analysis
Where the Voice referendum all went wrong: Labor’s post-referendum blues make way for hard-headed questions

No matter what its name might imply, Parliament House’s Blue Room is not usually a place for the blues. It’s a venue for ministerial press conferences: mostly serious, sometimes light-hearted, rarely emotional. But in March and in October, bookending the Indigenous Voice referendum process, there were tears. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese choked up in March as he stood, flanked by Indigenous leaders, and declared that he was “all in” on this one. Last weekend after the referendum he championed failed miserably, Mr Albanese had red-rimmed eyes but it was Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney who was wiping away tears as she urged fellow Indigenous people to be proud of their identity, history and culture. While emotions are still raw, there are hard-headed questions being asked about how the No campaign won, whether it’s ever possible to make more than technical changes to the constitution, and what the last few months might tell us about the future of political campaigning in Australia. The fatal flaw Many people on both sides of the debate say the lack of bipartisanship support was the overarching reason for failure. It was Mr Albanese’s simple answer after the results became clear as to why he thought Australians had voted No. “The analysis will go on for some time, no doubt. But the truth is that no referendum has succeeded in this country without bipartisan support. None,” he said. The partisan blame game will always see people on each side pointing fingers at the other’s leader. Liberals insist that leader Peter Dutton was genuinely open to supporting the referendum last year, citing – as Mr Albanese also does – his appointment of Voice backer Julian Leeser as shadow Indigenous Affairs spokesperson.. One said the Prime Minister could definitely have crafted a question that the Liberals would have had no choice but to agree with – but alarms bell rang when there was no negotiation. Mr Leeser quit the frontbench in April in order to campaign for Yes after the Liberal party room decided to oppose the Voice. He said after the referendum there had been over-confidence within Labor, fulled by the the same-sex marriage victory in 2017, winning The Lodge last year and the Aston by-election win. However, he conceded fierce No advocate Jacinta Nampijinpa Price probably never would have agreed to any constitutional change. Liberal Senate leader Simon Birmingham called the lack of compromise a “fatal mistake” while shadow minister Paul Fletcher said Mr Albanese had appeared “resolutely determined to make this issue a partisan issue”. “Why did he make absolutely no effort to engage with this side of the House, to engage with the Leader of the Opposition?” Mr Fletcher asked this week. Hours after the landslide win for the No campaign Mr Dutton was raising the letter with 15 questions he sent in January that went unanswered. Mr Albanese considered that if he responded, opponents would have just found another thing and another thing to throw up as hurdles. But it allowed the narrative to take hold that the Government couldn’t explain its plans. Multiple Liberal MPs said Mr Dutton had the authority within their party room to push for support but the Government gave him nothing to work with. “The PM and the referendum working group did not move one centimetre,” one said. Labor is sceptical of these claims given how hard Mr Dutton played in the campaign. One minister said the line seemed to continuously shift and it was difficult to see what would have satisfied Mr Dutton. Separately, cabinet minister Madeleine King believed the Nationals and Mr Dutton’s Queensland LNP would never have backed the vote. “That’s a dream, bipartisanship,” she said. “It would not matter what Anthony might have done or what we might have done or changes we might have made or concessions, they would never have supported recognising Indigenous peoples in our constitution through a Voice.” Ms King and other senior government members also question whether bipartisanship is enough in the modern political arena when a non-party outfit like Advance Australia can effectively run an opposition campaign by harnessing the power of social media. Politics or professors? Tied up with the argument about possible bipartisanship are the decisions made to stick with the wording preferred by the Indigenous leaders in the referendum working group, and the strategy of not providing details or a model. Senior Labor figures say there ultimately was no choice but to stick by the Indigenous leaders. Mr Albanese has repeatedly pointed out that the referendum was an election promise. “One of the things about this issue is that I have sought to grant agency to Indigenous Australians,” he said this week. Those Indigenous campaigners committed to a week of silence after the vote as they reflected on the loss. It left Mr Albanese exposed to questions about his Government’s continued commitment to truth-telling and treaty, as he waited to consult Indigenous people about the way forward. But Labor strategists and backbenchers say Mr Albanese should have used his authority and political nous to insist on a direction that might have had a better chance. As one MP put it, cabinet apparently decided “to outsource the political strategy to a bunch of professors”. In a scathing assessment, a former senior Labor strategist said the kind of all-or-nothing approach here was “more of a Greens mentality” when Labor usually opts for pragmatic outcomes. A lack of information about how the Voice would work both logistically and to achieve results was cited by voters as one of their top reasons to vote No. Experienced campaigners on both sides said the decision not to provide these details was a poor one, the wrong conclusions were drawn from the republic referendum, and these problems should have been corrected once it became apparent the message was not getting through to voters. One Labor campaigner said she realised the Voice was “probably stuffed” when she heard about the deliberative democracy process Liberal MP Aaron Violi ran in May, which resulted in those involved being split 50-50. If you couldn’t convince people to vote yes in a situation where you got them in a room with experts who answered all the questions they had, it was bad news, the Labor operative said. For his part, Mr Violi said the tactic behind the Yes campaign of engaging with voters one-on-one was sound, “however, if you are unable to answer the key questions of a voter by providing the detail they require you cannot sway their opinion”. Disconnected campaign The actual campaign is best summed up by one Labor MP who answered the phone on Sunday: “The whole thing was a fucking shitshow.” Another veteran political insider said the Yes campaign took far too long to mobilise, gifting time and clear air for the No campaign to sow doubt in the public’s mind. The sentiment was echoed by more than one strategist. Throughout the process, experts were concerned it was being led by people with plenty of experience in activism but little idea about how to run political campaigns. Those who spoke to The West in June about their frustrations said by the final week nothing had changed. Although the referendum had become a Labor crusade, Labor didn’t control the campaign apparatus. One Labor MP who was highly active throughout said at the start of the formal referendum period they were concerned they hadn’t seen from the Yes campaign a “33-day plan” – used in a regular election to map out day-by-day key messages, announcements, target areas and people to talk to. Another senior federal MP expressed several times over the past couple of months their fears there was no proper plan to speak to and convince people in the outer suburbs. As the results rolled in on Saturday night, they said it was obvious much of the work done had only been speaking to the converted. This should be a broader concern to Labor as it moves towards the next election, given Mr Dutton’s focus on outer suburban seats. The Yes side was also comprehensively out-campaigned on social media, especially Tiktok where many young voters are informed about the world, one 30-second clip at a time.. Comedian Dan Ilic was so frustrated by the spread of what he saw as lies and misinformation that he independently pulled together a team a month out from the poll to create skits backing the Voice. But he worried it was too late. “I was in conversation with various people in the Yes camp in January about this and saying that … they needed to have a six-month plan about how to combat it – how to not only educate people but to ridicule the disinformation,” he said. A Yes campaign insider said the No side did a good job of amplifying division among Indigenous people. That division was ultimately not borne out by the results from booths in remote, heavily Indigenous communities like Roebourne, Fitzroy Crossing, Halls Creek and Wyndham – but by the time the votes were counted it was too late. The Yes campaigner said they knew it was all but over when they started daily tracking polls about a month out, which showed all States opposed the Voice except possibly Victoria. Nevertheless, the campaign threw everything it had at it right up until polls closed. It massively outnumbered the No side on the ground, with its 80,000-strong volunteer force making more than one million phone calls and knocking on more than 350,000 doors during the campaign. Grassroots donations accounted for about $4 million of its funding out of roughly $40 million raised. But insiders say the operation was disorganised and disconnected. Inexperienced campaigners were put in key positions and Voice-supporting MPs encountered problems when trying to order Yes23 material including t-shirts and corflutes. Even in the official referendum pamphlet, the No side outsmarted Yes, including URLs to anti-Voice websites. “The whole thing really is a missed opportunity,” one political operative said. “I don’t know if it was arrogance, incompetence or a mix of all.”. Courting the conservatives The idea of a Voice to Parliament was conceived by conservatives – including Mr Leeser – as an approach to Indigenous constitutional recognition that could appeal to all sides of politics. But after the Coalition turned on the idea, the task of convincing conservative voters became more difficult. A Liberals for Yes group headed by former ACT Chief Minister Kate Carnell was set up and party figures including Julie Bishop, Ken Wyatt, Leeser and Fred Chaney lent their support. But those few voices were drowned out. Ms Carnell said people inside Yes23 and Labor initially brushed off warnings that the referendum would fail without the support of conservative voters. “There was sort of a view that ‘nah, we’ll get up, it’s all right’,” she said. The refusal to release more detail about the Voice model was a mistake because voters didn’t trust governments while the Yes campaign also failed to shrug off the perception that the Voice was for “elites”. “You had Qantas, big business, the heads of churches, the footy codes – all of these people you could argue were elites – out there saying vote Yes,” she said. “But then you have people saying ‘I don’t know enough about it this, I don’t feel comfortable … and by the way, I’m hurting’.” On top of this, soft No voters who could have been swayed didn’t feel comfortable turning up to Yes events which often looked and felt like Labor Party rallies. Conservatives who had reservations were also fearful of being branded a racist for publicly expressing doubts. The Liberals for Yes group ultimately found a solution. In the final weeks of the campaign voters in Coalition-held seats were invited to attend virtual town halls with Mr Leeser and Ms Carnell, where they could hear the arguments and ask questions in the comfort of anonymity. But again, it came too late, with one person involved lamenting: “I wish we had started two months earlier.” Doomed to fail? History shows the Yes campaign always faced an uphill battle. Analyses of this year’s results show the demographics of people who voted no are nearly identical to those who opposed the republic in 1999. Past experience also shows that the dramatic collapse in support that the Voice suffered from February onward was not unprecedented. Polling and election analyst Kevin Bonham said the 1951 referendum to ban the Community Party and the four proposals put forward in 1988 were just two examples where early support for a constitutional change eroded. “They often start off with high support when people have not heard very much about the idea,” he said. “But as people are exposed to arguments they haven’t heard before against the proposal, and exposed to division about the proposal, they tend to move over to No.” Another theory, from long-time political and poll watcher Peter Brent, is that the referendum was doomed even if the Yes side had run a perfect campaign, because of the timing and the fact it was Labor putting forward the proposition. He argues that structural political issues and wariness by large sections of the electorate of big reforms proposed by Labor make the double majority hurdle too high. It suggests future change could also end in tears.

analysisWhere the Voice referendum all went wrong: Labor’s post-referendum blues make way for hard-headed questions

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analysis
Where the Voice referendum all went wrong: Labor’s post-referendum blues make way for hard-headed questions