“From the moment the results of the voice referendum started coming in,” she states in her introduction, “politicians, advocates and commentators have been trying to rewrite history”.
They have indeed. And Morris proceeds to do exactly that throughout this tedious lamentation. For example, were you of the belief the Albanese government ran a “crash or crash through” campaign or that Yes proponents were “pig-headed”? Well, according to Morris, you have been deceived. “That narrative is false, and inverts reality,” she insists.
Mind you, I was not expecting a frank introspection. As refreshing as it would have been, I never entertained hopes the author would say, “The referendum was a lousy idea from the start and should never have been given legs,” or “Unfortunately for us activists, most Australians were not as gullible as we had believed”.
But the lack of self-awareness in this book is Oxford-level obtuseness. On one hand Morris stresses the importance of learning from the Yes campaign’s failings. Yet like many in her bubble, she holds the cause is righteous and that its rationale is self-evident and incontrovertible.
“The Australian people got it wrong in the voice referendum,” she writes. “We chose fear over love.”
We? By embracing vicarious liability for the supposed moral failings of her fellow citizens, Morris – as behoves a martyr – neatly ensures the record reflects she is among the elect. As for her claim the referendum was a choice between fear and love, that is nothing but reductionist piffle.
Her take on voters is not only fallacious but also condescending. Consider Albanese’s opportunistic refusal to separate the issues of recognition and voice for the purpose of the referendum. Unsurprisingly, Morris refuses to acknowledge this was emotionally manipulative. “Dividing the question would confuse voters,” she insists.
Really? I know activist academics regard mainstream Australians as dullards, but if Morris is to be believed, we are in fact complete morons unable to distinguish basic concepts. Presumably this explains why, according to her, the Yes campaign was felled by “disinformation, hate and dumbed-down debate”.
If only the masses had the means to enable them to make an informed decision. A constitutional convention, perhaps? But Morris does not agree. Constitutional conventions are “adversarial” by nature, she proclaims. Had the Albanese government commissioned one, it “would only have amplified division.” And we cannot allow dissenters a forum to question the narrative that the voice was all about love, can we, Shireen Morris?
Her assessment of Anthony Albanese’s motives is both naive and simplistic. “You could see his heart was in it,” she writes adoringly. “His tears when he spoke about the Uluru Statement were not for show: his emotion and conviction could not be contained.” He “knew this was the kind of thing that really mattered in the leadership of a nation.”
If there is one thing that should have been obvious to Morris by now, it is that what really matters to this prime minister is not principled leadership but rather political self-interest. Instead she chooses to believe his intentions were pure although his tactics flawed.
“Albanese’s choice to champion the cause on election night, to cheers from the Labor faithful, was arguably a mistake,” she writes. “Though this positively raised the profile cause, it also stamped it as a Labor agenda.”
But the agenda, particularly in the pejorative sense, was Labor’s. Albanese saw the referendum as an opportunity not only to wedge the Liberals but also to rupture the Coalition, thus ensuring his government would capitalise electorally. It would also be Albanese’s legacy gift to his party. When the conservatives finally returned to government, they would be constantly hampered by the constitutionally entrenched voice working in tandem with a Labor opposition.
What Morris calls Albanese’s “emotion and conviction” vanished when the electorate delivered its verdict. Just two months after the referendum he denied he had expended political capital. “I am not Indigenous, so it wasn’t a loss to me,” he said nonchalantly during an interview on 2GB radio.
But Morris’s only post-referendum criticism of Albanese is political timidity. The government now “seems scared to pursue a Makarrata Commission,” she claims. Seems? As was demonstrated by Albanese’s Garma speech this month, Makarrata is makaput. Albanese now claims he had never proposed establishing a so-called truth-telling commission. This transparently false denial is further evidence his promise to implement the Uluru Statement in full was always about political expediency. So who does Morris direct her anger towards?
You guessed it. “The Coalition wanted to derail the referendum to hurt Albo,” she concludes. It “sought to exploit every avenue for electoral and political advantage, even avenues that damaged the country”. The failure to achieve Indigenous constitutional recognition is the “legacy” of Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and the Coalition.
As for the timing of Dutton’s decision in April 2023 to oppose the voice, Morris sees conspiracy. The loss of the Aston by-election put pressure on Dutton, she says. He would “use the referendum to slam Albanese in Liberal electorates, particularly in those battler demographics the Liberals needed to win back.” The battlers are not only easily led, you see, but also bigoted by nature. “What better issue than race to re-engage the Liberal base,” she asks rhetorically.
Learn from this constitutional law scholar’s measured and objective assessment, everyone. “Racism was the fuel that made the lies travel,” she continues. The Fourth Estate too was complicit. “If only the media did not prosecute false balance, elevating mistruths without adequate critique.” To top it off, the “digitally amplified dog whistle whipped up something primal”. Dear oh dear.
If nothing else, this book is an insight into the social justice mindset, and it goes like this. The voice is the culmination of a First Nations/colonial dialectic over two hundred years in the making. That it was not realised can only mean it was sabotaged by undemocratic means. It is also relevant to the wider issue of why the left is so often frustrated in its numerous attempts to alter the constitution according to its vision.
“The [referendum] result raises questions for Australian democracy,” writes Morris. “If Australians lack the skills to build consensus to sensibly change our Constitution … then we are missing a crucial tool in our own democratic self-governance.”
As for the mechanism we already possess to amend our constitution, Morris claims it “has become a lever we increasingly don’t know how to manoeuvre”.
Spare us this constitutional chimera. That no referendum proposal in Australian has succeeded since 1977 is neither here nor there. As American economist and social commentator Thomas Sowell observed in his book ‘Intellectuals and Society’, leftists constantly decry the conventional process for changing the US constitution. They highlight the numerous attempts to do so, most of which have been unsuccessful. Does this mean the process is flawed? Answer: no.
“If the people do not want a particular thing done, even if the intelligentsia consider it desirable or even imperative, that is not a difficulty,” he says. “That is democracy … It doesn’t happen very often, because people don’t want it to happen.”
Are you listening, Dr Shireen Morris? To quote Sowell again: “Credentialed ignorance is still ignorance.”
More Coverage
Head knocks must be prevented
Prevention, especially minimising head knocks in training and competition, and strengthening concussion protocols must be reinforced in sport.
UN ‘propaganda’ on climate costing the world trillions
The international body is boldly working to suppress open debate on climate change while pushing prosperity-wrecking policies.
In one sense I agree with Shireen Morris, author of ‘Broken Heart: The True History of The Voice Referendum’, director of the Radical Centre Reform Lab at Macquarie Law School, and former federal Labor candidate.