Unlike mainstream commentators, I don’t think there is anything the ‘Yes Campaign’ could have done to win the No voters. You can provide someone with information but can’t lead them to judgement. No voters knew what they wanted. No point questioning their choice.

The claim there was not sufficient information, adequate explanation, or the Yes campaign was targeted at elite is a little difficult to accept. Remote First Nations communities voted overwhelmingly for Yes. It is hard to claim they are elite or had better access to information.

To claim the Yes campaign didn’t adequately explain its case is…meh. It is strange for people who rejected the Voice, because it would negatively impact the Constitution or operation of government, to understand THAT complex system but somehow fail to get what the Voice was about.

The other claim is: they were called racist so they lash out. There was, in fact racism in the No campaign. But the real trick was that the no campaign went looking for ‘offence’, even where no accusation of racism were made, as part of the tactic to use “fear over fact.”

The No campaign went out looking to be offended to launch their own attack. That was what was done to Marcia Langton. No campaign’s media relations wing, NewsCorp, lied that Langton called people racist. She didn’t. This was a tactic embraced by no campaign: fear over facts.

Let’s accept, for arguments sake, that no campaigners were smeared as racist. That takes us no further than hypocrisy and doubles standards. It seems whatever no campaign said was ‘free speech, but anything said by Yes campaign, even in reply, was ‘unfair smear’ or cancelling.

Even accepting no campaigners voted ’no’ as protest isn’t helpful. Backlash, used in this way, is nothing new. It’s a ‘historical pattern’ used against progress from women’s right movement to the civil rights. That is, you couldn’t have stopped it! Here’s something I wrote:

The important thing to remember about backlash, like claims to be protesting being called a racist by how you vote, isn’t caused by ‘anything’ said or done.

The backlash is caused by the change itself, not how that change was asked for. That is the heart of the problem.

Again, change is the problem, not how it was asked.

The Voice was a modest request. This was a change 200 years late, yet it was no ‘voter’ who were not ready, or felt rushed, and who are cast as ‘provoked’ victims.

These are all excuses with a purpose.

The purpose is to advance a false belief that things won’t be different but for the way change was asked. They won’t.

There is no great change without great discomfort or effort. The idea that we can become a better country by accident, instead of facing ourselves, is fanciful.

And we should avoid false hope. Justifying the outcomes of the referendum seeks comfort by exaggerating the occurrence of ‘good deeds.’ With that we can act as if these kinds of rejections are rare and not who we are. In truth, the shock isn’t the loss. It would have been a win.

There is no looking away. Justifications are a desperate attempt to cloth a brutal rejection with some virtue, some appeal to good intentions. It is the deed that counts, no glorious concepts of who we are that crack under the weight of reality - even modest ones.

I am not hopeless. And the point isn’t that people are evil, it is often not necessary to get that far - indifference will suffice. The point is there is no prepared future waiting. The future and the hope is how we managed the contact we have with each other. Here. Now.

And that is what I took the voice to be. A chance that we could create something together. It was a generous offer. While I accept the outcome by the authority of democratic process, I can’t admire it. For it is a gain “that make us smaller, even in the winning.”

First published Oct 16, 2023 on X