OPINION
The only thing really surprising about Australian voters’ rejection of the “Indigenous Voice to Parliament” referendum was its scale and brutal swiftness. Within less than an hour of polls closing, it was clear that the referendum had been emphatically rejected in every state. There was no need to even bother waiting on WA — which, on the heels of its farcical, hastily-repealed Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act, was always going to be solidly No — polls to close three hours after the eastern states.
What’s really weighing on many voters’ minds, now, though, is: will Marcia Langton make good on her “no more Welcome to Country” promise?
We can only hope. Just as we can only hope that “indigenous activists” not only make good on their promise to stay silent for a week, but keep their taxpayer-funded yaps shut for good.
And we can only hope that virtue-signalling corporates have finally got the message.
Companies could potentially think twice about backing divisive social issues, according to key business leaders, after many high-profile firms poured millions of dollars into supporting the failed Indigenous voice referendum.
Australia’s biggest corporations have been sharply reminded just how completely out of touch they are with their own customers.
Most of Australia’s 20 biggest companies – including BHP, the big four banks, Telstra and Woolworths – backed the Yes campaign, despite more than 60 per cent of Australians rejecting the proposal.
While not all businesses donated cash, the result of the referendum reveals a gulf between Australian boardrooms and the broader population, a move experts say has the potential to alienate customers, staff and wound brands.
Maybe Jetstar, for one, will finally give up on its fatuous, tedious, “traditional acknowledgement”, virtue-signalling garbage. Just don’t expect the “WokeFL” to drop the ridiculous “Welcome to Country” nonsense too soon.
Marcus Blackmore a prominent supporter of the No campaign – said the failed referendum has the potential to halt the wave of companies virtue signalling.
“They will really have to think long and hard about social issues,” Mr Blackmore said, adding he expected investors to ask executives tough questions at annual shareholder meetings, which begin this month.
“Some of the companies came out and said ‘Well, we‘ve got a responsibility to have a say in these sorts of things on behalf of our staff’. But I bet none of them did it on behalf of the staff. None of them.
I bet none of them did it on behalf of the staff. None of them.
Of course not. They did it because they were stupid enough to listen to the Millennial Communications grad they hired to head their PR department.
The outcome of the referendum has already quietened the voices of some of its loudest supporters, with ANZ – which donated $2m to the Yes campaign – declining to comment on Sunday. Meanwhile, Qantas – which held a joint media conference with Anthony Albanese to promote the Yes campaign in August – issued a two sentence statement on Sunday, saying it would continue to push for recognition and reconciliation with indigenous Australians.
As if Australians didn’t hate a company so thoroughly buggered by outgoing chairman Alan Joyce enough, a flying reminder of how diametrically opposed Qantas is to ordinary Australians can only embarrass the company further.
It adds to a growing list of corporations misjudging the broader community’s mood. Anheuser-Busch InBev, brewers of Bud Light, placed two on leave following a furore around its use of a transgender advocate in a US marketing campaign, while Adelaide-born Peter Flavel resigned as Coutts chief executive following the backlash around the bank’s decision to close the accounts of polarising pro-Brexit figure Nigel Farage.
The Australian
But if corporate Australia wholly failed to understand the Australian public, that’s nothing compared to the blind, deaf idiocy of the Albanese government.
Just a quarter of cabinet ministers in the House of Representatives pushing the Yes side in the Voice referendum were in line with their constituents, with only five electorates out of the 19 belonging to prominent Labor frontbenchers supporting the voice.
Some of the most powerful members of the government were given an unmistakable middle finger by their constituents.
Among the seats with the lowest turnouts for the Yes side include Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s electorate of McMahon in Sydney’s west, Jim Chalmers’ Queensland electorate of Rankin in Queensland and Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth’s electorate of Kingston in SA where only 35 per cent of constituents voted in favour of the Voice […]
Resources Minister Madeleine King’s electorate of Brand in WA returned the lowest level of support for the Voice of all Labor Cabinet Ministers with just 30 per cent voting Yes.
No-one in the Albanese government, though, has been more brutally embarrassed than its Minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney. The seats with the highest proportion of indigenous voters all voted solidly No. So did her own constituents.
Key advocate for the Voice Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney also failed to convince constituents in her NSW electorate of Barton to back the Voice with 56 per cent voting No.
Burney is the lamest of ducks in her portfolio. She has no credibility as a Minister whatsoever.
To his credit, while the rest of the Yes camp sulked and cried and shouted “racist!” at ordinary Australians, Defence Minister Richard Marles (whose own electorate also voted No), conceded that Australians, democratically, “always get it right”.
“Obviously for those of us who are supporting the Yes campaign, it wasn‘t the night we hoped for and I am disappointed,” he told the ABC’s Insiders.
“But the Australian people always get it right, and we absolutely accept this result and what this means is that Australians don’t want to see this pursued through a change to the Constitution.”
The Australian
As Churchill famously said, “At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil”. Our corporate and political elites would do well to stop sulking and lecturing, and remember just that.