OPINION
So, it’s locked in stone: having set October 14 as the date for the “Indigenous Voice” referendum, there’s no going back for PM Anthony Albanese. By law, the referendum must now go ahead. With polls indicating that the referendum is struggling, it’s no exaggeration to say that Albanese is putting his leadership on the line.
Launching the Yes campaign on Wednesday, Albanese put his leadership firmly behind the outcome of the referendum. He now owns the Yes case.
Having set October 14 as the date for the first referendum in 24 years, another defining moment for Australia’s historical record has been inscribed.
And that’s the biggest problem for Albanese. Like so many other lacklustre leaders, especially from the left, there’s this ego-stroking obsession with trying to cement their name into the historical record. But many voters are surely wondering why the PM is staking everything on a racially divisive referendum when their mortgage, their power, fuel and grocery bills, are all going through the roof.
The recent social media backlash over Albanese posting yet another of his cringey selfies of himself eating a banh mi is, on the one hand, just a typical social media meltdown. But it also points to something deeper. Take note of the tone of the comments on social media:
“What about the people in this country not afford a pork roll or a roof over their head or electricity?”
“Wish I could afford to go out to eat, rent is getting insane and you choose to help landlords like yourself and your colleagues, and developers over us!”
“Thoughts go out to those struggling to put food on the table, those who can’t afford the table, and those who can’t afford the house to put the table in.”
“Glad you can afford to buy a takeaway, not like the rest of us battling to make ends meet, higher rents, higher electricity, higher fuel, homeless people… the list goes on and all Australians are getting poorer under your government…wake up and start focusing on this country.”
These are the voices of an electorate growing more and more furious with a government that repeatedly promised to lower the cost of living during the election campaign and utterly failed to deliver. The same government that has made its overriding priority a divisive piece of grandstanding that was never mentioned once during the election.
If the referendum fails, these same people will be even more furious that it went ahead at all, while many of Albanese’s supporters will surely blame him for a hopeless campaign.
He says he can “walk and chew gum” at the same time.
But there can be no doubt this presents a critical challenge for the Prime Minister more than midway through his first term […]
While inflation is moderating, cost-of-living pressure will persist for longer than expected.
And while Albanese is staking everything on “the vibe” of the Voice, another critical issue, one entirely of his government’s making, is poised to really bite in the coming summer months.
A warning of an electricity supply crisis on the near horizon now also looms, with the increasing likelihood of blackouts this summer across the eastern states.
On the same day the Prime Minister stood up in South Australia to announce the date of the voice referendum, the energy market operator was preparing to release dire warnings about the national energy market.
The underlying premise is that the Albanese government’s ambitious pursuit of energy market transformation and climate change targets is now on the precipice.
The Australian
The perception is reaching critical mass that this is a prime minister fiddling with pet left-wing causes while the country burns down around his ears.
Just coincidentally, a legal-political furore is boiling over, which casts a dire shadow on the entire “Voice” proposal.
One of the key objections to the referendum is why a “Voice” even needs to be cemented into the Constitution when it could simply be legislated tomorrow. The answer from the Yes camp is so that it cannot be disbanded by a future government, as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission was. But, objectors point out, ATSIC was disbanded because it was endemically corrupt — who’s to say the “Voice” won’t go the same way? Only, being enshrined in the Constitution, no government would be able to disband it, ever.
Right on cue, one of ATSIC’s successor bodies is erupting with corruption allegations.
Senior staff of Australia’s largest Indigenous legal service have been accused of continuously sacking employees who become aware of alleged systemic corruption plaguing the embattled organisation, as dozens of disgruntled employees resign in a mass exodus, and many others continue to work without signed contracts.
The allegations come following explosive claims of corruption, fraud, bullying and drug use within the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency, including serious allegations that former chief executive Priscilla Atkins, CFO Madhur Evans and Chair Colleen Rosas misused thousands of dollars in taxpayer funds.
The Australian
Gosh, an “indigenous” quango and corruption? Surely BFD readers will never have heard of such a thing in New Zealand, either.