Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s proposal for a second referendum to impose what would be a unilateral non-Indigenous recognition of First Peoples is politically smart — too smart by half.
Dutton’s concern is that his relentless opposition to a constitutional Voice to Parliament will wreck any chance the Liberals have of reclaiming teal seats at the next election, without which his task of securing even minority government is dramatically harder.
His solution is a second referendum on unilateral white recognition, which, along with a legislated Voice, will enable him to pitch to Yes supporters.
We know Dutton’s legislated Voice simply doesn’t stack up. Having campaigned ferociously against a constitutional Voice as a sinister elite plot, another layer of bureaucracy and a dangerous experiment, Dutton now pushing for a legislated rather than constitutionally enshrined Voice — in effect, rejecting the result of the referendum — looks downright bizarre.
But his unilateral white recognition is even worse. Dutton wants Australians — those who have presumably rejected recognition on the referendum date of October 14 2023 — to once again go to the polls and vote on recognition, this time regarding a model explicitly rejected by First Peoples.
Australia asked its First Peoples what form of recognition they wanted; they replied with Voice, Treaty, and Truth. Dutton’s recognition would dismiss this response as invalid, as unacceptable, as not good enough for non-Indigenous Australia, and supplant it with recognition of his own invention, one that in explicitly recognising First Peoples in the constitution explicitly rejects the idea that First Peoples should have any say in that process. It would be a constitutional oxymoron.
That it would also perpetuate business-as-usual, that it would be guaranteed to fail, that it would subject First Peoples to another degrading “debate” laden with racism like the one they’re experiencing now, that it would be a simple re-run of John Howard’s ludicrous 1999 effort to impose a constitutional preamble written by a white poet are also fundamental flaws.
But Dutton’s proposal will also split the No camp. The outright racist sections of the No camp — think the likes of the Institute of Public Affairs — reject any recognition of First Peoples, full stop. Because they adhere to the lie of terra nullius — or, perhaps, simply hate Indigenous peoples — they see First Peoples as just another minority group seeking to undermine white supremacy, rather than the people whose dispossession was the founding act of the Australian polity.
So for the IPA and their racist fellow-travellers, Dutton is now proposing not one but two referendums to deliver an outcome they fundamentally oppose — not to mention a legislated version of something they also reject.
It also contradicts one of their core messages, one they share with Dutton: if a constitutional Voice to Parliament is racially divisive — if it “re-racialises” Australia, to use Dutton’s word — how does any recognition, even a unilateral white recognition, do anything different?
Dutton has thus crystallised what were previously latent but fundamental contradictions on the No side — between out-and-out bigots and those who, for political reasons, have to seem unbigoted, between those driven by ideology and those by politics, by those who see the referendum purely as a culture war and those who regard the welfare of First Peoples as a significant issue.
The question for every No campaigner now is thus: do they support a second referendum to impose white recognition on First Peoples? The No camp is no longer just No, but it must be No-No, or No-Yes, like Dutton. There are three sides to the referendum now.
There are no such complications for the Yes side. October 14 will resolve the issue; the people will either have agreed to recognition in the form First Peoples have sought, or rejected it.
If the latter, there will end the process of Indigenous recognition for the first part of the 21st century. There will end the idea of a Voice to Parliament. There will end any pretence that Australia is not, almost uniquely in the world, a colonial state that continues to render invisible those it dispossessed and murdered as part of the process of state-creation.
It’s up to the Yes campaign to make sure every voter understands the contrast between Yes, No-No, and No-Yes, and to drive home the huge wedge Dutton’s political cleverness has exposed on his own side. The No campaign was always riddled with incoherence and self-contradiction; the opposition leader has now put those up in lights.
