What the PM must say in the most important speech of his life

Next Saturday night, Anthony Albanese will make the most important speech of his life. It is the speech that will define his prime ministership.

While it will be an important speech whatever the outcome of the referendum, if, as every opinion poll predicts, the Voice is rejected, it will be more important still. Just as the campaign itself divided us, Australians will react to the result in sharply different ways: relief for many, but hurt and disappointment for many others. Albanese needs to rise above the partisan divisiveness of the campaign and speak to both sides as the leader of the whole nation.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese needs to accept the people’s decision next Saturday and speak to the whole nation. Credit: AAP

Of all the things he needs to say, the most important are these eight words: “We respect the decision of the Australian people.” No political rhetoric about a great opportunity having been missed. No self-indulgent nonsense about the nation’s heart being broken. If the people decide not to enshrine the Voice in the Constitution, there can be no calling into question the legitimacy of their decision.

While we can expect lamentation and anger from some disappointed Yes supporters, from the prime minister himself, anything less that an ungrudging embrace of the result will not meet the occasion. And it needs to be “we”, not “I”: Albanese must associate all members of his government with the unequivocal acceptance of a democratic outcome.

Whatever the result, Albanese’s most important job next Saturday will be to bring the nation together. If the No case wins, he will in particular need to offer words of reassurance to Indigenous Australians that the defeat of the Voice is not a rejection of constitutional recognition, that it will not stop efforts to close the gap, that it is not the end of reconciliation. (One of the most powerful arguments for the No case I heard came from former deputy PM John Anderson, who pointed out that if you constitutionally entrench the Voice, its very permanence would be a tacit admission that reconciliation will never ultimately happen.)

Opinion polls have consistently shown that there is overwhelming support for some form of Indigenous recognition in the Constitution – an idea that originally came from John Howard, and has been supported by every Coalition leader since. The decision of the Australian people would not be the rejection of constitutional recognition, but of one particular model of it.

It is particularly important that Albanese shoot down the calumny that rejection of the Voice means Australians are a racist people. In a nation that is a model to the world of successful multiculturalism, it has always been a ludicrous and offensive assertion, yet that did not stop intemperate advocates for the Voice – together with the usual suspects in the left-wing commentariat – repeating it with ever-greater ferocity during the campaign. Marcia Langton gave the No case its “basket of deplorables” breakthrough moment when she appeared to say so.

If the Voice is rejected, Albanese will be diminished if he tries to blame Peter Dutton. Since it was Albanese’s decision to hold the referendum in the first place, he has to take responsibility if it fails. He was the figurehead of the Yes campaign. Buttressed by the authority of his office, his massively greater popularity than Dutton’s, vastly greater funding, and the overwhelming support of the Australian establishment – big corporations, public broadcasters, universities, cultural and sports organisations, churches and civil society – Albanese held all the cards.

But, as even supporters of the Voice concede, the Yes campaign was slow out of the blocks and hit all the wrong notes. If you run a terrible campaign – tone-deaf, self-righteous, evasive and sanctimonious – you can hardly blame your opponent if you lose. Nor can you blame the Australian people if they refuse to cave in to moral bullying, or to tug their collective forelock to the condescending pieties of elite opinion.

The opposition’s reaction will be important too. No less than Albanese, Dutton will need to appreciate the sensitivities of the moment. In particular, a victorious No campaign needs to understand that many Australians who voted No will have done so with regret: eager for constitutional recognition of Indigenous people, but not persuaded that the Voice was the right way to go about it.

While I expect Dutton will be sensible enough to avoid triumphalism, I fear that not all of his colleagues will be as level-headed as their leader. Striking the wrong note if the No case succeeds could very well turn the outcome into a Pyrrhic victory for Dutton, reinforcing negative perceptions of the opposition, in particular among those who voted No with a heavy heart.

Commentators who predict that the defeat of the referendum is the beginning of the end for Albanese show a poor grasp of history. In 1951, Robert Menzies lost the most important referendum of his prime ministership – on outlawing the Communist Party – and went on to win the next five elections and govern for another decade and a half.

Much more important for the future of both Albanese and Dutton is not the result itself, but how each of them responds to it. Whether the Australian people support the Voice or reject it, both must put the politics of the referendum campaign swiftly behind them and refuse to succumb to recrimination or triumphalism. Australians will judge their quality as leaders by whether, next Saturday night and in the days that follow, they rise to the occasion to heal a divided nation.

George Brandis is a former high commissioner to the United Kingdom, and a former Liberal senator and federal attorney-general.