There’s nothing surprising about the No campaign’s success

If and when the historic Voice referendum meets defeat in coming months, as polls increasingly suggest, the court of history will blame not only the rank political opportunism of the opposition and the fringe right, but — as things stand — so too the Albanese government. 

It is, of course, no secret that Yes advocates (the government included) have been forced to trek an impossibly narrow path in their bid to explain and widen the proposal’s appeal. 

They’ve been at pains to point out, for instance, that the Voice embodies a simple rather than radical idea, though not something so modest in its aims it suffers the charge of symbolism. Indeed, that it nonetheless presents a historic moment of reconciliation, though not something so profound or far-reaching that it necessarily compels rather than invites change. And yet that, even so, it will make a difference, even if the possibility of such difference remains irrevocably tied to the will of Parliament, which can ignore the Voice. 

By contrast, and on the opposing side, lies the brazenly contradictory arguments of the right, which have for months proudly occupied a double-folded state of being, unable to decide whether the Voice will do too much or too little. 

On the one hand, it says the Voice will confer on Indigenous Australians a special and unfair say over everyone and everything, thereby raising the spectre of endless national discord and democracy’s demise. Such inequality, it intones, is of itself racist and divisive. From there it arrives at the rather daring conclusion the Voice will be, in time, unmasked for what it is and always was: a Trojan horse through which Indigenous Australians seek to right the wrongs of the past by regaining the nation’s sovereignty, utterly unravelling our way of life.  

And even if that is wrong, this group insists, it surely follows that the “Canberra Voice” will prove an ineffectual institution — a pointless vehicle through which self-serving “Indigenous elites” personally stand to reap financial reward from ongoing First Nations disadvantage and “white man’s guilt”.

No one from this vantage point can accuse the right of a failure of imagination. On any view, these are large and unhinged claims, and ones savaged by the nation’s leading legal minds. They’re also disinformation distended, steeped in an unbounded vulgarity that casts a pall over the heart of the nation.  

But none of this matters. Truth and logic are irrelevant when your singular aim is to sow fear and division, and give licence to unchecked outrage. And with as little as four months out from the referendum, we now have confirmation such tactics are meeting their desired ends.  

All published opinion polls but one show support for the Voice has fallen to below 50% for the first time, with most of the ground ceded to the No campaign reportedly emanating from Labor voters. 

Seizing on this, the Voice gravedigger-in-chief has in turn called on the government to abandon the referendum: “[The prime minister] should make a decision that’s in our country’s best interest and say, ‘Look, I’m going to call it off because it’s just going to divide the country down the middle, it’s not going to achieve the outcome that we’re talking about,’” Peter Dutton told 2GB in recent days. 

It’s tempting to ask where Dutton finds the reserves of sheer hypocrisy. But that would be to lend his Voice manoeuvrings a Machiavellian-like cleverness that isn’t there. 

The truth is, his is a politics that’s long been inked in fear, not inspiration, with its one unifying thread being an us-versus-them mentality unspooled from the moderating forces of truth and decency. 

This is the man, after all, who falsely claimed African gangs were frightening Melbourne families from dining out, who’s readily likened asylum seekers to paedophiles and murderers, and whose unceremonious presence was found wanting at both the apology to the Stolen Generations and the recent introduction of the referendum legislation. 

Political othering, in other words, is something of a national pastime for the opposition leader, who is the natural heir to a political lineage that has long championed a politics festooned in mendacity and sophistry. 

In this connection, it hardly needs pointing out that it was the Howard government whose penchant for lies and untruths unilaterally introduced new depths to the meaning of political cynicism, setting fire to the party’s sense of ethics and respect for convention. What we discern in Dutton today is nothing more and nothing less than a worldview warped in the same black clouds of this smoke. 

But none of this is truly news, which invites the obvious question: how is it that the Albanese government so readily underestimated the demonstrable power of an angry populism cloaked in white supremacy? 

One possible answer is hubris. Flying high in the polls, Albanese was convinced his popularity would sustain a Yes vote in a nation weary of the divisive politics of times past. To that end, he’s instead been busying himself with other endeavours, including shoring up his popularity through a loose constellation of alliances with media personalities such as Kyle Sandilands. 

Such hubris might also explain why it is the government failed to legislate Independent MP Zali Steggall’s truth in political advertising bill, despite acknowledging last November the dangers misinformation posed to the referendum’s success. And why, against the weight of expert legal opinion, it gave needless ground to the opposition on the question of a Yes/No referendum pamphlet, which — history shows — is a document invariably replete with falsehoods and misleading claims. 

The alternative, more charitable answer is that Albanese hoped his style of politics, bland as it is, would inspire those on the right to detach themselves from their daily efforts of outrage and apocalyptic thinking and return to the sensible, civil centre. But even if that is so, surely it was obvious by March that so much was wishful thinking.   

And so now the nation finds itself at an unenviable crossroads, increasingly cornered by the haunting spectre of a scarcely concealed racism and blind political opportunism. 

Against the backdrop of falling approval ratings for the prime minister and a looming recession, the situation for the Yes campaign is reportedly so dire the Labor Party is mobilising a far-reaching grassroots campaign with Yes23, with the trade union movement, too, joining their ranks. 

Some are hopeful the next four months will give way to hope and restore optimism. The difficulty, however, is the right’s pathway to success was always the easier to navigate. The more socially acceptable it appears to be to oppose the Voice, the more likely it is people will march unperturbed to the right’s drumbeat of division and hate. 

As things stand, perhaps few things are certain. The referendum’s defeat will not only spell the death of Indigenous reconciliation; it will confirm the death of conservatism in modern Australia. It will also settle as a matter of veritable truth that Dutton — as Albanese recently put it — is “completely unworthy of [being] the alternative prime minister of this nation”. 

The problem for Albanese, of course, is that we all already knew this. And long ago.  

Will Peter Dutton’s negativity win the day on the Voice referendum? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.