Indigenous voice to parliament: Yes23 campaign must target 1.7m ‘soft’ voters

Campaign volunteers have been told to ‘pick a villain people distrust,’ including mining billionaires, when convincing undecided voters to join the Yes cause.

AFL champion Michael Long leads the Long Walk from Melbourne to Canberra to support the Yes campaign. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

Yes23 must win over at least 38 per cent of the nation’s 4.6 million undecided voters to claim victory in the October referendum, according to confidential research targeting young people, women, multicultural communities and soft voters in four battleground states.

The 31-page Yes23 Persuasive Conversations document, obtained by The Australian, includes new strategies designed to reverse polling trends indicating the pro-voice campaign is on track to lose the referendum, which is expected to be called for October 14.

Campaign volunteers have been told to name a “villain” when convincing at least 1.7 million undecided voters to join the Yes cause, including invoking mining billionaires who “care more about profit than protecting our country”.

With mining giants strongly backing a constitutionally enshrined voice advisory body, Anthony Albanese on Sunday travelled to Rio Tinto’s iron ore operations in the key state of Western Australia, where he expressed confidence the traditionally conservative state would back the Yes campaign.

The Prime Minister will travel to Adelaide on Wednesday to announce the referendum date and officially launch the Yes campaign in the must-win state of South Australia.

Central to the Yes23 campaign, which has recruited more than 27,000 volunteers, are new strategies to secure backing from millions of soft voters they describe as being “up for grabs”. The PowerPoint slides, which Yes23 says are not official but prepared by volunteers, includes new confidential strategic voting and messaging research.

“Young people are key. The largest age segment up for grabs are 18-34-year-olds. So are women … 54 per cent of (those) up for grabs are female. People who speak languages other than English at home are not being talked to about this issue,” the document say. “Opposition in WA is much softer than in other states, and so should be a key persuasion priority.

 

Tasmania is a key persuasion priority, with a higher proportion of supportive segments. SA and Queensland are over-represented in hard-to-move (segments).”

The document, which provides cheat sheets to help volunteers shift sentiment, categorises voters across eight segments – Sceptical Allies (closet conservatives), Cheerleaders (including young female professionals), Leaning Yes, Undecided, Leaning No, Disengaged, Hard No and Culture Warriors.

It provides instructions on how to redirect voters who ask why the voice is needed now, raise concerns over the lack of detail and who believe the voice is about “more than just recognition”. Yes23 campaigners, who should adhere to “positive framing”, are provided with written examples of how to “affirm, answer and redirect” under a plan to engage the base, persuade the maybes and ignore the opposition.

“The job of a good message isn’t to say what is popular. The job of a good message is to make popular what we need said,” the document says.

Yes23 campaigners, who will target voters in SA, Tasmania, WA and Queensland, are instructed to follow the “Four Vs framework – value, villain, victory and vision”.

After discussing values, which are universal or widely supported, campaigners are told to “name the villain, or unfair barrier, including who or what is harming us and why – pick a villain that most people dislike or distrust”. The Yes23 document tells volunteers to single out wealthy miners as villains: “Mining billionaires care more about profit than protecting our country.” This is despite some of the country’s biggest mining companies, such as BHP and Rio Tinto, backing the voice.

Other villain themes include harm caused by discrimination of the past, successive governments taking funding away from local communities without consultation and past governments reneging on promises made to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Under the Four Vs framework, “value” is based on Australians believing everyone deserves a fair go, “villain” focuses on exposing discrimination and racism “that still has an impact today”, “victory” celebrates the voice as a practical step forward and “vision” represents a “united community where everyone is treated with respect and dignity”.

 

Yes23 volunteers are told that “in this campaign, when they go low – we will go high”, and encouraged to “introduce yourself using positional language rather than hierarchical language”.

The key message for voters categorised as Sceptical Allies, who Yes23 fears are adopting arguments from “covert conservatives”, is that a No vote will “be a big setback for FN (First Nations) people”.

Opposition Indigenous Australians spokeswoman and No campaigner Jacinta Nampijinpa Price said “once again we see the Yes camp making it up as they go along, and ‘redirecting’ voters who just want the detail”.

“The fact they are treating voters like mugs shows the complete desperation on the Yes side, and the fact their proposal only serves to divide us, not unite us,” Senator Price told The Australian.

“This is all the more disingenuous given the Yes camp has eagerly accepted several million dollars from some of the world’s biggest miners.”

A Yes23 spokesman told The Australian “this is not an official Yes23 document” but acknowledged it would have been prepared by volunteers engaged in persuasive conversation training sessions. “We welcome the enthusiasm of our ever-growing base of volunteers to educate others on how to have conversations with Australians about the importance of a successful Yes vote. The efforts and conversations that our army of volunteers will be having in the coming months will be critical to getting this referendum over the line,” he said.

Yes23 campaign director Dean Parkin on Sunday joined Indigenous AFL legend Michael Long in Melbourne for the launch of The Long Walk. Mr Long is re-creating his 2004 walk from Melbourne to Canberra in support of the voice.

Mr Parkin declared more than 40 per cent of voters “are absolutely undecided” and said they would for the first time this week turn their minds towards the referendum when Mr Albanese announces the date.

He said the Yes campaign would leave “no stone unturned” to get its message across, including through cashed-up advertising campaigns and “millions of conversations” with undecided voters.

A No campaign spokesman said “from the start” its focus has been on the key states of WA, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania.

“We’ve had voter contact programs in place for months focused on these states. As far as the No campaign strategy is concerned, nothing has changed. The Yes campaign is saying SA is a key state but we’ve been there right from the start,” the spokesman told The Australian. “The Yes campaign is an over-hyped, over-funded and overrated explosion of ideas – they don’t have a clear message. All they have left is the corporate millions that they will use to try and buy a result.”

Speaking at Rio Tinto’s iron ore operations in Karratha, Mr Albanese said he remained confident that WA would back the voice. He pointed to the backing of the AFL and the mining industry for the voice as a sign the state could “absolutely” be persuaded to vote yes.

Ahead of announcing the referendum date, Mr Albanese said Australia was the only former colony that had not formally recognised its Indigenous people.