It has been a difficult week for the caring class and other self-appointed champions of the wretched, who on Saturday voted in favour of what Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described as a “modest request”.
To their dismay, the rest of Australia did not share their fervent belief that our democratic and non-discriminatory system of government would be immeasurably enhanced by the constitutional incorporation of an undemocratic and race-based institution.
Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore is one of those greatly peeved. As with many a local government panjandrum these days, she sees her primary role as instilling moral rectitude in the ratepayer.
“On behalf of the City of Sydney I express continued solidarity with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders, leaders, and communities,” she announced on Facebook on Sunday, declaring it was “devastating and tragic that Australia said No”. Accordingly, Moore has decreed that Aboriginal flags will be flown at half-mast this week across all council buildings.
This was quite the turnaround for Moore. When NSW Premier Chris Minns last week decided to project the colours of the Israeli flag on the sails of the Sydney Opera House following mass terrorist attacks by Hamas, Moore was sermonising about the need for neutrality.
“I didn’t agree with that, taking one side or the other,” she said, adding that the sails should be illuminated only for “solemn, solitary, occasions”.
Call us old-fashioned, Clover Moore, but many Australians side against those who rape and murder women, take children as hostages, and decapitate babies. But in fairness to Moore, she was not the only one to take offence at this small gesture of solidarity, as evident by the pro-Palestinian Middle Eastern demonstrators who gathered at the steps of the Opera House and chanted “Gas the Jews”.
As for the referendum result, Moore’s reaction is typical of inner-city bien pensant mentality. The lead-up to it goes like this. First, the case for the Indigenous voice to parliament is self-evident. Second, not only should it be obvious to all, but the moral imperative behind it is such there is no need for debate or detail. To argue otherwise suggests one has an ulterior motive.
So how does this mindset try to rationalise the outcome?
“I’m bitterly disappointed that opportunity was seized upon by a mean, ungenerous and negative political campaign,” wrote Moore. “We saw ugly, Trumpian tactics and harmful misinformation that played to people’s fears and gave rise to racism.”
In other words, the Yes campaign was robbed. It could never be that Australians had twigged months ago the Prime Minister was a mere cipher for Indigenous activists. It could never be the vote was a logical reaction to Albanese’s assumption the electorate needed as little convincing as a Q+A audience. It could never be the backlash caused by Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney saying, “Those people that are against this are going backward”. No, it had to be right-wing populism, or the Murdoch media, or a Coalition wrecking ball, or the Institute of Public Affairs, or millions of disinformation bots targeting the ignorant masses.
As for those who voted No, you may be interested in what ABC federal political reporter and Palawa Plangermaireerner woman Dana Morse had to say. She, you may recall, made headlines in June following her appearance on Insiders, where she claimed that activists opposed to the celebration of Australia Day were “protesting about the genocide of Aboriginal people that is ongoing today”. Her take on the motivations of No voters was equally informed.
“I think we have to be very careful … how we talk about perceptions of racism in this country, because it is not up to the oppressor to decide whether the oppressed – how they are labelling them,” she told Fran Kelly and Patricia Karvelas, co-hosts of ABC The Party Room, on Monday. “So if you’re an Indigenous person in this country who has experienced racism as a result of a No vote, it is very difficult to then reconcile the day after and say people who voted No are not racist.”
To summarise, if you voted No, you must be very careful about denying accusations this constitutes racism, for your opinion as an oppressor is invalid. How convenient for Morse the rules she dictates for others do not apply to her fallacious and undergraduate pronouncements.
There is good news for No voters though, and that is not all ABC journalists think racism necessarily played a part in your decision. Rather, it could just be you are an ignoramus. Consider Karvelas, for example, who played down the theory the outcome reflected a divide between “the elites and the non-elites”. Rather, it was a case of the educated and the uninformed.
“Where people have been educated they come to different conclusions [on the voice referendum], and then you get a whole swathe of people working very hard can I say and probably having very little time to focus on reading constitutions or proposals … and making pretty quick on-the-hop decisions, where I do think quick social media campaigns probably have had a pretty big impact – that’s sort of the consumption,” she said.
It is difficult to imagine how Karvelas could have been any more condescending. If anything, she was proving the No campaign’s argument that the voice was elitist folly.
So rattled was ABC radio presenter Jonathan Green that he started coming apart even before the polls had opened. “F..k Australia,” he wrote on Friday in a since deleted tweet. “I mean seriously.
“What the f...k. How can you say no?”
Hardly a surprising reaction, given his X (formerly Twitter) bio proclaims he is “Typing on unceded Wurundjeri land”.
And Sydney Morning Herald columnist and former BBC correspondent Nick Bryant’s judgement was
such he thought playing on the cultural cringe factor could shift the undecided. Citing the coverage
of the referendum by Reuters, he tweeted on Friday that a No vote, would be “hugely damaging to
the country’s reputation”.
And lastly, spare a thought for those convinced that Beelzebub himself – otherwise known as the Opposition Leader – cruelled Albanese’s quest to become the great reconciler of the nation.
“We see you, Peter Dutton. We know what you did,” wrote Guardian Australia political editor Katharine Murphy on Saturday. “Dutton’s decision to say no, and help flood the zone with shit, was certainly part of the reason public support for the voice tanked.”
Let’s put this in perspective, Katharine Murphy. This was one of the most comprehensive defeats any referendum proposal has suffered. More than 60 per cent of Australian voters rejected it. It failed even to secure a single state.
The message from the Australian people could not be clearer. Their decision reflects the mainstream’s disdain for the politics of racial grievance and victimhood. The fact that so many journalists are losing their sh*t over the outcome says much about the profession’s concept of reality.
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