The Yes Campaign talks from both sides of its mouth

Talking out of both sides of your mouth means saying one thing to one person and the opposite to another. Politicians and activists find it an effective persuasion tactic because people are more persuadable you if you tell them what they want to hear.??

The Voice campaign is speaking out of both sides of its mouth and getting away with it, enabled by a sympathetic media and chattering class.

The message Voice advocates send to Aboriginal people and progressives is that the Voice will have significant influence and a vast remit and won’t be a tokenistic gesture but a momentous step forward.

Delivering the Lowitja O'Donoghue Oration last month, Prime Minister Albanese characterised the Voice as on par with the 1967 Referendum, concluding: “So let us not content ourselves with modest change. Let us not fill our hearts with the empty warmth of the merely symbolic.” At his press conference announcing the Referendum wording, Albanese said Parliament and Executive Government should seek written advice from the Voice early in the development of proposed laws and policies. He told ABC’s Insiders during the Garma Festival it would be a “very brave government” who ignored it.

Professor Megan Davis of the Constitutional Expert Group said Parliament won’t be able to “shut the Voice up”. She said the Voice will speak to “all parts of the government, including the cabinet, ministers, public servants, and independent statutory offices and agencies” naming Centrelink, the Great Barrier Marine Park Authority, the Ombudsman and the Reserve Bank as examples. She said it’s “foolish” to try to predict what the Voice might want to advise on, naming the environment, climate, conduct of elections, criminal matters and interest rates as examples, but acknowledging it might choose not to advise on defence or financial policy lest it burn up political capital.

Fellow Constitutional Expert Group members, Noel Pearson and Professor Greg Craven, have said the Voice could advise on tax, welfare, education, submarines and parking tickets. Pearson says there’s “hardly any subject matter” on which the Voice won’t want a say.

Yes23 director, Thomas Mayo, has for years talked up the Voice as a vehicle for reparations, ‘abolishing harmful colonial institutions' and changing the date of Australia Day. He has said “We’re going to use the rule book of the nation to force them. There is nothing more powerful than building a First Nations’ voice, a black institution – a black political force to be reckoned with” and a Voice will “punish politicians that ignore our advice”.

Most Australians want real improvements for those Aboriginal people who are experiencing disadvantage, and they support recognition. But they’re wary of an unelected constitutionally enshrined body set up for one race of people being able to interfere with government decisions, especially when the government won’t give any details about it; and they don’t want Australia’s institutions damaged or radicalised.

So, the message Voice advocates send to most Australians is quite different. For this audience there’s nothing to see here - the Voice will be a polite but impotent gesture with no impact non-Indigenous Australians and the government will be able to control it; or even not set it up at all.

To this audience, Albanese describes the Voice as “simply good manners”, “common courtesy”, a “gracious request for reconciliation”, “a conservative proposal” and a “modest change”. Is that the same modest change he said not to be content with?

To this audience, Voice campaigners downplay what the Voice will advise on and say that governments don’t have to listen to it.

In the Second Reading speech for the Voice bill, Attorney General Mark Dreyfus said Parliament and the Executive Government won’t be obliged to consult the Voice before taking actions.

At a press conference in May, Albanese described a question on whether the Voice can advise on climate policy as “very strange” and said “the Voice is not about defence policy.” Asked in Parliament if the Voice could speak to the Reserve Bank, Minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, said the Reserve Bank is “independent … Not even the prime minister can influence the Reserve Bank.” She said the Voice “won't be giving advice on parking tickets. It won't be giving advice on changing Australia Day. It will not be giving advice on all of the ridiculous things that that side has come up with." Never mind that it’s Yes campaigners who came up with all of those examples.

To this audience, Albanese says the Voice won’t lead to reparations and claims that is “misinformation” by Voice opponents who can’t think of a better argument. By who - Thomas Mayo?

Asked on The Project who has primacy if the Voice disagrees with the government, Albanese promptly replied “the government, absolutely … All this is, is an advisory group”. Voice advocate, Shireen Morris, also repeatedly says the Voice is “just” an advisory body. She’s said policymakers don’t have to consider its advice but, even if the High Court says they do, they don’t have to follow it and that the government will remain “in charge”.

And in its submission to the Referendum Parliamentary Committee, law firm? Gilbert + Tobin , whose chairman, Danny Gilbert , is a co-chair of Yes23, said Parliament won’t even have to establish or maintain the Voice and that the constitutional amendment, in itself, will give the Voice “constitutional existence” whether or not any humans ever exercise its functions. It’s hard to imagine an institution more empty and symbolic than one embodied by nothing more than a few words in a document.

The problem with speaking from both sides of your mouth is people eventually work it out. Australians aren’t stupid. As the Referendum approaches and more Australians focus on it, more are realising we’re being sold a pup.

This article was first published in the Daily Telegraph on 5 July 2023. Nyunggai Warren Mundine AO DUniv (Hon. Causa) is Director, Indigenous Forum, Centre for Independent Studies . @nyunggai