Albanese needs to finish this sentence to get Australians on side: ‘The Voice is…’

Not all laws of politics are immutable, but there’s one that surely is: if you’re explaining, you’re losing.

On this measure alone, the Albanese government is losing the battle to amend the Australian constitution for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. 

It’s been eight months this weekend since Anthony Albanese led Labor to a narrow win against a crisis-prone, poorly led Coalition. On election night, he put constitutional recognition of Indigenous peoples at the top of his government’s agenda, using it as his first sentence after an Acknowledgment of Country: “And on behalf of the Australian Labor Party, I commit to the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full.”

Since then we’ve had a brief proposal regarding what a constitutional change might look like — outlined in a speech to the Northern Territory Garma Festival at the end of July last year — followed by a semantic squabble over what means what. It’s been duelling detail demands, back and forth between a sniping opposition and a timid, reluctant government.

This “detail duel” heated up at the start of the new year, and the government has made no progress. In fact, the case for change and recognition has been going backwards. This week demonstrated just how weak the campaign to get Indigenous recognition is right now.

Interventions by Albanese in a combative interview on 2GB, and a national TV appearance by Attorney- General Mark Dreyfus, left many senior Labor figures wondering if there was any proactive campaign for success.

Albanese should have known he was parachuting into hostile territory with bombastic radio host Ben Fordham, but he had little to rebut loaded — but not necessarily unfair — questions. The weakness in his responses is central to where the government is losing. From the prime minister down, they are bound up in process.

Government ministers keep referring to the Langton-Calma report, a 272-page document bearing the name of its authors, Indigenous leaders and academics Marcia Langton and Tom Calma. It’s a thoughtful, considered document that answers or expands upon many of the prickly questions Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and others are throwing in the path of change.

However, there are three problems with this “here’s the process, just follow it” approach.

No one knows what the Langton-Calma report is, no one has read it, and neither the report nor the ministers waving it around have a crisp description of what a Voice might mean.

The Voice is a word in search of a sentence. There’s no meaning attached to it beyond what, for the overwhelming majority of Australian voters (who will decide this matter), is a feel-good notion of recognition.

In a lengthy interview with Laura Tingle on the ABC’s 7.30 on Monday, Dreyfus spent most of his time explaining, arguing and selling processes — spanning timelines, legislation and what a beautiful model was being developed. An argument for change it was not. None of this was helped by Dreyfus clearly reading out talking points from a government information sheet or Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney’s Twitter feed.

The government needs to finish a sentence starting with the words “The Voice is…” Then it must develop a considered campaign plan to convince people it’s something that will change Australia and the lives of Indigenous peoples for the better.

Ministers, led by Albanese, need to take the Voice out of the nebulous and attach it to real-life outcomes. These have to be founded in recognition but also encompass economic and educational opportunities, better health and welfare, and a greater sense of belonging and community.

The argument from within the Albanese government is that the referendum will look after itself, that we shouldn’t underestimate the intelligence of the Australian people, and that the culture war negativity of Dutton and his political and media cheer squad is yesterday’s script.

This could be wishful thinking, although Albanese spent much of 2020 and 2021 telling internal party doubters his “kicking into the wind in the last quarter” genius was all going to plan. He even likened himself to US President Joe Biden.

That was a useful analogy only when it worked. Listening to the interviews this week and then examining the conservative political and media reaction should activate flashing red lights in the senior ranks of the government and the Labor Party.

It wasn’t just the mechanised, scripted appearance by Dreyfus (who most voters might think has a handle on the legalities of all this), but also the unprepared way Albanese walked into the issue.

He made himself an easy target for a political attack specialist like Dutton, who is already polishing the ultimate defeat line for a referendum: it’s no wonder Australians are confused, and if Albanese can’t explain it to you, why would you vote for it?

Albanese has also exposed a lack of what should be easy-to-grasp detail (he confessed to 2GB the government hadn’t asked for legal advice from the solicitor-general before releasing the draft detail about the Voice, for example).

When pressed on how the who, what, when, where, how and why might roll out, he fell back on a lazy analogy about the Sydney Harbour Bridge: the referendum was like asking people if they wanted the nation’s most famous bridge — do people in Melbourne’s western suburbs or on the urban fringes of Brisbane really care? — before the Parliament would then decide “how many lanes [there] will be, which will go in what direction, what the toll will be, some of that detail. The question before the Australian people is a really simple one.”

Dutton pounced, saying Albanese didn’t know what he was talking about and was risking defeat for Indigenous recognition.

Here is the bedrock of Albanese’s response, which exposes the weakness of the government’s case.

“Do you recognise Indigenous people in the constitution? That’s the first question,” he says. “And the second is Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were asked to have a process. And … they came up with the Uluru Statement from the Heart in 2017.”

That might start a conversation in a common room at a sandstone university, but it doesn’t finish the sentence beginning with “The Voice is…”

Until the government can do that, and develop a serious campaign to win the backing of a majority of people in a majority of states, it is headed for defeat. Dutton has nothing to lose, which is why he is playing such a clever two-track political game, saying we all want recognition but the government has to set out in fine detail the ingredients and recipe involved.

This is not something that was ever going to look after itself, and if a referendum proposal is defeated, we won’t revisit it for a very long time. Don’t forget: the republic referendum was almost 24 years ago, and its return is nowhere near the far horizon.