Indigenous voice to parliament No camp fears rush of the late engagers

A leaked No campaign memo has warned that an ‘air of inevitability and complacency’, a large number of soft voters and Yes23’s $50m-plus warchest could reverse voice polling numbers.

Opposition Indigenous Australians spokeswoman and leading No campaigner Jacinta Nampijinpa Price at Parliament House on Monday. Picture: Martin Ollman / NCA NewsWire

Senior No campaigners have warned of complacency, fears that 20 to 30 per cent of voters will remain undecided on the voice until polls open and a “cooling” in fundraising and volunteer support, according to a leaked memo sent to Australians for Unity board members.

The No campaign, which leads Yes23 in internal and public polling, holds serious concerns it will be outspent and outnumbered in the weeks leading up to the expected October 14 referendum asking Australians to enshrine a voice advisory body in the Constitution.

A leaked memo sent to No campaign board members on Sunday, ahead of a meeting this week, said some senior Coalition figures were threatening the campaign by embracing an “air of inevitability and complacency”.

With 20,000 volunteers already signed up, the Yes23 campaign is preparing a big-spending, election-style campaign to win over soft and undecided voters in the weeks leading up to referendum day.

In a coup for Anthony Albanese and Yes23 campaigners, WA Premier Roger Cook is expected to make major amendments to controversial Aboriginal Cultural Heritage laws that have sparked confusion and pushback from farmers, landholders and environmental groups.

The Australian understands the WA Labor government was told by senior ALP figures that its contentious three-tiered system imposing cultural assessments for ground excavation on properties exceeding 1100 sqm was damaging the Yes campaign.

Despite the No campaign extending its dominance nationally in recent months, strategists have privately warned senior Fair Australia figures the Yes campaign’s $50m-plus war chest will likely trim their lead.

“There are a number of key influencers in and around the Liberal and National parties that are not seeing the data that we are and this is leading to an air of inevitability and complacency,” the memo says. “This is absolutely a threat to the campaign and every effort must be made to counter this narrative. Further, this has led to all fundraising channels ‘cooling’ over the past four weeks. It remains our position that the Yes campaign will spend in excess of $50m when counting both donations and government advertising.

“The Yes campaign has both enough time and, more importantly, money to mount the biggest spend by a non-party campaign in the history of Australia. This level of market share in the closing weeks of the campaign could have a catastrophic impact on the No campaign.”

Yes campaigners recently said their polling showed high levels of soft votes. The No memo says: “While there is consistency with the overall trajectory of voting intention, our internal polling is showing a much stronger trendline of soft and undecided voters.

“Our belief (is) that this is coming from a cohort of voters that still have little or no awareness of the voice and the referendum.

“To be clear – these are not undecided voters in the traditional sense, these are voters who are not engaged on the issue at all. The number of these voters is incredibly high and there is nothing we have seen that suggests our initial projection of 20-30 per cent undecided voters on election day will be wrong.”

Yes23 campaign director Dean Parkin speaking at the Garma festival on the weekend. Picture: Getty Images

Attempting to shift pressure to Peter Dutton, the Prime Minister has repeatedly accused the Opposition Leader of supporting a legislated voice and argued that this contradicts the Coalition’s decision to back the No campaign.

“You can’t say that it will change the entire system of government and then say you will legislate for the voice,” Mr Albanese said. “That is what you are saying. You can’t say it will promote racial division and then say you will legislate for the voice.

“Clearly they don’t see it as radical or divisive, or any of the other noise of confusion that they are seeking to inject into the referendum. Otherwise, why would they legislate for it.”

Speaking on the ABC’s Insiders, Mr Albanese suggested the only difference in Mr Dutton’s position was that he didn’t want to put a voice in the Constitution.

Mr Dutton said on Monday that “once again, the PM is clutching at straws, making things up as he goes along, and refusing to provide the details of his voice, treaty, truth proposal to the Australian people”.

“Our position is clear: we support constitutional recognition, which we think would be a unifying moment and which would be supported by the vast majority of Australians – and as I said back in April, we support the establishment of local and regional bodies,” Mr Dutton said. “We do not support Mr Albanese’s divisive national voice proposal, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that many Australians don’t either.”

The No campaign memo says that while it continues to outperform the Yes campaign “particularly in organic content metrics, the unprecedented volume of advertising would be incredibly difficult to counter based on our fundraising projections”.

“Our summary position is that all that has been achieved so far by us is to create a competitive campaign. The result is by no means a foregone conclusion. There is the threat of the fundraising deficit and the increasing sense of complacency colliding to form a critical risk.”

With Queensland and WA tracking towards a No vote, South Australia and Tasmania remain battlegrounds that could fall either way. South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas will play a central role in Labor’s Yes push.

Asked in the upper-house whether federal Labor pressured the WA government over its cultural heritage laws, government Senate leader Penny Wong claimed to “have no knowledge of any such discussions being had”.

Julian Leeser, the most prominent Liberal supporter for the voice, said the cultural heritage laws in WA were a “distraction”.

“I’m glad the WA government have walked away from them,” Mr Leeser said. “It was clear the issue had become conflated with the referendum.”