Lack of voice detail is a dangerous game, PM

Anthony Albanese knows many of the people asking for details have ill-intent in their hearts. But that’s not good enough.

One of Anthony Albanese’s strongest political weapons is that people feel like he understands them because he’s lived their life.

I fear Anthony Albanese’s passion to enshrine an Indigenous voice to parliament could be overshadowed by a stubborn unwillingness to provide the sort of details necessary to guarantee its success at a referendum.

To be sure, any stubborn refusal to provide exact details of what a referendum question might look like could be a deliberate strategy right now. Albanese knows many of the people asking for details have ill-intent in their hearts. A desire to stifle the process, either because they dislike the concept of “the other” a voice would enshrine, or they see the move as part of a culture war both the left and right are often guilty of engaging in.

I choose to believe that is not the PM’s intent. If the vagueness and ambiguity are a deliberate rhetorical rebuttal, I’m not sure that’s a good strategy when it comes to constitutional change. We know referendums fail far more than they succeed. We also know if one side of politics decides to oppose what is proposed its chances of success reduce dramatically.

The Nationals have already said they will oppose the voice. My initial reaction to their declaration last year, long before details had or even should have emerged, was that it felt premature. However, the more time passes without details emerging, perhaps the Nationals were ahead of their time.

Let me be clear, I’ll almost certainly vote for the voice, even if ­Albanese fails to properly spell out how he plans to legislate it in the aftermath of a constitutional amendment. That’s because I don’t fear the High Court and parliament subsequently interpreting or legislating around what gets put in the Constitution. I’ve heard the argument that it might become a lawyers’ feast. For a while I’m sure it will. I’ve heard the counter claims that activities surrounding the voice will be “non-justiciable”. That’s the claim contained in the Calma-Langton report, which is a classic case of over-promising. Former High Court judges Kenneth Hayne and Ian Callinan belled the cat on that misnomer when they argued the powers and reach of the voice could ultimately be a matter for the High Court. Of course it would, that’s the role of our highest court within our constitutional democracy.

Conservatives worry about that because they dislike judicial activism. Fair enough. I don’t because I have faith in the bipartisan construct of our High Court’s makeup, not to mention the calibre of the minds residing on it.

Equally, as a political scientist who studied the parliament as part of my PhD, I well understand the role of legislatures in putting the meat on the bones of how the voice might practically function. While parliament might legislate the details of how the voice would operate in a way that perhaps went too far, beyond what those supporting the referendum might have anticipated, voters would be able to cast their judgment on such actions at the following election. Any new government could make changes with new legislation.

It’s not analogous, but look at how successfully Tony Abbott prosecuted the case against Julia Gillard’s carbon tax, resulting in its repeal. While a voice would have been constitutionally entrenched and therefore only able to be removed with a second referendum, if its constitutional wording is vague and thereby left to judicial interpretation and/or legislative detailing, I’m not uncomfortable about the processes that go with that. I have faith in our political and legal systems.

But is that faith shared by most Australians? Probably not, which is why Labor and the PM are playing a dangerous game if they think they can secure a rubber stamp for their voice to parliament via a referendum without more details being provided.

Perhaps I’m missing something, and the refusal to provide details more than six months out from any referendum is nothing more than Albanese’s political strategy to bring Peter Dutton undone. Seeking to wedge him as a dinosaur unconcerned about Indigenous Australians. Sparking people’s memories that he refused to support the apology. Seeking to split the factions within the Liberal Party, even between the Coalition partners. Aiming to isolate Dutton from some of his more moderate senior shadow ministers, causing divisions in opposition ranks.

That was Kevin Rudd’s ulterior motive when he was playing games on the way to trying to legislate an emissions trading scheme shortly after his thumping 2007 election victory. How did that turn out for him?

But if the PM’s intentions behind constitutionally enshrining and legislating a voice are simply honourable – which I firmly, perhaps naively, believe they are – he needs to become more pragmatic and step people through what the change will look like, how it will be crafted, and what his plans for subsequent legislation involve.

Without such details I fear this referendum vote could become highly divisive. It already seems destined to bear divergent results compared with the 1967 referendum, which saw 90 per cent of Australians vote for Indigenous rights. Unless the tenor of the discussion changes dramatically, I can’t see a voice referendum securing the sort of overwhelming ­support the same-sex marriage plebiscite achieved.

Like it or not, we live in a democracy, a largely majoritarian one at that. And the mainstream doesn’t like being lectured to, much less kept in the dark, as if providing it with details about something it’s being asked to support is the wrong thing to do.

One of Albanese’s strongest political weapons is that people feel like he understands them because he’s lived their life: his background, his struggles, his experiences. The more people have found out about him, the higher his popularity has soared.

His story is arguably one of the most extraordinary rises to the prime ministership in Australian history. He needs to harness that when communicating about why a voice to parliament is a worthy cause. If he doesn’t, people will ­forget the Albanese story and simply see him as another inner-city lefty thinking he knows best.

There are hundreds of pages of details about the voice in the Calma-Langton report, but simply referring people to that document isn’t explaining how a voice will function. For a start, they propose multiple options. At the very least, people should know which one Labor is going for.

Albanese’s National Press Club speech on the eve of last year’s election was the best political speech he’s delivered in more than two decades in public life. I said that at the time. That’s because its centrepiece, which he passionately spoke to, was the voice to parliament and his plan to make it happen. The passion is there, no doubt.

He now needs to find pragmatism to go with it to ensure he wins the day. The same pragmatism that saw him grind down Scott Morrison.

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