Indigenous voice to parliament vote is very winnable, says SA premier Peter Malinauskas
Disparaging voice opponents as racist and ignorant is the surest way to ensure the Yes vote fails at this year’s referendum, SA Premier Peter Malinauskas has warned.
Disparaging voice opponents as racist and ignorant is the surest way to ensure the Yes vote fails at this year’s referendum, South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas has warned ahead of Wednesday’s formal launch of the Yes23 campaign in Adelaide.
Declaring the referendum “very winnable”, Mr Malinauskas will join Anthony Albanese in the northern Adelaide suburb of Elizabeth, with SA earmarked by Yes tacticians as the must-win fourth state for the voice to parliament to succeed.
The launch will be pitched squarely at undecided voters, make an appeal to SA’s progressive political traditions, and aim to harness the vote-pulling power of the popular SA Labor Premier in urging a Yes vote.
SA has been the focus of intense interest from senior Yes campaigners, with voice co-architect Noel Pearson visiting Adelaide two weeks ago and Yes campaign national director Dean Parkin making several SA trips.
Yes23 lobbying firm Crosby Textor believes while Queensland and Western Australia are lost causes, SA can join Victoria, NSW and Tasmania to deliver constitutional change, the assessment underscored by the most recent Newspoll showing the Yes vote marginally ahead in SA.
Voice opponents believe the analysis is deluded. Indigenous Liberal senator Kerrynne Liddle, a key SA No advocate, telling The Australian such an upbeat reading of SA did not gel with what she was hearing on the ground.
But speaking exclusively with The Australian ahead of the launch, Mr Malinauskas said he believed the case could be made for change by politely and respectfully engaging undecided and No voters.
“I enjoy talking with people who are voting no,” he said. “I don’t think voting no means you are racist or ignorant. That’s only going to drive people away. People have every right to ask questions. We need to engage with them and address their concerns.
“People can be persuaded. That’s why I think it is still very winnable. I think the vast majority of people haven’t engaged properly with it yet. When you explain to people that all this is simply about creating an advisory body whose advice can be accepted or rejected by the parliament, for the betterment of Indigenous Australians, it is the least contentious of proposals.”
Mr Malinauskas said he believed the campaign could be won in shopping malls and at street corner meetings rather than through boardroom-led displays of corporate support.
“We have got to get the debate back to the simple question of what the voice is,” he said. “We have got to make it more relatable to suburban voters that it’s about saving money and getting better results from bureaucracy, be that more cops to drive down crime in some areas or better outcomes to stop the health issues that affect Indigenous communities.”
Mr Pearson has played a key role in planning for Wednesday’s launch and said he believed SA would see the voice as “a natural progression” as it was the first state to give women the vote and enact state land rights legislation.
He told The Australian SA had a long tradition of winning over critics of social progress.
“SA’s long history of supporting democratic reforms makes it the hinge state for the referendum. Where SA goes in the Yes campaign the country follows. It sends a signal to the eastern states.
“Look at women’s suffrage. There was a big No campaign against women voting in the 1890s. There was a big No campaign to the formation of Australia as a Federation. SA led both of those initiatives. With women voting it led the world.
“This state has always led reforms like that and that’s why I have been in SA talking to community groups, faith groups … SA really is so important to us.”
The choice of Elizabeth as the venue for the launch is telling as the working-class suburb is home to a high proportion of blue-collar workers and aged pensioners most affected by the cost-of-living squeeze that has seen many voters dismiss the voice as a distraction.
Built as a satellite suburb by the Playford government in the 1950s and named in honour of the late Queen Elizabeth II, Elizabeth was the childhood home of Cold Chisel frontman Jimmy Barnes and the hub of the SA car industry at the now-defunct Holden factory.
Away from poorer suburbs such as Elizabeth, the Yes camp enjoys a tactical headstart in SA, with the state delivering a solid bloc of middle-class small-l liberals in the inner city, Adelaide Hills and wine country with an appetite for social reform. As the home state of Don Dunstan and the birthplace of the Australian Democrats, SA’s arty and libertarian culture has often challenged conservative political orthodoxy.
The state has an above-average proportion of public servants and Labor has governed SA for 17 of the past 21 years, with Steven Marshall’s Liberal government defeated last year after just one term.
Early in his premiership, former Labor Right faction boss Mr Malinauskas is governing from the centre and has won business support for his commitment to low taxes and championing big hospitality events such as the AFL Gather Round and the Saudi-backed LIV golf tournament.
He has told his Left faction detractors this approach has given him political capital to pursue progressive reforms including Australia’s first state-based voice to parliament, which while yet to take effect was passed by the SA parliament this year.
Mr Malinauskas said he would do everything he could in a campaign sense over the next six weeks to help the voice succeed nationally. “I am all in on this. It won’t be at the expense of my day job, but I am backing it in big time.”
Senator Liddle rejected the Yes camp’s assessment of SA and said she believed voters in the state believed Aboriginal communities needed jobs and opportunities, not symbolic gestures. She said she suspected many SA voters were sick of being “preached to” about the voice, citing the recent furore in which SA’s Mitcham Council reversed a secret plan to spend $40,000 of ratepayers’ cash urging a Yes vote, at the same time it had increased council rates.
“What we are hearing from the Yes campaign about South Australia is another example of them leveraging the vibe,” Senator Liddle told The Australian.
“It is laughable for Peter Malinauskas or anyone to say that the SA voice … makes the national one more palatable. The SA voice isn’t even working yet. They put it off by six months because they didn’t want it interfering with the referendum. We don’t actually have any example of the voice working here or anywhere.”
Senator Liddle accused the federal government of enabling a divisive campaign during a cost-of-living squeeze.
The Yes23 launch will be held at 11am on Wednesday.
More Coverage
‘Colonisation’ behind climb bans
New climbing routes at Mt Arapiles were blocked because traditional owners viewed it as a form of ‘colonisation’.
‘Enough is enough’: Dutton pledges to crack down on crime
Major changes to Centrelink access recommended by the Territory government will be at the forefront of the Coalition’s policy for cutting crime in Alice Springs.