No campaign tactics word-for-word lift of the same old fearmongering

The Nine papers revealed this morning the No campaign’s advice to its volunteers: use “emotive language” rather than “facts and figures” to “hammer” into voters feelings of “uncertainty, of doubt or fear”.

Led by Chris Inglis, a long-time Liberal staffer and now national campaigning chief for Advance, the online training session also encouraged volunteers to avoid explicitly stating they were No campaigners, suggesting they instead present themselves as concerned citizens associated with Fair Australia (Advance’s No vote campaigning arm), which sounds more “soft” and “calming”.

“This is the difference between facts and figures or the ‘divisive Voice’,” Inglis told the group. “That feeling of uncertainty, of fear or doubt, that stays. That lasts for a very, very long time.

“If you took everything that I had just said and turned it into one little thing, this is what you should write down and remember forever so you can tell your kids, tell your grandkids, tell your nephews and nieces: that people vote based on how they feel.”

The script volunteers are provided lines such as:

I’ve also heard that some of the people who helped design the Voice proposal are campaigning to abolish Australia Day and want to use the Voice to push for compensation and reparations through a treaty. All of these things raised a few questions in my mind and made me wonder if there was more to it all than meets the eye.

This approach is not new.

Marriage equality debate

Back in 2017, six years ago almost to the day, Crikey got hold of the No campaign script for volunteers in the marriage equality debate, and boy does a lot of it sound familiar: “The grassroots NO campaign engages people’s natural sense of caution and suspicion … If in doubt, vote no”, it says in the intro.

Engaging this natural sense of suspicion was hammered into the conversation from the opening lines, with doorknockers encouraged to mention they are voting No because they “don’t trust what the government will do”.

Also note the suggested dialogue when making an introduction: no mention of a specific campaign, volunteers to simply identify themselves as “a volunteer helping with the postal plebiscite”:

Screencap of the No campaign’s script during the marriage equality debate (Image: Supplied)

And just as the Voice No campaigners are told to introduce “risks” that are not actually part of what’s being proposed, such as reparations, the anti-marriage equality movement was encouraged to tell voters who expressed support for marriage equality that the change would somehow bring about “260 new genders”.

Screencap of the No campaign’s script during the marriage equality debate (Image: Supplied)

It goes back further.

Republic debate

As former prime minister and former chair of the Australian Republican Movement Malcolm Turnbull pointed out when we chatted with him in July, the No campaign in the lead-up to the vote on whether Australia was to become a republic had a very familiar catchphrase:

A SECTION OF THE NO CAMPAIGN’S 1999 PAMPHLET (IMAGE: SUPPLIED)

Alongside the contention that if you don’t know, you should vote No — as well as vague warnings of legal risks — was the equally familiar idea that the very posing of the question was “divisive”, and should be rejected on account of:

A SECTION OF THE NO CAMPAIGN’S 1999 PAMPHLET (IMAGE: SUPPLIED)

So just as Advance is the P Diddy-style rebrand of Advance Australia — formed in 2018 as a conservative counterweight to GetUp! — its rhetoric is simply a reheat of tactics from yesteryear. It will hope the approach remains as effective as it was in 1999.