Indigenous voice to parliament: To get to Yes, try a little respect, not hectoring
When voters are weighing up whether to support change, they don’t want to be told they are racist or idiots who don’t understand the issue if they don’t vote for the voice.
It’s time for the Yes campaigners for the voice to parliament to acknowledge they need to change strategy. Start advocating for their cause rather than assuming its merits are self-evident and doubters lack morality. If they don’t, they risk failure when Australians vote on the constitutional reform.
The polls reveal that initial goodwill and support for Indigenous recognition in the Constitution are fading fast. People are confused about what a voice actually is. The original hope that goodwill would be enough – similar to the success of the 1967 referendum on Indigenous rights – is no more. Even a victory would likely be tight, with no guarantee a majority of Australians in a majority of states would support the proposal, as is required for the referendum to pass.
When Anthony Albanese addressed the National Press Club on the eve of last year’s election, he homed in on why the voice was an important issue, highlighting that it’s the right thing to do, to help with reconciliation.
He was emotional in a way that enhanced rather than detracted from the message being delivered. I described it at the time as the best speech I had heard Albo deliver during his 26-year parliamentary career.
Since then opponents have become louder and a partisan divide has ensued. We know referendums struggle when they don’t have bipartisan support.
But it is the hectoring that we’ve seen in some quarters in support for a Yes vote that is turning off many Australians. It’s a turn-off to me and I’m a Yes voter.
To be sure, the Prime Minister isn’t guilty of such conduct. He deliberately has remained measured as he seeks to pull together the support needed. Younger Australians will need to deliver the victory, just as they did in the marriage equality plebiscite.
The real culprits of hectoring within the Yes camp have come from the likes of Marcia Langton and even Noel Pearson, but I don’t say that to condemn them. I can’t even begin to imagine how frustrating they must find some of the criticisms and attacks on the concept of the voice after a lifetime of advocacy and attempts to build consensus.
But, like it or not, in a democratic system such as ours being right (or virtuous) means little without the numbers to win. Advocates of the voice must focus on how to build support, not on condemning opponents they regard as stoking fear.
When voters are weighing up whether to support a proposition for change, they don’t want to be told they are racist if they don’t or a bigot if they won’t, or idiots who don’t understand the issue if they don’t vote Yes.
Concerns among those who are wavering need to be met with respectful attempts to win them over, even if critics aren’t always respectful with their arguments. That’s the nature of any debate between one side looking to tear a proposition down and the other seeking support. Only the opponent can play dirty and get away with it.
Australians don’t like to be lectured and there has been plenty of that from the big end of town in support of the voice.
Organisations throwing their support behind the voice risk reminding some Australians why they don’t like the way those big organisations do business, the way they treat their employees or their customers. If Yes campaign strategists think they are coalition building to help their cause by enlisting the big end of town and a conga line of celebrities, they should think again. That was the Australian Republic Movement’s strategy in 1999 and we saw how comprehensively that referendum went down.
Exactly what a voice to parliament for Indigenous Australians is remains a mystery to many. The information is out there but few take the time to look it up. It is more than constitutional recognition. Were that all that was being sought at a referendum it’s far more likely 2023 would replicate 1967. The voice to parliament includes enshrining an Indigenous body to advise government, which opens the door to a scare campaign: will it usurp the powers of the parliament? Will it slow down policymaking? Will (in time) the High Court interpret its powers in ways not currently envisaged? The No campaign is seeking to highlight these risks as reasons to vote against what’s proposed. Some are ridiculous, others are real.
It reminds me of the No campaign’s divide-and-conquer strategy during the 1999 republic referendum: this model isn’t up to scratch so vote against it so one day you can support a better model. That was a quarter of a century ago and now Charles is our King. The problem with the way Yes advocates dismiss concerns about the voice is that they don’t know what the future holds any more than critics do.
Of course a future High Court could interpret the voice in ways we don’t currently expect. That has happened time and time again through the years. But what is so scary about that? It is a legitimate concern, but not necessarily a legitimate reason to set back reconciliation. Our institutions are capable of dealing with whatever the future throws up.
Ideally this referendum simply would have enshrined constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians, leaving a body to advise government to be established with legislation. That is happening even if the voice referendum fails.
Fears a legislated voice will be overturned by a future government are no more valid than fears a future High Court will interpret the voice as more important than parliament. Overturning a legislated voice would require support in both Houses of Parliament.
However it’s too late to disentangle the two parts of the voice, so what happens from here?
Goodwill still exists, the Prime Minister remains popular and passionately in support of the voice. He must be front and centre in the debate. That debate must be cast as about inclusion, not the poorly understood concept of a voice. And advocates who become condescending or polarising in the way they champion the need for a voice must be sidelined, lest they turn off more voters than they convince.
Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.
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