Intolerance takes down a man of goodwill

While some commentators were quick to allege Julian Leeser’s move to quit would damage Peter Dutton and perhaps even the No case, the opposite appears likelier.

Julian Leeser announcing his resignation as the opposition’s spokesman for Indigenous affairs. Picture: NCA NewsWire/ Ben Symons

Announcing his decision to resign from Peter Dutton’s Coalition shadow cabinet, former opposition Indigenous Australians spokesman Julian Leeser said: “On the voice referendum, we find ourselves in different places. People of goodwill can disagree.”

Once Dutton decided to bind his frontbench to Coalition opposition to the constitutional amendment, Leeser had no other choice lest he parked his convictions at the door. The nature of his departure was as dignified as possible, done in a way to limit the fallout rather than exacerbate it.

It does, however, raise the obvious question of why the Opposition Leader handed Leeser the Indigenous Australians portfolio in the first place, all but guaranteeing this week’s outcome occurring sooner or later.

Dutton plucked Leeser, a moderate conservative (if there can be said to be such a thing), from the obscurity of the backbench in the aftermath of last year’s election defeat to install him as both opposition legal affairs and Indigenous Australians spokesman.

It was a strong move, designed to initiate generational renewal. But there was no need to cobble together the Indigenous Australians portfolio with the legal affairs role.

The lack of strategic foresight by Dutton intertwining the roles under Leeser’s control is alarming.

While some commentators were quick to allege Leeser’s move to quit would damage Dutton and perhaps even the No case, the opposite appears likelier.

Dutton now can put Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, an Indigenous senator from the Northern Territory whose experience has led her to strongly oppose the voice, into the Indigenous Australians role. She was instrumental in the Nationals taking a similar stance against the voice late last year.

A Price appointment would only reinforce Dutton’s claim that the voice as it’s currently constituted doesn’t represent the regions and is too centrally focused. It also protects the Coalition from all manner of race-based attacks for opposing the voice. Not that critics will universally relent in this regard, just you watch.

That’s all assuming Price takes up the role. If she does not, it is strike two for Dutton in poor strategic decision-making, perhaps a telling nail in the coffin of his leadership.

Leeser had been mulling over the need to quit for months, in the meantime hoping to convince Liberals (and Labor) that constitutional reform was an option, if only a compromise could be found.

He probably would have resigned irrespective of whether the frontbench was bound to a party position. Leeser wouldn’t have wanted to create a scenario for the rest of this year in which his utterances as opposition spokesman were undermining his leader daily, damaging the man who gave him his big political promotion.

The traditionalist in Leeser believes in the right of every conservative backbencher to cross the floor, irrespective of party positions. Doing so can limit careers, as we saw ever so clearly during the Howard years. It can even damage future preselection chances. But it cannot result in party dismissal.

When you hear Labor MPs yapping on about the outrage of Dutton binding his frontbench to a consistent position, remember that Labor never allows its MPs to break ranks from party positions and vote against “the family”.

During the life of the Rudd and Gillard governments, had cabinet minister Penny Wong – now Foreign Minister and Senate leader – decided to vote for same-sex marriage she would have been dumped from the ministry and chucked out of Labor according to the party’s cut-and-dried rules, irrespective of her personal circumstances. She would have been forced to quit politics or move to the crossbench.

Perspective matters when morality lectures are being given.

I’ve known Leeser for more than 30 years and it has been disturbing to watch from afar (we have not spoken) as his character has been attacked by the government in recent weeks.

It has been equally confronting to watch the attacks now coming from his own side – from party members who are unrepresentative even of rusted-on Liberal voters, much less swinging voters the conservative side of politics needs to find a way of winning back – and from commentators who don’t always grasp nuance.

Anyone who knows Leeser well understands how deeply principled he is. Which is not to say he lacks ambition.

Deliberate in his attempt to resign in the least painful way possible for his party, Leeser was speaking the truth when he said people of goodwill could disagree.

Unfortunately the increasing intolerance of some on both the left and the right prevents civil disagreements all too often in these modern times as issues increasingly are viewed through a myopic “team red, team blue” prism. Or simple absolutism is given an intellectual credence it doesn’t deserve.

To be sure, it is worse in other parts of the world, but the contagion of intolerance towards differences of opinion has caught on here too.

Not only does it stifle civil debate but it also increasingly drives away rational citizens from debates that matter.

This can be only a bad thing for our democracy and the processes of decision-making.

The rise and rise of intolerance towards dissent is a bipartisan phenomenon. The ideological left and right suffer from it. The centre gets squeezed out, accused variously of representing “the other side” because “if you’re not with us, you’re against us”.

It is hard to think the debate over the voice in the coming months is capable of rising above such pettiness and intellectually vacant tribal thought processes.

Too many on both sides seem to lack the capacity to carry themselves with dignity in disagreement: You’re a racist if you oppose the voice, a constitutional dead brain if you don’t. Or a fool if you seek a third way that might yet achieve a different version of constitutional reform, as Leeser does.

Most Australians will choose to stay out of the verbal fight, seriously engaging only when they cast their judgment in the privacy of the electoral booth. Whatever the result, the dogs will bark but the caravan will move on to the next issue, which also will be debated without civility and tolerance for differences of opinion. Unless something changes.

Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.