When principles confront politics

...and polls on the Voice and lessons in Australian history

Thank you for your support and thank you for your interest in my One & Free newsletter.  After just a fortnight One & Free already has more than 2,000 subscribers from across Australia - including quite a few MPs!  Please feel free to share/forward on/cut and paste One & Free to family and friends and anyone who you think would be interested. 

Some of you have very kindly offered financial pledges to One & Free.  That's very much appreciated but for the foreseeable future I'd like to keep it free so that I can reach as many Australians as possible.

What I saw this morning

Before I get into the discussion for this week I thought I'd mention a couple of items I noticed in today's newspapers. I don't want One & Free to turn into a weekly analysis of the news but from time to time it's useful draw attention to what we're being told by the media.   The media shapes what we talk about and how we talk about it - and how ultimately we think of ourselves. 

These days the media operate less as disinterested presenters of information offering a balanced viewpoint and more as partisan barrackers for a side.  I talked about this last year on IPA Encounters with the American writer Batya Ungar-Sargon, the author of 'Bad News: How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy'.  The media's transformation is driven by commercial concerns as advertising revenue is replaced by subscription income, and also by shifting public attitudes as elite opinion becomes removed from the rest of the community.  (You can watch our discussion here.)

Here's the first thing I noticed.

In both this morning's The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age there was a front page story - 'One in 10 unlikely to vote on Voice'.  The first paragraph in each newspaper were nearly identical.  This is from The SMH:

Millions of Australians are yet to commit to casting a ballot on the Indigenous Voice despite competing efforts from Yes and No campaigners, with 10 per cent of voters saying they are unlikely to vote and another 9 per cent unsure about doing so.

The story reported on the findings of an opinion poll by Resolve Strategic of 1609 Australians taken last week for The SMH and The Age.  The poll included three questions.  The first, 'Do you approve' of the proposed change to the constitution with possible answers being 'Yes', 'No', 'Undecided', the second was the same question but respondents could only answer 'Yes' or 'No', and the third asked whether they were likely to vote. 

The poll results were described as:

The survey confirms the national majority in favour of the change, with no sign of momentum for No case despite Duttons' warning to voters, but it also highlights the uncertainty over the outcome when only 81 per cent of voters said they were likely to cast a ballot.

But does it?  The last two paragraphs of The Age story said this:

In the first question on the issue, the latest survey presented voters with the most recent version of the government's draft wording and found that 46 per cent were in favour of the change, 31 per cent were against and 22 per cent were undecided. [My emphasis.]

In a subsequent question, the survey asked voters to indicate their position 'even if it's a leaning' and gave them no option to say they were undecided.  On the second question, 58 per cent said Yes and 42 per cent said No.

'46 per cent in favour of the change' is not a 'national majority in favour of the change'.  A 'national majority in favour of change' can only be arrived at by eliminating the undecideds.  A front page story with a headline 'More than half of Australians against the Voice or undecided' would have been an entirely accurate representation of the poll. Of course was not the headline. 

(The sentence detailing the Yes, No, and Undecided results appeared only in the print edition of The Age.  It didn't appear in the print edition of the SMH.)

The second item I noticed today was an opinion article in The Australian by Professor Kim Rubenstein from the University of Canberra.  The piece argued in favour of the Voice - 'A Yes vote in the forthcoming referendum is the first step towards a commitment to an equality of Australian citizenship and should be supported by all Australians no matter what their political leanings.' 

I’d disagree with the suggestion that giving some citizens legal and political rights not available to other citizens can be a 'first step towards a commitment to an equality of Australian citizenship'.  To me 'equality' means 'equal'. While it's one thing for a law professor to have a different interpretation of 'equality' to mine, it's something else entirely when in an  attempt to bolster the Yes case, Australian history is misrepresented.

Rubinstein wrote in her article - 'After Federation, Indigenous Australians did not share voting rights until the amendment of the Commonwealth Electoral Act in 1962.'  The implication is that indigenous Australians did not have the right to vote until 1962.  Which is not quite accurate. At that time in four states indigenous Australians could vote in federal elections, but an estimated 30,000 indigenous Australians in Western Australia, Queensland, and the Northern Territory could not.   The Commonwealth Electoral Act 1962 of the Menzies government gave all indigenous Australians the same entitlement as every other Australian to enrol and vote in federal elections.  The Act was significant but it was the culmination of what by the early 1960s had already started to occur in Australia, namely the recognition that equal citizenship had been denied to indigenous Australians. 

In 'Their Fiery Cross of Union - A Retelling of the Creation of the Australian Federation, 1889-1914', one of the most outstanding works of Australian history written in the last few years William Coleman examines the history of the franchise for indigenous Australians.  As Coleman writes - 'When, in 1891, [Henry] Parkes was confronted with a move to deprive Aboriginals of the vote, he repulsed it as 'barbarous'.  Parkes was outvoted.

When principles count and when they don't

Last week I talked about the anger (and even the nastiness) of some of the elites who support the indigenous Voice to parliament.  They're simply not used to engaging in the democratic process and attempting to persuade people who disagree with them.  They've never had to engage in debate.  They don't want to debate and they don't know how to - which is why sometimes they turn to abuse.

Today I want to stay on the Voice and talk about how difficult it is for commentators and some in the media to come to terms with the fact that opposition to the voice might be based on a belief in the principle of the equality of citizenship of all Australians.  Journalists seem to have no problem accepting the Greens, the Teals, and the socialist left members of the ALP, and the 'moderates' in the Liberal Party can be guided by 'principles'.  When Julian Leeser resigned from the Liberal frontbench his principles were lauded - 'Both history and Liberal principle are on Leeser's side (The SMH), 'Julian Leeser's stand on principle should be respected' (The Australian), 'Julian Leeser's principled stand' (The Saturday Paper).

But it’s different when 'conservatives' (for want of a better term) take a stand on a principle.  To this day the Canberra press gallery can't comprehend why the Institute of Public Affairs makes 'such a big deal' (to use the words of a journalist to me) out of freedom of speech.  Maybe it's because media commentators don't share those principles or because those commentators refuse to acknowledge that conservatives can have principles too.  And to be fair to the media, some 'conservatives' do their best to prove principles don’t' matter to them.  In 2017 Scott Morrison said freedom of speech 'doesn't create one job'.

Since Peter Dutton and the Liberals announced their opposition to the Voice much of the media has struggled to understand the motivation for the decision. 

Nick Bryant at the University of Sydney and regular media contributor couldn't comprehend how if the Liberals were seeking the votes of Teal supporters that the party would then do anything to disturb that attempt.  According to Bryant arguing for equality of citizenship is 'hardline conservatism'.  '…Peter Dutton's hardline conservatism is politically perplexing… at a time when so many conservative constituencies have embraced the teals and rejected the Trumpian, making the Liberal Party more illiberal feels like such an outdated play.' Standing for a principle might seem like an 'outdated play' but sometimes politics is not about politics.

Like Bryant, Professor Greg Craven in a lengthy article in The Weekend Australian also admitted to not understanding the purpose of Dutton's position.  According to Craven, support for the No position would upset millennials.

[S]ome people will very clearly remember Dutton's attempted throttling of the voice.  These will include millions of millennials already deeply sceptical of the Coalition.  Oppositions do not win elections by assuring the votes of people who already vote for them, but by persuading others.

The other remembering bloc will be the teals.  They are always on the lookout for a new stick with which to belabour the Coalition.  Nothing could service better in Zali Stegall-land - or any precarious middle-class Liberal seat - than a voice assassination.

This analysis is so misconceived it's difficult to know where to begin.  The idea that if the millennials and Teals support the Voice than therefore the Liberals should too is a recipe for disaster.  It's exactly that sort of thinking that has got the state Liberal divisions into the mess they're in.  Surely what the Liberals (or any political party worthy of the description 'political party') should ask themselves first is 'What do we believe?' and from that all else follows.  Maybe that approach is old-fashioned' but maybe what Australia needs at the moment is a few more 'outdated plays'.  It’s fanciful to suggest Liberal support for the Voice will somehow temper the Teals' antagonism.  If somehow the Liberals had campaigned for 'Yes' the Teals would simply have found another stick with which to belabour the Coalition.

If you see everything through the lens of politics and you believed that the Liberals' primary concern should the interests of voters in Teal-seats then you might agree with Craven's remark that 'The entire political approach [my emphasis] of the Coalition to its referendum argumentation has been inspiringly clueless'.  But you'd have a different view if you believed the Liberals eventually reached a position on the Voice that was the only one compatible with the principles of liberal democracy.

And another thing

I was genuinely excited to see the appointment of Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price as shadow minister for Indigenous Australians.  She's a brave and principled Australian.  In December last year I spoke with Jacinta about the Voice and many other things on a special episode of IPA Encounters you can watch here and you can read her essay 'Telling The Truth' in the IPA's Essays for Australia here.

These are the final words of her essay:

I believe one of our great strengths as a country is that, as Australians, we all play by the same rules and every Australian is entitled to equal dignity and respect, regardless of our background and upbringing, and regardless of how many generations our forebears have been here.

Australia is a great country and our way of life is the envy of the world.  I am proud to be Australian.