The Harsh Reality: A Referendum Campaign Plunged into a Political Abyss

For Indigenous Australians who supported an Indigenous voice in Parliament, the complete loss of the 2023 referendum – its defeat in every state as well as nationally – is much more than just a political loss.

As the Uluru Statement from the Heart said, this was an invitation to all of us for a better future: a coherent articulation by First Nations people, an articulation that had been embraced and heeded by more many of them than anything that had been said before, from a point of view toward a future that swallowed up everything that had happened in the past and demanded very little.

And we rejected it. It will take a long time to understand why this happened. Politics will move quickly to shape and blame the reckoning: largely a fight between whites.

But pause briefly before that happens to think about the pain of that rejection.

A vote against “activists”

It took very little time before not only was the idea of ​​the Voice relegated to history, but the people behind it were diminished by the naysayers.

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott was one of the first to claim that this was not a vote against indigenous people but against “activists” – a line repeated several times by the leader. opposition Peter Dutton and his spokesperson for Aboriginal Affairs, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.

This is a term designed not only to delegitimize the people – and particularly indigenous leaders – who championed the Voice, but also to somehow suggest that they were from the start foreigners without a clear mandate.

In fact, those people now described as “activists” – and the work they carried out at Uluru – were part of a process that had been put in place by the then Prime Minister and head of the opposition in 2015 to “advise the government on the steps to take to reach an agreement”. referendum”.

Although the Uluru Declaration had a difficult journey from the start, it gave birth to a new generation of Indigenous leaders who championed its cause with dignity and grace, in the face of increasing appalling abuse and racism.

Loading…

Dutton’s fast pivot is busy as usual

Dutton and Price told people who had voted Yes on Saturday night that the Coalition had “their best interests at heart” and was protecting the country from a prime minister who was deliberately misleading them and “academics and campaigners in the downtown “.

Indigenous people, Price said, need to “get away from their grievances.”

In the space of a few short sentences, Dutton transformed the discussion of direction from one that was his version of what could be done to ameliorate Aboriginal disadvantage to a discussion of white grievances: of the promise of a royal commission into allegations of indigenous violence. child sexual abuse and an audit of indigenous funding to lower the cost of living, helping people buy their own homes, “the waste of energy policy”, supporting – not opposing – small businesses and national security.

In particular, there was no question of organizing a second referendum solely on the recognition of Aboriginal people if the Coalition won the government.

Dutton’s indigenous agenda was law and order and child sexual abuse, and the suggestion that things could be sorted out by an audit of the funding of a system that his government designed and monitored for a decade and whose Productivity Commission recently found that it had not even met its targets. own objectives.

Loading…

The trend does not bode well for the Coalition

There are a lot of oddities in the relationship between this referendum and politics.

Despite the total defeat of the referendum, voters repeatedly told focus groups that they devalued Peter Dutton for the way he had behaved.

The essentials of the vocal referendum:

More importantly, the very clear voting trends do not bode well for the Coalition in the next election.

He must regain the seats he lost to independents in last year’s elections, but the latter recorded the country’s strongest votes in favor of the referendum – often between 60 and 70 percent. Such levels of support suggest that voters in these seats will not forget the events of the past few months.

The Labor Party saw a large part of its core, in the outer suburbs, vote against The Voice. However, he is not at all sure that this will work against him in the same way in the next elections.

The Prime Minister and the government have lost their position because of Voice. But more because voters feel their concerns on other issues have been ignored. If Anthony Albanese can now band together to be visible in resolving these issues – particularly the cost of living – they will be put to rest.

But his party will find its inability to be a powerful defender of a referendum in which it was deeply committed.

Loading…

No simple message from the Yes campaign

The brutal truth of the referendum campaign is that the Yes case failed to stand out, failed to explain simply enough why what was seen as a simple advisory committee was so important that it should be included in the Constitution.

There was no simple message to remember from the Yes side, nor a clear figurehead.

The Prime Minister procrastinated and delayed taking the lead, believing that it should be the community and Indigenous leaders who should lead the debate – believing that his presence would make the political debate brutal.

But it was always going to be a brutal political contest. And he guaranteed it by making the referendum his first commitment the night he became Prime Minister. This has ensured that, whatever the arguments about the Voice itself, it has become a target for political opponents who know that a crucial step on the path back to government is to deny a Prime Minister his or her program and its apparent effectiveness.

Albanese’s position put absolutely unfair pressure on his Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Linda Burney, to lead the debate from a relatively junior position within government, and helped dispel the idea of knowing who was leading the debate at a time when various groups and spokespeople were already arguing. a series of propositions in support of the case.

The result was a disaster.

The No affair contained at most a few simple messages and a clear spokesperson and, where it appeared, deadly messages from Peter Dutton.

The Voice’s proposal came up against an electorate that is notoriously conservative about any change to the constitution, which has little knowledge of indigenous people and, as Noel Pearson said last year, little empathy for them .

Add to that a vicious disinformation campaign making wild claims about the Voice threatening people’s homes, higher taxes, a UN takeover, and most other conspiracy theories you can name, and we have witnessed a Dante-like descent into political hell over the past year, much more it is fueled by the undeniable poisonous fuel of racism.

Indigenous leaders vowed to stay strong Saturday night; recognize the considerable support they received from the rest of the country during the referendum; the 80,000 volunteers who, they say, supported them, the 200,000 people who marched across the country.

Many called for a week of silence to mourn the outcome, saying it was not the time to analyze the reasons for the outcome.

However, white politics will make no such pause. With Federal Parliament returning this week, the race to shape the story of what happened will quickly bury all the passion its supporters have put into Voice.

Laura Tingle is 7:30’s chief political correspondent.

Loading