‘Secret weapon’ Noel Pearson’s vitriol only helps the ‘No’ campaign in the Indigenous voice to parliament debate

Cape York leader and architect of the voice Noel Pearson

Well, folks, today we delve into some treasured secrets from the Indigenous voice to parliament No campaign. Yes, their best secret weapons are Noel Pearson and, admittedly a distant second, Marcia Langton.

When No voters say their evening prayers they must surely be throwing in a request to God to let Pearson go on Patricia Karvelas’s radio show the next morning to let rip at his enemies or, even better, his friends.

No campaigners know that every piece of epic abuse Pearson showers on them is worth its weight in gold when it comes to campaign donations and voting intentions.

Australians hate polysyllabic insults of any kind but particularly despise a walking encyclopaedia like Pearson dumping on an idealistic woman such as Jacinta Price or an amiable and well-intentioned one-time friend such as Mick Gooda.

Price is, according to Pearson, caught up in a “tragic redneck celebrity vortex”. Gooda was accused of “bed wetting” for committing the mortal sin of canvassing compromise. Pearson described Father Frank Brennan, a highly regarded – but, in Pearson’s eyes, unduly moderate – campaigner for Indigenous Australians as setting himself up “as some kind of final arbiter of what is good for the natives”.

Mick Gooda

Pearson’s question about whether Jewish MP Julian Leeser “expects us to wear a tattoo identifying ourselves as Indigenous” was so sickeningly intemperate that even Pearson realised he’d crossed a line.

Every time Noel says something like this, more undecided voters might ask themselves “would I want this man running the voice?” and shift into the No side of the ledger.

So Noel, the No campaign salutes you and says please do keep going. Indeed, some of your recent efforts were so far below your usual standards, we need you to substantially lift your game.

For example, I was personally distraught that the worst you could say about me in your column in The Weekend Australian was that I “regurgitate (my) arguments repetitively and they were the same lines (I) ran when” I was an IPA official. Apart from this being factually untrue, it’s so lame.

How can I hold my head high at weekly meetings of my coven of eastern suburbs cross burners when that is the worst Pearson can say about me? What do I have to do to attract insults more in keeping with Pearson’s stellar achievements in the bile-venting department? Desecrate graves? A little satanic animal sacrifice? Barrack for Manly?

Seriously, Noel, all my friends will desert me if that is the worst you can say about me.

Now of course I’m guessing that you are saying much worse about me in private – legend has it your use of the English language behind closed doors is spectacularly colourful – but that doesn’t count. You actually have to come out and say it on national media. Come on, PK will always give you airtime for a good spray.

Marcia Langton

I should acknowledge that a few lines in Pearson’s piece in The Weekend Australian were up to his usual standards. Having called Jacinta Price “just a front” for the Centre for Independent Studies and the IPA, he continued: “The voice is Indigenous but the words are scripted by the clever children of the IPA. The fists inside the puppets punching down on Indigenous people are white.”

This was pretty good, Noel, but to borrow some of the loveable rugby analogies you were so keen to claim in your piece last week, it came too late in the second half to make a difference. You’ve got to play the full 80 minutes, Noel, if you really want to deliver a lot of No votes.

While Pearson is the standout performer, we should also recognise Langton’s contribution to the No case, even if it was accidental.

When Langton warned Australians in a recent interview for The Weekend Australian that if Australians were so ungrateful as to vote No, they could forget about asking an Indigenous person to do a welcome to country, she was deluged by comments begging her to confirm that a No vote meant no more welcomes to country.

What Langton accidentally exposed is that while many Australians are happy to tolerate a welcome to country if they have to, they do it for the benefit, and as a recognition, of Indigenous Australians. They don’t do it for their own benefit – hence Langton shouldn’t feel she needs to perform a welcome to country for non-Indigenous Australians.

Noel Pearson

But don’t let us stop you, Marcia: keep threatening Australians with the end of welcome to country if the No vote gets up. The No campaign must be praying for more of these own-goal threats.

Lest I am too harsh on Pearson and Langton, I do need to praise their flexibility and ability to adapt. No need to be hidebound by slavish adherence to principle – as the old saying goes, “consistency is the essence of mediocrity”.

Langton, for example, famously wrote or, to be more accurate, co-wrote with Tom Calma, in paragraph 2.9 of the Calma-Langton Report on the proposed design of the voice, that in order to “respect parliamentary sovereignty and avoid causing unintended consequences”, “all elements would be non-justiciable meaning alignment with the standards could not be challenged in court”.

More recently, Langton has admitted the voice would be a matter for the courts. Specifically, when asked if High Court challenges could be used to delay government decisions until the voice had deliberated on a matter, she said: “That’s a possibility – why wouldn’t we want that to be the case?”

That’s quite a turnaround on what was an important starting principle for the voice. What else will change?

Pat Anderson, Noel Pearson and Megan David in Sydney.

The last word for consistent adherence to principle though has to go to Noel Pearson.

And, again, it is because without wanting to, he makes the best possible arguments for the No case.

In 2012, Pearson wrote: “As long as the allowance of racial discrimination remains in our Constitution, it continues, in both subtle and unsubtle ways, to affect our relationships with each other. Though it has historically hurt my people more than others, racial categorisations dehumanise us all. It dehumanises us because we are each individuals, and we should be judged as individuals. We should be rewarded on our merits and assisted in our needs. Race should not matter.”

Amen to that. Noel, the No case thanks you.