social media. So has John Farnham. That is shameful and should stop.

Indigenous academic Marcia Langton had every right to condemn the No campaign’s tactics, as she did this week. Yet suddenly, calling out lies and racism is disrespectful or offensive. It is wrong not to call out racism and lies.

It is not acceptable to pretend they haven’t featured in the No campaign. It is wrong to tolerate dishonest, orchestrated appeals to people’s worst instincts, revealed in this masthead, where No campaigners are being tutored to ignore facts and spread fear.

These squalid tactics will pollute Australian politics long after the vote has passed, and the opposition, rather than denying the evidence before it, should distance itself from them.

Even Liberals opposing the Voice believe the tenor of the No campaign will ensure Peter Dutton reaps no reward if the referendum fails.

“He will be seen as a wrecker,” one MP said.

The government’s fumbling has masked unease in the opposition over Dutton, including from his right flank, after his pledge for a second referendum. If Australians say No and Dutton persists, internal critics will cut loose.

After Dutton used the Qantas dispute to disrupt parliament with a spurious challenge to a ruling by Speaker Milton Dick, a few Coalition MPs, including former Nationals leader Michael McCormack, reached out to Dick and his staff to make sure they were OK.

Dutton’s dismissal of Kylea Tink’s complaint alleging aggressive behaviour towards her by one of his MPs, a fellow Queenslander, followed by Karen Andrews’ disclosure to Annabel Crabb on Kitchen Cabinet of the creepy behaviour of one of her colleagues, illustrates why the Liberals struggle to regain the support of professional women.

The malaise was obvious at a gathering last week of about 45 of the party’s most senior moderates at a Chinese restaurant to congratulate Maria Kovacic on her first speech to the Senate. What began as a celebration ended as a postmortem.

Kovacic deserved plaudits for her fine contribution. She has only been in the Senate for five minutes, yet she summed up the essence of leadership. Namely, the courage to argue for hard decisions like capping the number of homes that investors can negatively gear, or making childcare costs tax-deductible for small or family businesses.

Maria Kovacic delivers her first speech in the Senate.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

By the end of the night, Dutton was figuratively laid out on the lazy susan, picked over by increasingly frustrated Liberal MPs, former MPs and prospective candidates. The consensus, despite Albanese’s horror weeks, was that Dutton would never become prime minister, that there were slim pickings among the likely alternatives and no one stood out as a potential fixer for a party in decline.

There were regrets that Simon Birmingham had not switched to the lower house, perhaps run for Boothby in 2022 or slid into Christopher Pyne’s former seat of Sturt in 2019. It’s too late for any of that.

Opinion was divided on whether Victorian backbencher Keith Wolahan, also present, could emerge as a future leader. Seeing he has only been there for six minutes, it was a desultory discussion.

The obvious successor remains Josh Frydenberg. Slight problem. Frydenberg has told friends he is “unlikely” to run in 2025, not because he thinks he won’t be able to reclaim Kooyong, but because he is relishing his time with his young family.

At the dinner, moderates were worried party conservatives had convinced themselves they had hit rock bottom, so there was only one way to go. Up.

Attendees said former minister Linda Reynolds felt compelled to point out what happened in her home state of Western Australia, where the party was left with two seats in state parliament, and reprised one of the golden rules of politics: no matter how bad it is, there is always the potential for it to get worse.

Niki Savva is an award-winning author and regular columnist.

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