As we creep towards 14 October, the tone of the referendum debate in parliament has been sullen. At times, it’s been poisonous.
But a convivial atmosphere prevailed when MPs gathered on the shore of Lake Burley Griffin to welcome AFL legend Michael Long on Thursday morning. Long was on the final leg of his walk from Melbourne in support of the voice to parliament.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, looked overcome as he stepped out of his car to greet him. The two men hugged. A few minutes earlier, the former Olympian and Labor senator Nova Peris told the crowd spilling down the lawn that Indigenous people had been “counted” in the referendum of 1967. The task in October 2023 was for the first born of the continent to be “seen”.
A couple of Liberal MPs – Julian Leeser, who quit the frontbench after the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, resolved to say no to the voice, and Bridget Archer, who does what she believes is right, an isolating habit in professional politics – also sought to be seen supporting the yes case.
The marshalling point for the walk with Long was on Menzies walk, a two-kilometre stretch of pathway on the northern side of the lake. Leeser and Archer have declined to be partisan, and claim the voice, correctly, as liberalism’s cause. Leeser said as much in an adjournment speech given in parliament the night before, inviting Australians to choose empathy on 14 October – “to lift up their eyes, and despite their own challenges, to see the gap that does not close”.
The prime minister issued his own invitation after he arrived lakeside. Albanese didn’t see the two Liberals at first but a staffer pointed them out.
He beckoned them up the front to walk a while with him and Long. They obliged, and again, for a few seconds, the prime minister’s emotions caught him. Albanese seemed to inhabit a moment he once imagined possible; a moment where a Labor prime minister could bend a country in a progressive direction without breaking it.
The group walked, and they yarned. Long, Peris and Djawa, the Yolgnu leader from Arnhem Land, flanked by Labor and Liberals, Greens and teals, joggers and cyclists; a slow wave of human optimism. Advancers cleared the route. Police held back commuter traffic. A dual cab utility screamed past as the march cleared Kings Avenue bridge on the way to the parliamentary triangle. The driver screamed “vote no” out his window. The walkers did not break stride.
When Albanese made it back to parliament, he ambled through the building to his courtyard with Long and the minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney.
Months ago, Albanese had hoped strong support from business, trade unions, churches, sporting codes and enough parliamentarians of goodwill would get the voice over the line, even if Dutton chose to be Dutton.
The prime minister is by nature an optimist, so he will hope right up until the last. He told the reporters gathered in the courtyard if “fear stops us from ever stepping out, we’ll never get anywhere – we will stay in the same place”.
Long told reporters he also felt optimistic. There had been a good reception from people during the long walk from Melbourne. He said if Australians accepted the voice, it would give the continent’s unseen people power over their own destiny.
But the drum beat of negative polls hung over the hope of the moment. A month out from referendum day, the no campaign is leading yes in every state.
Polls can be wrong. But the trend, and the surround-sound negativity, was enough of a harbinger. Long addressed the zeitgeist directly.
At various times during the press conference, the two men gripped hands. “We implore you now to have heart,” Long said to Albanese. “We know you will continue to walk this journey with us.”
That gesture of patience, of resilience, of comity – the preemptive consolation from an Indigenous man of Long’s high standing in the community to a campaigning prime minister, who knows there is no guarantee of success – seemed to echo in Albanese’s cold stone courtyard, like an act of grace.
