How elite is the No campaign? Let’s count the ways

Those hostile to an Indigenous Voice to Parliament — such as Warren Mundine, Peter Dutton and extreme-right activist group Advance — insist that it is “elites” who are pushing the Voice. But it doesn’t take much checking to see that it’s the No campaign with the strongest claim to the title of elite — financial and political.

Take its financial backers. Despite claims by Advance (formerly known as Advance Australia) that it has “tens of thousands of grassroots donations”, it’s bankrolled by some of Australia’s richest people. Billionaire Sam Kennard is a backer of Advance, as part of a dozen super-wealthy donors who have poured money into it. Among the contributions was more than $100,000 from the Garnaut family, associated with major property and financial management companies — including Garnaut Private Wealth, which says it “exclusively advise[s] high net worth, sophisticated and professional families, businesses and charities”.

Exclusive, sophisticated, high net worth — but not elite, of course.

Another major No campaign financier is retired fund manager Simon Fenwick, who according to the Financial Review “worked for EY in Australia and investment banks Societe Generale and BNP Paribas in London … sits on the board of think tank the Institute of Public Affairs … [and] is also a director of the University of Queensland Endowment Fund”.

Again, plainly a salt-of-the-earth working Aussie, rather than an out-of-touch elite.

Or there’s Andrew Abercrombie, founder and chair of buy now, pay later group Humm and director of the right-wing Liberal lobby group Menzies Research Centre. The rich lister is famous for hosting a party at his Aspen apartment in March 2020 that became a COVID-19 spreader event back in Australia. Aspen? The world’s most expensive ski resort, but not elite at all.

And let’s not forget Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, made a special effort to support right-wing senator and Advance’s campaign leader Jacinta Nampijinpa Price when she delivered her maiden speech a year ago. Rinehart is famously in touch with the Australian heartland — lamenting that Aussie workers don’t want to work for $2 a day and drink and socialise too much.

Australia’s super-rich are perfectly entitled to spend their doubtless hard-earned cash backing the No campaign, and engaging in any other political activity they feel like. And they’re not the ones proclaiming the “elite” nature of Yes advocates. But Advance’s pretence that it’s bankrolled by “grassroots donations” and its opponents are out-of-touch elites — including attacks on “corporate elites” funding the Yes campaign — sits rather poorly with the reality of its donors.

Similarly on the political front. Senator Price is a relative newcomer to politics. But a look at the political figures lining up to oppose the Voice reveals a decidedly elitist tinge. John Howard and Tony Abbott are former prime ministers — in Howard’s case, Australia’s second-longest serving leader. Barnaby Joyce, a former deputy prime minister. John Anderson, another former deputy PM under Howard. Abbott, Anderson and Joyce are, by the way, all products of elite Sydney schools, which makes Advance’s sneering at Matt Kean’s objections to its racist advertisement last week (“elitist Sydney views”) a little confusing; at least Howard went to Canterbury Boys High before taking his law degree at the University of Sydney.

So for the avoidance of doubt, according to Advance, the following do not indicate elite status:

• attendance at elite Sydney schools;
• being a former prime minister or deputy prime minister;
• being among the richest people in the country;
• owning an apartment in Aspen;
• working for a merchant bank in London;
• complaining that Australian workers drink too much and refuse to work for $2 a day;
• advertising that you “exclusively advise high net worth, sophisticated and professional families”.

In contrast, support for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament is a marker of elite status, no matter how impoverished or powerless you may be.

Being “elite”, according to Advance, seems to be less about what we usually attribute to elite status — reflecting the power one holds based on wealth, social or political position, influence or prominence — and more about a nebulous state of mind, which either cancels out the impact of wealth, political or social prominence even if you have them, or somehow delivers them to you if you don’t. It’s a special kind of right-wing fairy dust, a little sprinkle of which transforms the world into its mirror image.