Why the Voice referendum should be cancelled

Much has been made of the high failure rate of referendums in Australia. Only eight of 44 have achieved the challenging “double majority” threshold: that is, a referendum proposal must win the support of most voters nationally as well as a majority in at least four of the six states.

Relatively little has been made of the fact that referendums, unlike elections, are the gift of the government to the people. In other words, while elections must happen by law, referendums need not. The Voice referendum is a gift that should have been taken back. It was a dud gift. A poisoned chalice. It’s not that the Voice was a tainted offering. It was worse than that. It was dead in the water politically.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the Garma Festival in East Arnhem in 2022, when he announced the Voice referendum.Credit: Getty

Anthony Albanese celebrated his May 2022 federal election victory by drawing a line in the sand at the Garma Festival in Arnhem Land with a gesture that was far more naive than it was courageous. He could set right, he hoped, 235 years of disastrous race relations. He could also immortalise himself. Never stand between a political leader and the tantalising opportunity to carve his or her place in history.

The stampede to the Voice referendum is defined by the pride, hubris and urgency of whitefellas’ laws and impulses, augmented by an Indigenous political class and a new generation of corporate and community high-flyers. Who enabled who in this democratic frenzy is debateable. But they all ended up in bed together.

There was no Graham Richardson telling Albanese: “Prime Minister, this won’t fly.” Politics requires both wise heads and hard heads. Australia’s shameful track record on Indigenous matters since 1788 partly explains why the wise heads have controlled the referendum agenda while the hard heads have remained mute.

I am an instinctive Yes supporter. Like many, I identify with making good on a meaningful gesture, rather than having any intrinsic belief that the Voice will deliver a better and lasting way of life for Indigenous Australians. Saying that the Voice will close the gap in the short to medium term is simply starry-eyed.

All but a cruel few Australians – and they are out there – want to see the lives of Indigenous people improved. The incontrovertible truth is that major parts of the oldest culture on earth have been subjugated and alienated. Whitefellas’ disease, alcohol, drugs, violence and practices have created a chronic underclass that trillions of dollars since Federation and truckloads of goodwill across the political spectrum have been unable to fix.

Nevertheless, I want to see constitutional recognition for First Australians. Sadly, I almost certainly will not see it – not this year and perhaps not in my lifetime.

On August 30, Albanese stood at the lectern in Adelaide to announce his date with destiny: the referendum would be held on October 14. Instead, he should have recognised the magnitude of his mistake and announced he was pulling the pin on his miscalculated, misguided, carve-my-name-in-history moment.

In the heat of contest, attention focuses on the immediate Yes v No issues. But Australians should also ask how this doomed proposition got to the starting line, and even more so why it should not be allowed to get to the finishing line.

As with so many dates with destiny, this one has far more to do with the standing and ambitions of the proponents than what it can deliver to the underclass it is purported to help. Politicians, elected and unelected, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, are invested in the referendum – especially the Voice part of it – up to their eyeballs. How any of them can say “this is not about politics” takes incredulity to new levels. It’s all about politics. The Yes or No result will be part of what defines Australia’s political agenda for the next generation, and probably longer. More immediately, it will be either the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end for Albanese and his government, with proportionate spoils for other political players.

If he had his time over again, I’d bet Albanese would have made the referendum something for his second term, or at least excised the Voice from the offering, or both. If only the opposition had lived up to its overtures to deliver bipartisan support. Well, maybe. But since when did a government pin its hopes of policy delivery on bipartisanship, other than in matters of national security and foreign affairs? Even they get shaky from time to time.

Give the opposition the scrutiny it deserves and gets about where it stands on the Voice. But don’t blame a second-tier player for a failed political strategy that points increasingly to the referendum going down in a screaming heap.

More to the point, why the deafening silence from advocates of the Voice on the option of putting the referendum on the backburner until the Australian community is fully informed, or at least as informed as it can be? Instead, we are fed more bunkum, that advocacy for the Voice has been around for more than 10 years. For all but a handful of Australians, it has been on the agenda for a matter of months. For many, it is still not on the agenda.

When this referendum fails, which it will, its proponents will have to face the truth that they were prepared to trifle with the unmitigated mess of race relations and Indigenous wellbeing for the sake of a glittering but illusionary political prize.

This referendum, with anything more complicated than constitutional recognition, should not have been allowed to get off the ground. Because of the Voice, the baby is about to be thrown out with the bath water. Its failure will bring division and acrimony. If the 1999 republic referendum is anything to go by, constitutional change in support of Indigenous Australians will be on the backburner for another generation.

Anthony Albanese will be judged not for having had the courage to act for Indigenous Australians, but for lacking the courage to stop the referendum in its tracks. It’s not too late to do that, but it won’t happen. Why? Because the political class, elected and unelected, can’t bring itself to own up to an awful mistake.

Michael Yabsley was a minister in the NSW Greiner government and a federal treasurer of the Liberal Party. He is the author of Dark Money – A plan to reform political fundraising and election funding in Australia