A no vote would revive both the colonial ghost of dispossession,and the federation ghost of the White Australia policy. Where the 1967 referendum to count Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the census and permit the Commonwealth to make laws on their behalf was seen internationally as a sign of Australian maturity,a no vote would be read in the reverse,a retreat from diversity – our version of Brexit or Trumpism.
Of course,Dutton might not care about any of these things,and just want to confuse people again,comfortable in the knowledge that any day that is wasted talking about something other than the proposal before the Australian people is a winning day for his side of politics.
But surely he understands the electoral maths? Referendums are easier to defeat than governments,and there are almost no precedents for a successful No campaigner from opposition bringing down an incumbent at the next federal election,with the exception of Robert Menzies,who opposed the 1948 Rents and Prices Referendum and won government in the same year.
Dutton has a second warning from history in the result of the 1999 referendum on the republic. Seventeen Liberal electorates across the five mainland state capitals voted yes back then,including Howard’s own Bennelong,in Sydney’s north-west. Twelve of those 17 seats have since changed colour,to teal,Labor red and Green. They won’t come back to the Liberal fold if Dutton is blamed for killing the Voice. How does the former Liberal treasurer Josh Frydenberg,for instance,win back Kooyong,in Melbourne’s inner east,as the candidate for the party of No in an electorate where the Yes vote for the Voice is expected to match,or even exceed,the 1999 republican vote of 64.2 per cent?
The Coalition requires a net gain of 20 seats to form majority government. The outer suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne do not offer an alternative path to power to its former high-income heartland whenmigrant communities are among the strongest supporters of the Voice.
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It must be said at this point that Dutton would be a figure of ridicule if our system still ran on the reform energy of the 80s and 90s,when major party leaders were expected to be across policy detail,and the press gallery still had institutional power. Howard saw his first election campaign as opposition leader in 1987 crumble because of a simple double-counting error in his tax policy. John Hewson is reminded to this day that he couldn’t explain in 1993 whether his GST would apply to a birthday cake,or just the candles.
Dutton is plainly trying to have it both ways,and without shame – decrying the cost of the referendum before the Australian people and arguing that the Voice represents a threat to our democracy,while offering another referendum on a question that Indigenous leaders have already rejected,as well as a legislated Voice of his own making.
But he is operating in a political environment that rewards those who make the most noise. A no,if nothing else,would embolden a Dutton-led opposition to campaign against any social or economic reform the Albanese government might pursue in the remainder of this term,or at the next federal election.
Whenthe John Farnham ad was first screened to heavyweights in the Yes camp,some wondered whether the inclusion of Howard’s gun law reform was a mistake. But it provided the perfect juxtaposition with today’s generation of leaders who divide between those like Dutton who are prepared to say anything to stop change,and those like Albanese whose risk aversion leaves them saying nothing much in the end to inspire change.
There remains a narrow path to victory for the Voice,and it is in the central idea behind the ad that Australians will feel better about themselves if the answer is yes. Unstated in that ad is,if the answer is no,then we may never recover the spirit of reform that defined us a people when Farnham was in his glorious mulleted pomp in the 80s.
George Megalogenis is a journalist,political commentator and author.
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