According to Anthony Albanese, the hardliners who oppose his referendum proposal for an Indigenous voice to parliament are a threat to our democracy. Speaking at a Labor think-tank in Canberra last weekend, the Prime Minister warned that disseminators of “misinformation” on social media were attempting to start a “culture war”.
So insidious is this phenomenon that Albanese drew analogies with the recent uprising in Brazil and the US Capitol riots of January 6, 2021. “We can condemn those events – but we must also heed the warning they carry,” he added solemnly.
This is a sage warning and one that should instil us with urgency. Presumably the authorities at Parliament House are watchful of any attempt by no campaigners to smash their way en masse into the building and bash and maim police. As for the rest of us, we must be alert to those among us who resist what is a modest proposal to enshrine identity politics in our constitution.
Of course that does not mean everyone opposing this referendum acts with treasonous malevolence. Many are simply ignorant. For example, they wrongly infer the government is not being frank about how the voice would operate. And that is merely because Albanese and Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney have spent the last six months fobbing off questions about detail.
Instead, as the Prime Minster said on Monday, voters should “think about the generosity of spirit”. The previous day he stated his government would “trust in the capacity of Australians to engage with complexity”. Within reason, mind you, hence Albanese’s decision not to publicly fund either a yes or no campaign. They are a good idea in theory, but there is an unacceptable risk their succinct summaries of the for and against arguments will overwhelm voters with their complexity.
Think about it as your right not to know. For example, last month ABC current affairs program 7.30 alleged that conservative lobby group Advance Australia’s no campaign was based on misleading material, specifically its claim the proposed amendment would invest “one race of people with special rights and privileges”.
Normally it would fall to the public to decide whether the claim is correct. But as 7.30 reported, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology’s so-called fact-checking unit had not only rated the claim as false but had teamed up with Facebook’s parent company Meta to frustrate the campaign.
“Once we’ve rated something as false we publish the fact-check on the RMIT website, and Meta, using its technology, can either grey-out the post or attach a warning to the post and allow users to be directed to the actual fact-check article,” explained assistant director Sushi Das.
You will be relieved to know the unit’s charter, at least according to its website, is “to inform the public through an independent non-partisan voice”. Not only that: it operates in conjunction with the ABC, which jointly funds the unit. That is the same ABC which last week falsely portrayed a community meeting of concerned locals in a crime-plagued Alice Springs as a gathering of white supremacists.
As to who else can refute misinformation in the larger debate concerning so-called truth-telling, our Prime Minister has, or at least had, another suggestion. “Look at what Bruce Pascoe has done with Dark Emu and our place in this land,” he told parliament in 2020. “In this one extraordinary book, Bruce has unearthed the knowledge that we already had in our possession – but chose to bury along the way.” Given Pascoe’s unsurpassed ability to speak the truth about the history of Indigenous Australia, surely Albanese could appoint him as a voice ambassador. I am mystified as to why he has not already done so.
Another candidate for countering inaccuracy and nastiness in the referendum debate could be Professor Marcia Langton, who co-authored the Indigenous Voice Co-design Process. Asked in December about the Nationals’ decision not to support the voice, she accused the party of introducing “misinformation and vitriol” into the debate.
“It would be terribly unfortunate for all Australians if the debate sinks into a nasty eugenicist, nineteenth century style of debate about the superior race versus the inferior race,” she said. A perfectly reasonable and informed corollary, wouldn’t you say?
As Albanese said recently, democracy cannot be taken for granted. “It needs to be nourished, protected, cared for, treated with respect,” he said. He is dead right. We witnessed egregious breaches of that compact by governments during the last three years, especially in Victoria. Not that I can recall Albanese protesting.
Longstanding democracies do not die overnight, and their demise is caused by a confluence of events. One common factor stands out, and that is when governments proclaim to be the repository of truth and the eliminator of misinformation. Who could forget then-New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern addressing the United Nations last year as she called on world leaders to address online “misinformation”.
“How do you tackle climate change if people do not believe it exists,” she asked rhetorically. “How do you ensure the human rights of others are upheld when they are subjected to hateful and dangerous rhetoric and ideology?” Answer: you censor content that conflicts with the official narrative. “We have an opportunity here to ensure that these particular weapons of war do not become an established part of warfare”, she said.
As for Albanese’s public stance on preserving democracy, all I will say is there is no better person than a career politician to call out misinformation and culture wars, particularly given that profession’s commitment to truth and its abhorrence of misrepresenting facts, vilifying opponents, manipulating public opinion, evading questions, covering up internal scandals, and lying outright.
Heaven forbid the profession become one in which malleable ideologues operate according to mob psychology, contemptuous of the principle that representatives should strive for the public good. Come to think of it, I remember a certain cabinet minister in the Gillard government who, in a rare moment of candour, tearfully declared his political ethos was that of a cultural warrior.
“I like fighting Tories,” he said. “That’s what I do.”
His name escapes me. Anyone know what he is up to these days?
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