As the referendum campaign for an Indigenous voice to parliament heads into its final days, the South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, is remaining upbeat about the prospect of a yes vote.
He echoes a line later offered by Anthony Albanese this week, telling Guardian Australia: “We’ve got nothing to lose.”
Earlier this year, South Australia was thought to be in safe “yes” territory for the 14 October referendum, because of its “progressive” history, because the state’s voice legislation passed relatively smoothly and because of its popular and charismatic leader.
The Labor premier, whose election last year bucked the trends of the pandemic by tipping out a first-term Liberal government, had shepherded a state voice through parliament in March. The government then paused its implementation as the federal voice debate got under way.
In August, federal voice supporters held a rousing campaign launch in Elizabeth, in Adelaide’s outer suburbs. A tapestry of groups – Labor, the Greens, unions and various multicultural communities, joined by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people – listened to Malinauskas spruik South Australia as the place of progressive reforms including decriminalising homosexuality and giving women the right to vote and to stand for election.
The 1967 referendum, to include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the census and allow the federal government to make laws for them (stopping state-based assimilationist policies), was also launched in Adelaide.
Since August, the state has seen a string of high-profile referendum campaigners from both sides. Yet polling for South Australia has dipped below a winnable level.
Malinauskus tells Guardian Australia the campaign is still “winnable” (the same word the prime minister has used), and says he’s had some success converting soft negatives.
“Every campaign is winnable until it is done,” he says. “A lot of people are yet to engage. The opportunity is to engage with those who are making up their minds.
“As campaign day draws near, activity always increases, and there’s an opportunity for the yes campaign to have more of an impact on the ground. The pressure’s on the no campaign.
“This is something we believe in. We’ve got nothing to lose.”
Malinauskas says it’s “undeniable” that there is misinformation in the community about the voice, but that “there’s no point sitting around complaining about it”. “You just go out and do your best to give information to people,” he says.
Whichever way the referendum goes, the state voice will go ahead. Malinauskas says he has some concerns about confusion and low voter turnout at next year’s elections, but once it’s up and running “it will be an active, real-life demonstration of how some of the false claims about the voice [can be] disproven”.
“I think that will be powerful,” he says. South Australia became the first state to enshrine a voice in legislation (but not the constitution), despite Liberal party opposition.
The state opposition leader, David Speirs, says his party has also unanimously opposed the federal voice, and that he believes the state will vote against it.
“I’ll be out and about visiting the pre-polling booths, supporting the no campaign,” he says. “I won’t be fronting rallies and things like that, but providing a broad level of support.
“I represent the only mortgage-belt seat the Liberal party holds … they will vote very heavily against this. It’s not a priority, and they don’t understand it.”
Speirs says no one “outside the political class and the media commentariat” realised there was a state voice in place, and that many would feel “duped” when it starts.“We’ll give it the benefit of the doubt at this stage, and be open to amending it if we form government.”
The latest Guardian Essential poll shows the yes vote picking up nationally, but with less than a fortnight to go, it is still on track to fail.
The poll showed 42% of voters surveyed are a “hard no” and 30% a “hard yes”, while 13% say they are a “soft yes” and 7% a “soft no”, leaving 8% unsure but 28% potentially in play.
