Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Nyunggai Warren Mundine (Image: AAP/Jono Searle)
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Nyunggai Warren Mundine (Image: AAP/Jono Searle)

“Elites against battlers the great divide” reads the headline at the top of The Australian‘s breakdown of voting patterns in the weekend’s referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament — true enough, though it does ignore the Northern Territory’s remote areas for whatever reason.

“In some areas with high Indigenous populations, many voters still opposed change,” the piece insists, without offering an example, except to add, not all that relevantly, “69% of all Queenslanders” rejected reform. Most (94.8%) of Queensland’s population is non-Indigenous.

The slobs vs snobs narrative is pushed further in Janet Albrechtsen’s piece, offering her inside look at “the small motley No crew”, who “up-ended the arrogance of the most elite powerbrokers in Indigenous affairs, politics, media, law, business, sport and education”:

Yes23 was flush with funds, power, influence, and celebrity. It has apparently spent about $50m. Directors and chief executives of Australia’s biggest companies wrote blank cheques, supporting the voice even before the proposed words were released. 

… Advance Australia had run small campaigns against superannuation changes and maintaining Australia Day. Massively outgunned early by the Yes23 camp, it became a professional, lean and focused campaigning outfit, delivering a message to elites on the weekend.

Albrechtsen sells Advance short here — they had also run a quite blindlingly unsuccessful pitch against Zali Steggall in Warringah in 2019, when the proto-teal romped home with Tony Abbott’s longtime seat, despite the attentions of Captain GetUp! an superhero mascot, his face frozen in the rictus of embarrassment as he jetted around Sydney’s northern beaches, inflicting some light frottage on Steggall’s posters.

Still, how does this narrative hold up? Let’s look at the grassroots battlers who got the No campaign’s message out there.

Advance

Let’s start with Advance, that Animal House-style collection of blue-collar salt-of-the-earth types. As Crikey analysis revealed earlier this year, in the 2021-22 financial year Advance reported receiving $2.45 million — $723,422 in amounts that were over the mandatory disclosure threshold of $14,500. Of those disclosed donations, 12 associated individuals and groups were responsible for at least 30%.

These include:

  • $112,500 from Louis Denton and Rayleen Giusti, who both have links to the Garnaut property family.
  • $75,000 from various members of Sydney’s millionaire O’Neil family.
  • $75,000 from JMR Management Consultancy Services, directed by Brett Ralph, co-owner of transport company Jet Couriers, who owns a 20% stake in the Melbourne Storm NRL club. 
  • $45,000 from Gabrielle and John Hull, a Queensland couple who’ve frequently donated to both the Liberal National Party and Advance.
  • $25,000 from Ian Tristram, CEO of the 100-something-year-old company Trisco Foods, which created the Trisco soft drink before selling it to Cadbury.
  • $25,000 from Telowar Pty Ltd, a company linked to the owners of Taylor Wines.
  • $20,000 from Andrew Abercrombie, a multimillionaire Liberal Party powerbroker and chair of buy-now-pay-later company Humm. A cocktail party at his luxury Aspen chalet in 2020 was ground zero for a COVID-19 cluster affecting wealthy Victorians.
  • $20,000 from Marcus Blackmore, the scion of the Blackmore supplements empire. 
  • $20,000 from Siesta Holdings Australia, a company which lists storage king and longtime Advance backer Sam Kennard as one of its directors. 

Particularly noteworthy is the contribution of retired investment banker Simon Fenwick and his wife Elizabeth, who have poured several million into Advance in recent years, much of it gained via investments in the kind of woke capitalism the group purports to hate.

Mining billionaires

Billionaire miner and chaos agent Clive Palmer threw $2 million to the No camp, while Gina Rinehart — who became Australia’s richest woman after starting with nothing but a dream, a relentless work ethic and a multimillion-dollar mining company she inherited from her dad — was quieter about her views; the fact she snuck in to support Northern Territory senator and No breakout star Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, and that she made an appearance at the “jubilant” No victory party on the weekend probably gives you an indication.

Think tanks

Similarly, the Institute of Public Affairs, which we understand runs off what Rinehart finds in the pockets of clothes she hasn’t worn in a while, insisted it did not “support or oppose the Voice to Parliament” — despite producing a lesson plan (as part of its “Class Action” program, pushing back against apparent woke indoctrination in Australia’s classrooms) that felt pretty skewed in one direction. No such equivocation on the weekend. The 14th was a “proud day” for Australia, according to a press release.

Also apparently neutral was the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) — although this is a hard claim to take seriously from the organisation that made Price and Nyunggai Warren Mundine its spokespeople on Indigenous affairs. CIS board members include a host of investment bankers, high-level consultants, former CEOs and even a couple of knighthood recipients.