We don’t just look back on the past. We often look down on it, assuming that not only is the past another country, it is a poorer, meaner, primitive place. Not always, though. This morning I went looking for the No case against the 1967 Referendum on Indigenous recognition.
There was none.
Support for the Amendment was bipartisan, and the vote in favour was as close to universal as makes no difference. Ninety-one per cent Yes.
That’s not gonna happen this time around. We are another country. We do things differently now. In ’67, three years before Peter Dutton was born, a Liberal-led government proposed the amendment to recognise Aboriginal Australians as, well… Australian. The Labor Party supported them.
Somehow, in half a century, our politics have not just regressed; they have fallen even further and deeper into crude ugliness than the point from which we started.
I’ll take a deep breath and hope for the best on October 14, knowing that the state where I live, Queensland, will almost certainly vote No by a wide margin. I know these people. Many are my neighbours. They were not blessed in life by a notable generosity of spirit.
Peter Dutton knows them, too, and he understands them just as well.
He is betting that their callous and selfish nature is replicable and infectious. Should the Voice be rejected, it would be a grim wonder to peer into his soul the morning after to see whether any spark of regret, shame or self-loathing flickered there. Because I believe what he is doing is shameful and loathsome and will occasion an excruciating passage of regret for us all. He will, if he is mindful of consequence, take care not to be photographed celebrating the continued immiseration of the first Australians, but largely because of the consequences for him when he tries to recapture the traditional Liberal seats lost to the Teal insurgency.
For now he is simply desperate for a win. So desperate that he is willing to burn down the fucking house just to warm himself in the glow of the fire.
It’s not all his fault.
This guy can wear some of the blame.
I’m sure it was a giddy moment on election night when Albotinto declared his government would deliver the Voice. Having made the promise, however, they seem to have fallen into a trap that so often ensnares the Labor Party, assuming that everyone will vote for their cause because there is no alternative.
There’s always an alternative.
In this case, the alternative was to surmise the bleeding obvious that a rump reactionary movement would seize upon the opportunity to reanimate itself, and to prepare accordingly. Instead, we’ve had the lazy arrogance of presumptive moral primacy, the idle conviction that because they’re right, everything will turn out right.
Yeats reminds us what happens when a lack of conviction meets the worst sort of people, full of passionate intensity.
On this reading, Albanese will bear more responsibility than Dutton for any defeat of the Voice. Dutton was always going to play the villain while denying he had done anything of the sort. Having put the issue into play, Albanese and his colleagues had a duty to prosecute the case with focus, rigour and relentless energy.
Do you have any sense that they’ve been doing so?
It doesn’t mean the Voice is lost.
There are many days left in which to make the case, and the case is simple.
This is the right thing to do.
But I will be holding my breath.
On a programming note, I’m getting on a place next Friday and flying out for Saigon, then onto Europe. I will be gone for some time. It’s my intention to release a scene or a chapter of that crazy book I floated here a fortnight back, chasing your chosen villains through the ruins of our civilisation.
91-year-old organist over morning coffee today when I told him some members of the congregation were going to vote 'No': "But how can they call themselves Christian?" Indeed. If it helps at all, the churches and other faith groups have been pretty solidly campaigning for Yes and while my own congregation is the Liberal Party at Prayer and so has some 'No' votes, my colleagues' congregations all have 'Vote Yes' corflutes on their church buildings.
JB: I turned 18 in 1967 but in those days one had to be 21 to vote so didn’t get to vote in that referendum and my memories of it are dim - so fully submerged from this world was I in the fundamentalism of my Protestant sect - being in this world but not of it. One thing I do recall though were cringeworthy street interviews by supercilious faux BBC-accented ABC reporter asking middle-aged Edna Everage/Les Patterson cut-outs for their opinions - and their generally inarticulate responses - though in line with Dutton, Brandis, Abbott sentiments of these current times. And yet 1967 - 91% Yes! So in fact I am thinking a Yes Win in spite of the loud mouth naysayers. Though there is the Murdoch Boris Brexit and Fox Trump factor at play right here in fair-minded Australia - divisiveness and naysayer are hooks which catch a lot of fish. Your points about Albanese sadly make some sense to me. Yes, it was his first announcement having claimed an admittedly narrow victory but almost his second was The Quad (which always conjures up for me the internal Quadrangle of my university - the grass of which one was only permitted upon graduation days) and AUKUS - cancelling out the goodwill of the first. Then sliding so far up the fundament of the US that his view became locked in with US aggression over the bodies of Ukrainians and in further provoking a non-belligerent China. It makes him appear untrustworthy - handing over our sovereignty to the US - how can he be genuine re The Voice - to be followed by the other two pillars - Treaties and the Truth-telling. And then the outrageous lies of Warren Mundine and Jacinta Price to further muddy the waters. Still, I feel confident - Australians are not as stupid as the Murdoch and Big Miners and most LNP types presume.