The Voice: Maximalist Left Adopts Modern Nasty Tactics. By Dennis Shanahan.
There are such entrenched feelings, inherent faults, truncated schedules and demands for maximum power in the referendum proposal that much of the debate is unlikely to be reasoned, civil or logical.
If the past week of debate, legal opinion, parliamentary exchanges and media appearances after the release of the referendum words and principles on March 23 are any indication, there is going to be a chasm between the Yes and No campaigns.
The lying:
Anthony Albanese has clearly demonstrated in recent days that he does not want to engage in detailed or substantive arguments, and has demonstrated an alarming disregard for consistency and accuracy in presenting the case for change. …
The Prime Minister’s political strength has been to talk to the vibe and make emotional appeals directed at the goodwill people feel towards Indigenous Australians in dire circumstances and the long frustration with a lack of practical outcomes. His weakness has been his dismissive and disdainful approach towards the weight and scope of constitutional change.
The foundations of Albanese’s strategy are his strength of belief in an Indigenous voice to parliament and his conviction that politics has changed so much since the last successful referendum, almost 50 years ago, that bipartisanship is no longer necessary.
Deception, ostracism, and emotion:
As a result of these underpinnings, there has been little opportunity for public input into the formulation of the referendum wording and principles, the legal advice has been kept secret, political co-operation has been kept to a minimum, and there has been a disregard for detail, a closed circle of consultation and a cavalier or slovenly approach to the settings for the referendum.
On the other hand, emotion has run free as Albanese has sought to recruit all he can to the cause of national unity and to intimidate or ridicule those professionals and serious-minded individuals prepared to ask inconvenient questions. …
Albanese and his ministers have been vague, undoubtedly deliberately. There have been mistakes, misrepresentations and contradictions in the characterisation of what the voice to parliament can do and what control the politicians will have. …
He certainly believes the warm support for the Yes campaign from sports stars, clubs and groups, the corporate world and all faith groups and churches will swamp elevated concerns about whether the voice will be able to appeal to the High Court and intervene in the daily working of government.
In the past week there has been ample evidence Albanese is prepared to take grand statements and weasel words to the point of misrepresentation, and contradict his ministers and the facts in the interest of killing off criticism. …
So aboriginal activists are grabbing as much power as they can, and have been convinced they will win:
These claims were all wrong and served to show that Indigenous leaders, who pushed back against Albanese’s propositions, would turn against the model for the voice if they felt that power would be restricted.
Noel Pearson: First-class citizen of Australia
Indigenous leader Noel Pearson said the inclusion of the bureaucracy was essential to the power of the voice and that meant “day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month business”.
“If we remove it, we basically remove the guts of the whole proposal,” Pearson said.
The incentive to exclude the public service or limit the voice’s power of intervention into the public service is to avoid a smothering of day-to-day business, to protect public servants from High Court challenges and to avoid a New Zealand-style co-governance problem.
Not aboriginal? Then you will have less say in how the country is run — you will be second-class. Go to the back of the Parliament. Relax, our ruling class are pretending it’s not racism.
The left control most of the MSM in Australia, with the most notable exception being The Australian newspaper. That might be enough to ride roughshod over the opposition and ram through their maximalist Voice agenda using ostracism, emotion, and deception. But it probably won’t.
