If the past two weeks have been the “best yet” for the Yes campaign in the “Indigenous Voice” referendum, then they really are rooted, to use a great Australian vernacular. After all, the past fortnight saw the release of polls showing that even women voters are deserting them in droves. It also saw the Guardian Essential poll, the last holdout for a “Yes” victory, show that support has dropped below a winning margin.
If all that was the ‘best’, then the worst yet to come is going to be pretty brutal. No wonder they’re beginning to buckle under the strain.
Anthony Albanese has publicly revealed what is clearly a deepening personal frustration over where the voice referendum is heading.
In an interview with 2GB radio host Ben Fordham Wednesday morning the Prime Minister allowed himself to become audibly vexed and abrasive by the questioning.
At one point he accused the host of reading off the no pamphlet before denying he had levelled such a charge, triggering an on-air squabble.
This is never a good look for a leader. I well remember Jeff Kennett’s on-air meltdown with Jon Faine in 1999, when Kennett ended up flatly refusing to talk (“I’m just going to sit here and drink my cup of tea”), leading to about 20 seconds of awkward dead air before the host cut away. It was one of the pivotal moments in the campaign that so unexpectedly cost him government.
It wasn’t all his fault. He was talked over and goaded.
It was a normal political interview, then. This is stuff that politicians, leaders especially, should be prepared for and able to cope with.
But this was not the demeanour that the nation’s leader will have wanted to present in prosecuting the argument for the yes case.
Particularly to an audience such as Fordham’s, which is one the yes campaign needs to reach. It is this demographic likely to possess the deepest antipathy.
But Albanese’s stoush with Fordham reflected the exasperation that he clearly feels over the no campaign’s ability so far to steer the debate.
He even conceded that the polls were an accurate portrayal of where public support was.
This follows his call on Monday for the yes campaign to lift its game and present a stronger case.
The Prime Minister needed to take control of the issue. This interview was an attempt to do so.
The Australian
Just not a very good one. Albanese claimed that the government would refuse to change Australia Day, even if the ‘voice’ demanded it. This immediately brings up two questions, neither of which have answers the government would want to hear. Firstly, if the government is just going to ignore it, why even have a ‘voice’? Secondly, what will the voice do if snubbed? Go to the High Court? Which contradicts the assertion that the voice will not be justiciable.
Albanese also said the voice won’t give advice to the Reserve Bank, saying that even the prime minister can’t do that. But the office of prime minister is not enshrined in the Constitution, as a voice would be. And Uluru Statement co-author and voice campaigner Megan Davis is equally adamant that the voice will give advice to the Reserve Bank.
The desperation is showing in other voice campaigners, too.
Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney says she will not debate the Indigenous voice to parliament with Liberal party’s spokeswoman on Indigenous affairs Jacinta Nampijinpa Price because “this is about Australians, not politicians”.
Senator Nampijinpa Price said on Tuesday she would be happy to debate Ms Burney on the topic of whether the existence of an Indigenous advisory body should be guaranteed in the constitution.
The Australian
So, the Indigenous Affairs minister is refusing to even talk to a prominent Indigenous politician? Whoever said Linda Burney is a wealthy box-ticker completely aloof from everyday Aboriginal Australians?
Price, meanwhile, is kicking the Yes campaign ever harder.
Labor’s plan to guarantee all Indigenous students a commonwealth-supported place at university and consider setting up a First Nations higher education council to advise the sector shows “we do not need a voice to parliament”, opposition Indigenous Australians spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price says […]
“It’s strange that on the same day the Prime Minister tells us we need the voice to make better decisions for Aboriginal people, his government then announces these changes,” she said.
“The fact that the government can make policy decisions like this one today that affect Indigenous Australians clearly shows we do not need a voice to parliament enshrined in our Constitution.”
The Australian
Even without the largess of tens of millions in donations from Australia’s richest corporations, or a gaggle of celebrities and sports stars on their side, the No campaign are effortlessly winning the public debate.