Mick Gooda’s speech a decisive step away from ‘we was robbed’ rhetoric

His analysis challenges the popular justification by Indigenous activists for referendum failure that White Australia is racist, ill educated and just plain stupid.

Mick Gooda is the Kylie Minogue of Indigenous politics, without the costumes. Everybody likes him, accepts his sincerity and sees him as a great ambassador for his people. His people are the Australian nation as a whole, especially its Indigenous citizens. Gooda is no bitter, radical separatist.

His speech to the National Aboriginal Press Club on Friday is a turning point in discussion about the failed referendum for an Indigenous voice. For the first time, a senior Indigenous leader has conceded that the referendum campaign was fundamentally flawed.

In the same week, Indigenous academic Marcia Langton publicly lamented that the voice had not been legislated as a trial run before a referendum was attempted, and that a national voice needed established regional bodies to succeed.

Gooda’s speech is a decisive step away from the “We was robbed” reaction of many Indigenous leaders. No matter how distressing the result of the No vote, he accepts that the push for Yes was fundamentally flawed.

He is uncompromising in his basic verdict. He writes that he is positively angry with people on the Yes side. In his view, the referendum failed because it adopted an irresponsible “crash through or crash approach”. Doubtless, Gooda will again be called a “bedwetter” simply for calling it as he sees it.

His cataloguing of the referendum disaster is entirely persuasive. The voice failed because its supporters rejected bipartisanship, refused to provide detail and could not accept that this referendum, like any other, would be a big ask.

What makes Gooda’s analysis unique is that he refuses to blame defeat on a carefully produced bogeyman. Other Indigenous leaders, such as Langton and Megan Davis, attempt to blame Peter Dutton for his “rejection” of bipartisanship.

Gooda knows bipartisanship was never on offer from the Yes side and its political cheerleader Anthony Albanese. This was the crash-through strategy that inevitably crashed. His analysis challenges the popular justification by Indigenous activists for referendum failure. They argue White Australia is racist, ill educated and just plain stupid.

Gooda certainly is devastated that Australia rejected the voice, but he places the blame far closer to home.

He rightly blames referendum defeat on an uncompromising, suicidally confident campaign strategy. He could have been even blunter. The Yes campaign was pig-headed, condescending and self-righteous.

The necessary implication of Gooda’s speech is that all this came straight from the top. The Prime Minister never wanted the Opposition Leader’s imprimatur. Cynically, he wanted Dutton wedged and himself a Labor hero.

Sadly, this impression has become only stronger in the wake of the referendum. Albanese accepts no responsibility for failure. There is no sign of his government producing profound, practical initiatives to close the gap. But there is a nice cartoon about the referendum in the prime ministerial office.

Gooda also is painfully aware of the conservative fallout from the referendum. In his native Queensland and elsewhere, conservatives are sidling away from previous support for local Indigenous voices, treaties and truth telling.

He has great hopes for the regional bodies that should have been established before the national voice was attempted. But in his speech, you glimpse not only exasperation and disappointment but also an element of looming tragedy.

Now, four months after referendum day and with Gooda’s dignified contribution in mind, it is time for all of us to contemplate that resounding No vote. Typically, this is put as an opportunity for White Australia to repent and self-flagellate.

But Indigenous leaders need to face reality. They had control of the voice referendum. They brooked no change or adjustment. The referendum lost at a canter. There is no hiding place for them from this result.

Noel Pearson once said if the referendum failed an entire generation of Aboriginal leadership would have failed with it. A new generation would have to take up the cause.

Looking at Gooda, you realise this is a very faulty diagnosis. For the immediate future, the cause of Indigenous Australia needs to be in the civil, persuasive but determined hands of people such as Gooda, and natural reflective allies such as Tom Calma, Pat Turner and Sean Gordon.

Overwhelmingly, it was the younger generation of Indigenous leaders who doomed the voice to failure through high-minded intransigence and political ineptitude. They would brook no disagreement on the way to the referendum, so the referendum result disagreed with them. You can only wonder what will happen when these supremely confident apparatchiks are in charge.

The most striking memory of the innumerable discussions of the voice is a dreadful meeting in Canberra. The most senior law officers of the commonwealth were trying to explain why a modest change to the draft would improve it constitutionally and make it more acceptable to the public.

They were faced by a bank of new-generation Indigenous activists with looks of utter condescension and dismissal on their faces. What are these mere lawyers saying? There will be no change.

From then on the referendum was doomed.

It is apparent that Gooda fully recognised this moment of prospective disaster.

Out of all this mess, there are three obvious ways forward, all flowing out of Gooda’s speech.

First, politicians must dedicate themselves to practical measures to help Indigenous people help themselves.

Second, the institutional way forward for Indigenous Australia is through local voices, treaty and truth telling. These should have preceded the referendum, but there is still a sliver of opportunity.

Third, our Indigenous leadership must accept a just proportion of responsibility for the failed referendum and take lessons from it into the future.

Otherwise, we will be looking back on Gooda’s speech as an obituary for that future.

Emeritus professor Greg Craven is a constitutional lawyer and former vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University.