OPINION
With the Voice referendum campaign officially underway, the “Yes” shills are doubling down on what’s already failed them: emotional blackmail, and lies.
Of all the cheap, emotional tactics tried on by the Yes camp, “But what will the neighbours think?” is one of the most laughable. In recent days, we’ve had Julie Bishop blithering that voting No will send a “very negative message” to the world. Well, the world can go jump: this is Australians voting on the future of Australia.
Now we get this emotive bilge from yet another Aboriginal Industry trougher.
Aboriginal author Jackie Huggins says Australians will cast their vote at the voice referendum based on “what people think of us”, as Noel Pearson’s declaration that racism and prejudice will diminish if the poll succeeds triggers claims from the No camp that supporters are playing the “racial card”.
The Australian
Pearson’s claim is ludicrously illogical: We have to insert racism into the Constitution to diminish racism? Sure, Noel, that makes sense. Oops, I better watch what I say, given Mr. Pearson’s alleged propensity for shouting at “white cunts”, among other charming expletives.
Oh, but now he wants us to “feel the love”? Does that include being called a “bucket of shit”? Just asking.
And then, of course, there is the endless barrage of media lies and deception — the worst of it coming from the very people pontificating about “combating misinformation”.
For instance, The Age prominently featured this headline and blurb:
This powerful tool, not used in a referendum before, may decide the Voice
This referendum is a moment in history that could be decided by misinformation. An everyday tool makes lies and half-truths easy to spread.
Except… when you click on the article: no “powerful tool” is mentioned at all. All it does is rabbit on the usual claims from the Yes campaign.
It’s clickbait.
That aside, though, what does it actually say?
Watch out for the small tricks and big lies of the final campaign to decide the Indigenous Voice. The arguments about the Voice have been marked by misinformation and outright falsehoods for most of this year, and those lies will be fired with rocket fuel now that voting day is so close.
He said to the mirror.
Peter Dutton is off to a quick start with dubious claims. He is using tricky language to feed anxiety about a powerful, elitist threat from the Voice. “The Yes campaign has $100 million to spend,” he said on Monday. Pure speculation, and totally rejected by the Yes camp, as we reported on Thursday.
Well might they reject it, and it may be speculation, but is it wrong? After all, Wesfarmers alone donated $25 million to the Yes campaign. Another group donated $17 million. The Paul Ramsay Foundation donated another $5 million. So, they’re halfway to the $100 million from just a handful of donors. With other big supporters including Qantas, the AFL, NRL and just about every other major sporting code, Dutton’s figure doesn’t seem at all far-fetched.
Dutton has also falsely claimed the Australian Electoral Commission was doing the wrong thing by counting ticks as Yes votes in the referendum – something it has done under federal law for three decades. The commission took the rare step of rejecting his “factually incorrect” claims.
It’s not a “false claim”, it’s an opinion. Dutton never denied that it had been law for decades, he merely asserted that it was morally wrong. Many people agree. The Age may disagree, but that’s, like, their opinion, man — and an opinion is not a fact. Something mainstream media journalists seem incapable of comprehending any more.
There is already a classic half-truth in the campaign: the conspiracy theory about the Uluru Statement from the Heart. The statement is a one-page declaration from Indigenous leaders that was agreed in 2017 and is now on display in Parliament House. (To read how it came into being, see this account by Michael Gordon.)
Conservative critics of the Voice, such as Sky News host Peta Credlin, say the full statement is 26 pages.
Which is absolutely true. So true that even Meta dumped RMIT FactLab for claiming otherwise. Even The Age admits that it’s true.
But most of the document is a wish-list for the future, including a treaty and a truth-telling commission, and several pages are taken up with charts showing how this roadmap might work.
And so what? It’s still part of the full document.
One big claim could spread faster than any. This is the pernicious idea that Indigenous Australians are being showered with wasted money. It is why leading No campaigner Jacinta Nampijinpa Price warns the Voice will be a “bloated bureaucracy” – a powerful phrase that taps into envy and anxiety – and it is why Albanese assures voters the Voice will stop waste.
But how much does Canberra really spend on First Australians? “They have been spending $33 billion annually on Aboriginal affairs,” said No campaigner Warren Mundine on Wednesday. Mundine did not say who “they” were, but the essential fact is that federal spending is less than half his claim.
So, The Age is making up something Mundine didn’t actually say, and then accusing him of lying?
The Productivity Commission estimated the total outlay was $33.4 billion in 2016 across all services from federal, state and territory governments […]
It is true that Indigenous Australians received more than others. The commission calculated it to be on average $44,886 compared with $22,356 for non-Indigenous Australians.
So, Australian governments spend twice as much money on Aboriginal Australians as anyone else, and yet, there is still a yawning “gap” between Aborigines and the rest of Australia.
That sure sounds like a whole lot of money is going to waste, to me.
False claims move fast. Challenging them rarely stops them.
The Age
Of course, it doesn’t: the mainstream media like The Age have been in the business of peddling false claims for decades. That’s why almost nobody trusts them any more.
Their great tragedy is that they steadfastly refuse to learn from it. Lying has become an ingrained habit for the mainstream media.