Yet another one.Just in case the above is illegible The...

Yet another one.


Just in case the above is illegible

The commentators and historians who will pick over the corpse of Saturday’s referendum looking for a cause of death will have plenty to choose from. But the blame must rest primarily at the feet of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Mr Albanese let his desire to experience his own Gough Whitlam moment — pouring a handful of red soil into the palm of Gurindji man Vincent Lingiari symbolising the start of the Aboriginal land rights movement — blind him to the practical realities of the Voice proposal.

And in doing so, he doomed the humble ambitions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as set out in the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart — an ambition for recognition and to end the powerlessness that has been thrust on them by institutions and governments since colonisation.

Until the end, Mr Albanese and those around him appeared to believe that occupying the moral high ground would be enough to convince Australians to agree to change their Constitution.

That was a terrible error of judgment. It ignored entirely the many lessons from history — 36 of them, the number of failed referendums this country has held.

That graveyard of referendums is clear evidence that Australians are loath to tinker with their country’s founding document.

If you want people to vote Yes, you had better have a compelling reason for them to do so.

And that is where Mr Albanese and the Yes campaign failed.

Voice supporters will blame fearmongering and dirty tactics from the No campaign for the loss.

But that is to ignore that they authored their own demise through a woeful campaign that failed to deliver a cohesive message to Australians about why they should vote Yes.

It was a fatal mistake to dismiss calls for greater detail about how a Voice would operate. The blithe response “don’t worry about that, we’ll sort it out later”, didn’t wash with an Australian public inherently distrustful of bureaucracy and politicians.

And it was a grave error not to push harder for bipartisan support — a feature of almost every successful past referendum.

Many Indigenous people will today likely feel a deep sadness and anger that their request has been rejected by a resounding majority of their fellow Australians.

But if there is a kernel of good news to take away from what has been a bruising and corrosive chapter of our national history, it is this — Australians agree that we must do things differently.

As we wrote in The West Australian’s editorial on polling day, a No vote isn’t a vote for continued Indigenous disadvantage.

We know the status quo is not sustainable. An Indigenous person waking up today will die eight years younger than a non-Indigenous Australian. They are more likely to be incarcerated, to die by suicide, to have their children removed by the State, and to be victims of family violence.

Australians have decided a Voice was not the right mechanism to change that.

With the Voice now dead, it is up to Mr Albanese, who bears much of the responsibility for its demise, to chart a new course — one in which the views and expertise of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are central and real change can occur.

Responsibility for editorial comment is taken by the editor in chief, Anthony De Ceglie, 50 Hasler Road, Osborne Park, WA 6017. Postal address: PO Box 1769, Osborne Park DC, WA 6916.

The West Australian | Digital Edition