Love and other vitriol

This month, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton announced the?Liberals would oppose a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous Voice, dubbing it the “Canberra Voice” that won’t resolve issues on the ground in Indigenous communities.

I agree with him. It won’t.

The only way to resolve the issues affecting many Indigenous communities is to get kids going to school, adults working in real jobs, and social stability so people want to live, work and invest in them.

Economic participation, not bureaucracy. Self-determination, not government control.

The Voice will choke the neediest Aboriginals with more bureaucracy when they need less, tie up those community organisations who are making a difference in a new, labyrinthine organisational structure, and divert funding from real outcomes.

Liberal Party rules allow backbenchers to cross the floor without expulsion so some will break rank, including former Opposition spokesman for Indigenous Australians?Julian Leeser, who quit the shadow cabinet on principle.

I find this interesting because last week at the National Press Club he pointed out problems with Albanese’s constitutional amendment, said it would leave great doubt and uncertainty and recommended the Voice’s right to make representations be in legislation not the constitution. He said: “It’s not enough to say that these questions will be addressed in legislation afterwards. You can’t out-legislate the constitution.” These are important principles too.

The reaction to the federal Liberal Party’s decision by some leaders of the Yes campaign was disgraceful.

In a 16-minute taxpayer-funded rant on Radio National Breakfast, Noel Pearson let loose on Dutton in his characteristic florid and dramatic style, declaring: “I was troubled by dreams and the spectre of the Dutton Liberal Party’s Judas betrayal of our country” and that Dutton is “an undertaker, preparing the grave to bury Uluru”.

He means of course the Uluru Statement adopted at a Yulara resort 30km down the road from the great rock itself (but apparently now synonymous with it).

He went on: “When they go low, we’re gonna go high. We’re gonna meet hate with love. We’re gonna meet fear with understanding.”

Love and understanding went out the window when he continued to savage Dutton, saying that it was “symbolic on the day of the Passover, leading into Easter, we should be betrayed like this and the country should be betrayed like this”, and that Dutton is “chucking Indigenous Australians and the future of the country under the bus just so he can preserve his miserable political hide”.

This isn’t an isolated outburst. Last year, when the Nationals announced their opposition to the Voice, Pearson accused Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price of being caught up in a “redneck celebrity vortex” and a puppet of conservative think tanks he claimed were using her to “punch down on other black fellas”.

Last week he also attacked Leeser, who is Jewish, suggesting he wants Aboriginals tattooed and wearing badges on our clothes, widely interpreted as references to the treatment of European Jews during the Holocaust. This during Passover no less.

I expect he will continue to dish out bile to anyone who won’t do what he says.

Some of his fellow Yes supporters haven’t been much better.

Former Liberal Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt, now working for the Voice campaign, quit the Liberal Party on Dutton’s announcement.

A week earlier he threatened if the Liberals did not support the Voice it could add to a “global perception” the Liberals are a “racist party”.

What was Wyatt doing as a member of a perceived racist party up until last week?

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews described the Liberals as a “a nasty, bigoted outfit” that will “stand condemned”.

Another Yes campaigner, Marcia Langton, reacted with vitriol. “This is the Australia we live in; it is racist. … We have to make sure that we win this campaign because, if we don’t, then the racists will feel emboldened,” she said. The following weekend she said if the referendum is defeated most non-Indigenous Australians will not be able to look her in the eye. So even if people vote Yes, should they be ashamed because others voted No?

When the Nationals announced their opposition to the Voice, Langton specifically referred to Price as a Warlpiri/Celtic woman before continuing: “It would be terribly unfortunate for all Australians if the debate sinks into a nasty, eugenicist, 19th century-style of debate about the superior race versus the inferior race and I have to say that I’m terribly disappointed that a Warlpiri person or a Celtic/Warlpiri person has kicked this off.”

And in March, Voice supporter Brett Walker SC, who rejects the idea that the Voice triggering litigation is a problem, said: “The notion that the Voice is to be abominated because it may have moral force is, I’m sorry, I believe to be racist.”

Dutton’s opposition to the Voice was conciliatory. He said the Liberals support constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians (by which he means actual recognition, not some vast new bureaucracy to rule us all) and legislating for grassroots bodies that can advise governments on practical outcomes for Indigenous people.

Price’s opposition is very matter of fact and simple to understand. Far from starting a “eugenicist debate” one of the main reasons she opposes the Voice is that it will divide people by race.

But the message from the Yes campaign is clear. If you dare to oppose the Voice, no matter how measured, reasoned or principled your opposition, you’re a redneck, racist, bigoted, nasty, eugenicist undertaker and a Judas-level traitor and you will be publicly abused and shamed for doing so.

So much for love and understanding.

This article was first published in The Daily Telegraph on 14 April 2023.