Will the states go marching in for a Voice to Parliament?

The longer the political year grinds on at its relentless, metronomic pace, the more the grand mistake of having a referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament stands out.

Today the first two months of 2023 come to an end and the case for a form of constitutional recognition of Indigenous peoples is at the edge of failure.

Protests that there is plenty of time and talk remaining, that the wording of any change has yet to be settled, and that the naysayers are simply looking for pathways to failure all may have merit. However, they look more and more like excuses for the ever-growing sense of defeat for what should be a simple, commonsense change.

More than a month ago I pointed out in Crikey that the Voice needed a basic sentence of definition. It’s still the question most asked by all types of people — from those highly engaged with political and current affairs, to interested but detail-deprived devotees of the Adelaide arts scene, to communities as diverse as inner-city Brisbane.

It’s easy to find a clear majority of people who are willing for the proposed change to succeed. They don’t want to wake up the next day having voted down basic recognition of Indigenous peoples. However, just about everyone has their doubts. Can it be turned around? Sure, most things in politics and public life are possible, but the famed Overton window — the range of policies a population finds acceptable at a given time — might quickly shift. 

The referendum faces the brutalist double jeopardy of having to succeed with a majority of votes in a majority of states. Territories don’t count. This means having substantial victories in the two most populous states of NSW and Victoria and one other state won’t change a thing if there are narrow or greater losses in the other three.

It’s probable — but like everything else not certain — a referendum question proposing a constitutional amendment to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and giving them a Voice to the national government and Parliament will get more than 50% of the vote in Victoria and NSW.

History is not helpful. The marriage equality plebiscite won support everywhere, but this advantage was at its lowest in NSW, something attributed to opposition within conservative religious communities, usually ethnically based.

The gold standard for the reform-minded is the 1967 question, which was about removing references in the constitution discriminating against Indigenous peoples, including them in the national census and allowing Parliament to make laws in relation to them. It swept home in every state by a majority of about 10 to one, winning 90% of the national vote.

Of course, the times suited the 1967 referendum. All political parties backed it in, all levels of government did likewise, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities spoke as one. It was a political kumbaya moment in Australian politics.

Likewise, the times suited the same-sex marriage plebiscite, but even then there was more measured support than seen in 1967. The backing for change was just under two in three voters, but more than 10% of federal electorates still said No — with the highest rejection coming in Blaxland in Sydney’s inner metro where 74% of people rejected the proposal.

In all, 17 of Australia’s 150 electorates voted no to same-sex marriage, all but five in NSW (three in Queensland and two in Victoria).

This year it doesn’t feel like the times are suiting the case for change. There are rancorous divisions within the Yes side of what passes for the campaign for change. Three camps are emerging.

There is the centrist consensus led by insiders including Tom Calma, Megan Davis, Noel Pearson, Shireen Morris, Gabrielle Appleby and Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney.

There’s a small group of people who want a Yes vote to succeed but can see difficult, mostly legal, obstacles coalescing around Frank Brennan, a Jesuit priest and law professor. This “yes, but” camp argues the wording Prime Minister Anthony Albanese outlined at the Garma Festival should be narrower and sharper to prevent legal ambiguity and head off constitutional court challenges. Any restrictions on the definition of the Voice is strongly opposed by the majority Yes faction.

And then there’s a radical fringe that wants change but on a big bang scale — a full treaty, a truth-telling exercise where history is picked over and wrongs exposed. There’s an argument about who or what comes first, but a common thread sees the Voice not entertained until after a treaty has been adopted.

According to people who’ve dealt with some inside the Yes campaign, there are enough threads of dissent, disagreement and disruption to throw the mission for change off course for a short time or longer. Some veterans of the 1999 republic referendum hear echoes from that doomed exercise when former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s self-belief and fractured tactical meetings trying to deal with the direct election splinter group upended the whole shebang.

If all this plays out to the best-case expectations of the optimists, the Yes campaign could win NSW and Victoria and have a chance in South Australia, where voters have the nascent experience of a state-legislated Voice. Hardly anyone thinks Queensland or Western Australia will back change — not just because of a tendency to conservatism on these issues but the shared experience of high levels of youth crime, much of which features Indigenous teens.

Tasmania has a long and sometimes mysterious history of not going with the mainland flow on these kinds of changes. This could well happen again.

Federal Labor sources reckon Albanese still feels a positive mood for change, based on the vibe of the thing.

After a week in conversation with various people in south-east Queensland, metropolitan Adelaide and regional South Australia, as well as some chats with people in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, it’s safe to say there’s another vibe about — and it’s not such good juju.