Legacy of the Voice referendum

FOLLOWING the “Voice” Referendum I was fortunate to be part of a discussion group of about 20 predominantly YES voters who were considering reasons for the failure of the YES campaign.

Previously, three or four members of the group had advanced concerns about the lack of detail supplied in regard to the Voice’s vision, function and powers as well as its composition. While these issues had concerned me, by the time we came to the last two weeks of the campaign I became disturbed by the fact that it became obvious that Albanese’s access to “advertising funds” far in excess of that available to the NO case made him far more visible than the proponents of the NO case. It was already publicised that Albanese had the support of churches, state premiers, universities, sporting groups, big business and the ABC etc. These are all organisations which could be subliminally vulnerable to the political decisions of Government.

During this time Albanese gained a lot of airtime and took on the role of a powerful advocate for the YES case, and stridently denigrated NO voters as ‘having no heart or intellect’. Now that the

Referendum has been lost, it is my experience that disappointed YES voters have followed the same mind set as Albanese in denigrating NO voters.

I believe the Spokespersons for the YES case should not have needed the extraordinary advocacy of Albanese and his absolute trust in the Voice even cast doubt on his future ability to negotiate with Aboriginals if the YES case had succeeded. As Prime Minister, John Howard did not assert his preference during the referendum regarding the choice of a monarchy or a republic. This result was affected by the Republicans being unable to agree on a model for a Republic. We all knew Howard was a monarchist, but he did not act as an ubiquitous advocate for the monarchy.

How can Albanese unite this country when he has condemned the democratic choice of at least 60 per cent of the country to be the result of a heartless and ill-informed judgement. 

Rosemary Hutchinson, Inverloch