OPINION
No wonder the Australian left are having such a massive sooking fit after last weekend’s referendum. They didn’t just lose the “Voice” referendum, they’ve lost some of their most treasured causes for at least a generation.
One of the most consequential outcomes of the sheer scale of the rejection of elite would-be Constitutional meddling is that it’s doubtful any government will dare risk wounding itself as Anthony Albanese has, for a very long time.
So, so long Republic. Peter FitzSimons and Malcolm Turnbull will likely go to their graves as bitter old men, still whining that “we wuz robbed in ‘99!” Poor old Pirate Pete, he thought his moment had come at last when the late Her Maj shuffled off this mortal coil. Now, Albo’s yanked the plush rug out from under his feet.
Even Peter Dutton has hurriedly dropped his compromise proposal of a second referendum, solely on “Recognition”. No doubt because that, too, will be seen for what it is: the politics of racial grievance and division.
The Albanese government, obviously, will not propose another referendum given this fiasco. It will shelter behind the truism that “the people always get it right”.
Peter Dutton, unsurprisingly, has ditched his earlier support for a new Coalition-led referendum, saying the public is “over” the referendum idea for some time. That’s an understatement. The scale of defeat will be measured in the years before constitutional recognition is tried again. That will probably await a new generation.
Make no mistake, the referendum result is seismic.
This referendum will have lasting legacies. The 61-39 per cent defeat is devastating but made worse by several factors. It saw the most intense referendum campaign by a prime minister since Federation. It saw the most substantial alignment of elite and celebrity power for a referendum in our history. It was cast as a moral invitation and a test of the nation’s conscience.
Yet the defeat is one of the worst and, looking at the need to carry at least four out of six states, the No votes in Queensland at 69 per cent, South Australia at 65 per cent and Western Australia at 64 per cent show this proposal was flawed from the outset.
The serial blunders made by Albanese, our elites and the Yes camp reflect a delusional view of Australian values. If the referendum’s advocates fall for their self-serving propaganda that the result was due to disinformation, racism and prejudice they are only likely to repeat their blunders.
Albanese threw himself behind this referendum in a way that John Howard did not, with the Republic referendum in 1999. The whining, carping, name-calling and foot-stamping from the left-elite and the troughers of the Aboriginal Industry in the days since has only sharpened the calibration of ordinary Australians’ bullshit detectors.
This means that the rest of the Aboriginal Industry agenda — “treaty”, “truth-telling” and reparations — will be even harder for the elite to sell. Indeed, just days after the referendum was defeated, there were “Indigenous” activists in Victoria, openly demanding “recompense”.
Indigenous leaders took a historic gamble by demanding a voice in the Constitution – their quest for “substantial”, not “symbolic”, recognition. By tying constitutional recognition to the voice the Indigenous leaders, the Albanese government and the elites who backed this strategy have lost both – no voice and no constitutional recognition. It is a blunder on a momentous scale.
A blunder that the rest of Australia can only give thanks for. By making the bullet so gigantic, they only made it easier for Australians to dodge.
Voters will be gun-shy for a long time yet.
The moral is that referendums are national projects needing national cross-party support. They cannot succeed as party political or historical justice projects. There will be no referendum put on the republic for 20 years or for another generation. Labor can forget that cause. The party needs to assess the full ramifications of what it has done.
The Australian
But, being of the left, they never will.
Far easier to just screech about “racism” and “misinformation”.