Dutton’s decibels are drowning out the Voice, while the Yes case is a shambles

The honeymoon is over, baby
It’s never going to be that way again
— The Cruel Sea’s “The Honeymoon is Over”

Politics being what it is, it’s very possible that Anthony Albanese might be a little grateful for the crime wave sweeping Alice Springs, because it has given him the chance to act decisively, and be seen to be doing so. 

It will make a welcome change from the shellacking the government is getting on the Voice, which itself disappeared from the front pages in an instant.

In the fortnight leading up to this crisis, the Voice has probably suffered more damage than it has in the two years previous. A few more weeks like this and the Yes campaign will be marching towards a high chance of defeat, as already wary voters in Western Australia, Queensland and Tasmania turn into decisive No voters. 

The Albanese government hoped it could do the whole thing as a sideshow. But it has given Peter Dutton a chance to get the Coalition back into the game, about half a year earlier than might have been the case. Heck of a job, folks! 

The Voice’s Yes campaign was going to be a disaster, it was clear right from the start. There is no single leader, no face and voice of Yes, and no single body driving it. The failure to have a more concrete model of what it would be, even as an aspiration, is starting to show. 

What it is and how it would work

Yet all it needed to be was something on the order of this:

“The Voice to Parliament will be an assembly of Australian First Nations peoples, of between 24-48 members, chosen by their communities, convening around three times a year for a total of nine to 12 weeks to debate matters crucial to First Nations peoples, make specific proposals, and respond to government policies. It will be advisory only, have no legislative powers, and no delegated administrative powers. The referendum question we are putting to the people enables Parliament to make the law that will put the Voice into the constitution. Parliamentary laws will then give the Voice this specific form.”

Now, how difficult would that have been? It gives millions of voters a clear idea of what the Voice would be, how it will work, gives them a mental picture of it actually sitting in the Old Parliament House, etc. So what if it is then 60 members, or meets six times a year. No one is going to feel they were lied to. When people say they want “detail”, they don’t actually mean “detail”. They mean they want to know the concrete form of the thing they’re being asked to vote for. Even here, there remains confusion. I take the Langton-Calma report to say that the Voice delegates will be chosen by communities, rather than by an all-nation election of First Nations peoples. The PM says it will be elected. Which is it? 

But there’s a greater problem. Because there’s no real doubt that a double game is being played by both Yes supporters and the government. They want to reserve the capacity to eventually start delegating administrative tasks to the Voice, or public servants attached to it, so that it does acquire the capacity to play a role in First Nations’ community administration. It would never have legislative powers. But all sorts of bodies and tribunals have delegated powers and laws and regulations to make that possible. 

It would also of course be a nightmare to suggest this possibility in the public debate in any way, because then the debate is around ATSIC II. The smart thing would have been to explicitly rule out any such delegation of powers, as per my little paragraph above, and stick to it for five or 10 years, before revisiting the question as an entirely separate fight on its own terms. 

But the smart thing isn’t much in evidence from the Yes side. Instead of responding to what is a widespread request, from both non-First Nations and First Nations peoples for more concrete form, the leaders of the Yes campaign, and some of their supporters, are doing a one-two self-knockout punch: insisting that voting up the Voice is a historic moment that if we fail will be a historical denial of our blah blah blah, and also that the Voice is not actually a political question per se. 

This take basically argues that the only opposition to the Voice is either confused, ignorant, mean-spirited or mendacious. The job of the Yes campaign and the government is therefore not to argue the case for the Voice against well-formed counterarguments, and win the debate, but to impose a self-evident truth on the fools and schemers who are trying to frustrate it. The internal logic of this argument is soft totalitarian: it suggests that the Yes case has no genuine other. Every time this attitude is displayed, a few more waverers peel off from maybe to no.

The latest trumpeting of the “history will ever forgive us” argument was made by Noel Pearson yesterday on Patricia Karvelas’ RN Breakfast. Marcia Langton had a similarly counterproductive appearance there last year, banging on about biological and cultural definitions of “race” while going the fang on Jacinta Price; the program is becoming a bit of a one-stop disaster shop for the Yes case. Thank god no one can hear them. 

The Yes case’s lack of organisation and basic politics — stuff it had years to get together — is now dragging the Albanese government down. It presumably hoped that the Yes case would have a concrete proposal to which the government could say “maybe/no” to — after all, that’s how the Voice is going to work in perpetuity, as Indigenous peoples petitioning a white government for permission to exist. They could then facilitate the referendum while standing apart from the result, not get identified with it. 

Instead, the Voice shambles has characterised Albanese as confused and indecisive.

The onslaught begins

Now comes the full onslaught. The immediate winner from this is Peter Dutton. Dutts is back in the game, and he didn’t have to do anything to get there. He just asked a few questions, the questions that a lot of people are asking, and wisely didn’t lean into the “one nation/we brought civilisation” argument too much. Tony Abbott would have banged on about Western civilisation, Malcolm Turnbull would have– well, he would have done an Albo, and ScoMo would have said: “Well, beyond the Voice, there is also the Word… Have you heard about the Word…” But Dutton has made the Coalition the representative of a sceptical middle, who feel no particular emotional attachment to this cause. 

Progressives have, in general, been hopeless at pushing the Yes vote forward. They’ve attached to the Voice cause without much inquiry as to how much support it has among First Nations people. Tomorrow many will march in Invasion Day rallies organised by Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance, who are scathing about the way in which a “Voice first” politics was stitched up by selective invitations to the Uluru discussions, and the degree to which an absence of truth and treaty processes renders the Voice as a white object. The petulant whining regarding detail, “There’s a 200-page report”, is the cry of people who read reports for a living. 

Well, the Voice may still stumble across the line, but time is running out. The government and the Yes case are now caught in a vice. A referendum early — winter? May? — might be a coup, before support has leached away further. But the Yes case does not appear to be even slightly ready to go out there with a clear message and a doorknock army, to fight the right’s lies — and there will be lies — house to house. 

But if they go later, the right’s attacks, and the failures of the Yes case and progressives, may have leached away so much support that the referendum simply cannot be won. And the Albanese government will lose political capital all the way through. Having tried to avoid being identified with the actual cause, it has become identified with the absence of a case for the cause. For a government that surely has big things to do on governance, economy, foreign policy and defence, this is a disaster. 

There is no upside for the Yes case or the government to keep banging on about what a historic act this would be. The logic is circular, recursive. You make history by making history by making history? No. You make history by acting in the present, for a first-order cause, that is either in your own collective interests or for what you believe to be “the good”. 

The Yes case would be well advised to name a single head, draft a concrete case on what the Voice is, print it on a card, and start training an army of doorknockers to recite it. Otherwise we’re gonna get our tattoo changed to another girl’s name, the girl being progressive causes, the tattoo being the Voice Yes case. I hope that’s clear.