“There’s a serious group of people in charge,” he said.
Since then, Albanese and other serious adults in charge have been brainstorming how to convince the Australian public to change the constitution to incorporate a so-called Indigenous voice to parliament. Given the party’s history, this is a formidable task. In the past 80 years, federal Labor governments have held 17 referendums. Only one of those succeeded, that being in 1946.
So what is Labor’s strategy to amend Australia’s founding instrument? In short, the Albanese government has outsourced it to an American basketballer. Calling a press conference last weekend, the Prime Minister introduced NBA giant Shaquille O’Neal as an ambassador for the referendum. He had, said Albanese, “agreed to do some vids and to have a chat about the importance of bringing people together”.
“I’m here in the country, anything you need from me you just let me know,” said O’Neal as he shook Albanese’s hand. “I want to let you know that Shaq loves Australia.” Yes, if there is one trait that resonates with mainstream Australians, it is celebrities referring to themselves in the third person.
According to Albanese, O’Neal is an ideal representative for the voice as he “does a lot of work in the United States about social justice and lifting people up who are marginalised”. That’s an interesting take on someone with a net worth of $400m who earns around $60m per year in endorsements, including spruiking for gambling conglomerates.
So confident was Albanese in O’Neal’s knowledge of the voice referendum that he would not let him take questions from journalists. The promised “vids” should be interesting. “As President Albanese says, it’s time to give Indigenous Australians the voice to parliament. And don’t worry about those people who say ‘But we don’t know how the High Court will interpret this power’. As I keep explaining to those dumbasses, they can always appeal to the Supreme Court if the High Court gets it wrong. Voting ‘yes’ to this is simple, folks. It’s so easy you can do it with one hand while using the other to place a bet on a roughie at Randwick or the dogs at Dapto.”
Like me, you probably struggle to think of a meeting more ill-conceived. The only thing that comes close was in 1970 when singer Elvis Presley, who was well and truly off his tits, met President Richard Nixon at the White House to volunteer his services as an undercover agent for the Narcotics Bureau. Unlike Albanese, however, Nixon prudently resisted the temptation to grandstand by not inviting the media.
Last month, Albanese declared the referendum would be “a unifying moment for the nation”. In one aspect he has succeeded at this by enlisting O’Neal. Thanks to him conservatives and the far-left are united in their opposition. “How could (Albanese) possibly think that would do anything but inspire cynicism,” asked former deputy prime minister and Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce. Likewise, Greens senator Lidia Thorpe said it was an “insult” to Indigenous Australians as well as the entire country.
Laughably, the government defends this charade. “I think Shaquille O‘Neal brings a lot of style, power, and attention to an important issue,” said environment minister Tanya Plibersek this week. That claim is up there with her stating as Labor’s foreign affairs spokeswoman in 2014: “Africa is one of the countries that has suffered most from these cuts to the aid budget”. Small wonder she no longer holds this portfolio, nor education for that matter.
It does not portend well for the government that the referendum is in the hands of constitutional dunces. For example, in December 2018 Albanese declared in Parliament “We recognised the rights of Indigenous Australians to be citizens in the famous referendum in 1967,” clearly unaware they had held that status since 1948. In delivering her maiden speech in 2016, then MP and now Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney claimed that the “first decade” of her life “was spent as a non-citizen”.
Neither politician can give straight answers regarding the intended composition of the Indigenous advisory body. “And the … thing that has escaped the debate so far is that at the end of the day … it will be the parliament that will make the final decisions about the way in which the voice will look and what its functions would be,” said Burney last weekend. Really? “It is going to be a body that we will consult with, you and everyone else, on what it will look like and how it will operate,” she declared last month on ABC’s Q+A. “That is not … the decision of politicians. This is something for you and the Australian people”. Host Stan Grant had to remind her Albanese had said the opposite.
As for Albanese, he is also inconsistent. When asked last weekend whether the Calma/Langton report was the blueprint for the final design of the voice, Albanese’s reaction was abrupt. “I haven’t said that,” he said. Yet a fortnight ago he said during his visit to Thursday Island: “We know that there’s already extraordinary level of detail out there from the work that Marcia Langton and Tom Calma did.”
Albanese’s strategy for this referendum is obvious, and that is he wants Australians to vote on the vibe alone. To this effect he and Burney alternate between two responses when asked about its proposed make-up. The first is to brush off questions about specifics by referring journalists to numerous reports and recommendations about the voice model, ignoring the fact they are not uniform.
The second is to stymie questions by insinuating that those seeking detail have an ulterior motive. “And what people look for is for prescription, so they can then say that ‘in that 170-page report I disagree with what was on paragraph three on page 54 and therefore I’m against this proposal’,” insisted Albanese on Saturday.
But his intentions, he assures us, are pure. “I’m creating the space for people to come on board,” he said. “I want people to own this process.”
How one does that without knowing what it entails is a mystery. But in fairness to Albanese, we can understand why he chose a star basketballer to sell this for him. After all, both men excel at the art of dribbling.
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