OPINION
Well, it looks like I was wrong: Australian PM Anthony Albanese will be going ahead with the “Indigenous Voice” referendum, after all.
In my own defence, I will point out that, all along, I have only ever suggested Albanese abandoning it as a remote possibility. After all, even Treasurer Jim Chalmers has conceded that the Yes campaign will struggle to get up in at least Queensland. Which is sunny optimism, to say the least.
Still, despite the heavy blow to his leadership that a loss would be, Albanese has apparently opted to emulate Labor’s socialist idol, Gough Whitlam, and “crash through, or crash”. (How did Whitlam end up, again?)
Anthony Albanese has confirmed he will announce the date for the referendum next Wednesday in Adelaide, kickstarting a six-week campaign on an Indigenous voice to parliament.
Which, by law, will commit the referendum, come hell or high water. There’s no going back once the date is announced.
The Australian has confirmed the referendum date – which has been favoured as October 14 for months – won’t be revealed while he’s in Perth but later in the week when he heads to Adelaide.
According to the latest Newspoll, the Yes case now leads in only NSW and SA, is tied with the No vote in Victoria and trails in Western Australia, Queensland and Tasmania.
The No campaign is targeting its resources at WA, Queensland, SA and Tasmania, as it needs to win a majority in just three states in order to defeat the referendum.
Interestingly, an announcement next week will leave two parliamentary sitting weeks at the start of the official campaign. To date, the government has been hammered in parliament when the issue has come up, between Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney’s blatantly false assertions, and Albo’s prevarifications over the devilish details.
But, as ever, it all has to be fit into Airbus Albo’s addiction to taxpayer-funded overseas travel.
September 11 is the last possible day an October 14 poll can be announced. Mr Albanese will travel to Indonesia, The Philippines and India between September 6-10.
The Australian
Meanwhile, there’s been a rare outbreak of honesty at the ABC, where Media Watch host Paul Barry has called bullshit on Aunty’s own “fact-checkers”.
ABC Media Watch host Paul Barry has disputed a “false information” label put on Sky News host and News Corp columnist Peta Credlin’s reports that the Uluru Statement from the Heart is 26 pages long.
RMIT University’s FactLab – which works “hand in hand” with RMIT ABC Fact Check – this month claimed Credlin’s reporting and commentary on the length of the Uluru Statement was incorrect, using statements from Anthony Albanese, voice co-architect Megan Davis and the National Indigenous Australians Agency to justify its analysis.
As I reported for The BFD recently, that “fact-check” was all the excuse Facebook needed to censor Credlin and Sky News. Even though — or because — they were telling nothing but the plain truth.
Barry said: “The Uluru Statement is expressed on one page, but there are many more pages of notes and background … where matters like a treaty and reparations are raised.
“And given that there may be some point in what Credlin is saying, we think a disputed label would be more appropriate.”
Elsewhere at the ABC, though, it’s pork pies as usual.
ABC head of communications Nick Leys contacted The Australian about the masthead’s editorial on the matter and claimed it made “incorrect statements about RMIT ABC Fact Check and should be corrected”.
“The fact check referred to, concerning a column by Peta Credlin, was not conducted by RMIT ABC Fact Check but by RMIT FactLab, a stand-alone operation with its own editor and editorial processes which has no financial or editorial relationship with RMIT ABC Fact Check, or the ABC,” he wrote. “The fact checks referred to are published on the RMIT FactLab Debunks website, which again has nothing to do with the ABC.”
Which is a load of old bollocks, of course.
But the ABC’s RMIT FactLab page states it “works hand-in-hand with RMIT ABC Fact Check, a partnership between RMIT University and the ABC which focuses on fact-checking claims by public figures”.
The website also states Russell Skelton is the director of both RMIT ABC Fact Check and RMIT FactLab.
The Australian
There may be another reason the ABC is so keen to distance itself: as exposed by independent journalist Rukshan Fernando, RMIT FactLab is paid up to half a million per year by Meta, Facebook’s parent company, for its so-called “fact-checks”.
These people are more incestuous than a hillbilly family with a lifetime Viagra prescription.