Australian politics
More on the Voice
Dutton is pursuing a two-pronged strategy to defeat the referendum. One is his deceitful call for “details”: an electorate that doesn’t understand the process and erroneously believes it is voting for a complex set of arrangements to be cemented into the Constitution will cautiously vote “no”. The other is to have it framed as a “Labor” proposal rather than as one that has emerged over many years in a non-partisan process: history shows that a referendum supported by only one side of politics has little chance of success.
Legal opinions from respected sources: it’s simple and it’s safe.
As voters are coming to understand the deceit in the “details” campaign, the anti-Voice movement is turning to the argument that if the constitutional change is adopted, as specified in those three sentences, people will seek to expand the power of the Voice through mounting successful court cases.
That, and other arguments pursued by the “no” campaign, are dealt with in a clearly- drafted article by two legal experts – former Chief Justice Robert French and Emeritus Professor of Law Geoffrey Lindell. Their article Voice is low risk but high return in the Financial Review is essentially a legal opinion, thankfully written in clear language.[1] They go into the meaning of the proposed amendment – the three sentences – and they address “two key questions” around the proposal:
Why not leave the Voice out of the Constitution and just make a law using the races power to create the Voice?
and
Why not spell out the detail of the Voice now, beyond what is set out in the proposed amendment?
They deal with each in turn. On the first, they stress that “the Voice is not about race. It is about our First Peoples as the indigenous people of Australia”. The idea of race – an absolutely discredited nineteenth century concept – should not enter our consideration.
On the second question they stress the distinction between the Constitution and Parliament. The distinction is clear, but the “no” campaigners in the Liberal Party are trying to confuse the voters in their calls for “detail”.
The Prime Minister spelt out this distinction in his address at the Press Club last Sunday where he explained that the mechanics of the Voice will not be written into the Constitution:
That’s not how it works.
For example, the Constitution says the Commonwealth Parliament will have power to make laws for the ‘naval and military defence of the Commonwealth’.
It doesn’t spell-out the size of the ADF, or where it should be based or what sort of defence hardware we should have.
And just as well – that section of the Constitution doesn’t even mention the air force, for the very good reason that it became law before the first powered flight.
The authors of Federation understood – as servants of democracy – that it was for government, parliament and the people to deal with the detail and the implementation, through legislation.
The Constitution contains the power and then Parliament uses its democratic authority to build the institution and renovate it as needed.
The conventions and principles of parliamentary democracy, however, have never been the Coalition’s strong point.
The legislative journey
Legislation to hold a referendum has to be approved by Parliament, but its passage is subject to slightly different rules than most other legislation. And if the government wants to have special provisions concerning this (and future) referendums, it has to have these approved in separate legislation. For those with a stomach for Parliamentary proceedings, Antony Green has a five-minute explainer on The World Today.
Note: this is all about legislation to hold a referendum. Not the referendum itself, which will be held up to six months later, nor the legislation to give effect to the Constitutional changes should the referendum succeed, to be settled even further on – maybe not even before the next election.
Senator Bragg on the Voice
New South Wales Senator Andrew Bragg (Liberal) has written a paper presenting five reasons the Voice is right:
- It is fair and it is a liberal solution.
- It will support bottom-up, community decision-making.
- We should protect minorities.
- It can be a safe change.
- It isn’t woke.
Brgg’s paper also dismisses suggestions that the High Court could interpret the Constitutional provision in a way that expands the power of the Voice. Bragg draws on legal opinion, covering essentially the same ground as that covered by Justice Robert French and Geoffrey Lindell.
He discusses his support for the Voice in an interview on ABC Breakfast: Liberal Senator's plea for party's support on Voice. (6 minutes) He would like the bill for a referendum to be considered by a Parliamentary committee before it is drafted – in preference to a committee considering an already-written bill or draft. And he would like more information on the government’s intended legislation – if not a draft, then at least some general proposals. (He understands and makes the distinction between the referendum and legislation, but does the public? There is a risk that too much discussion on the legislation will lead the public to believe that in the referendum they are voting on the specifics.)
Stan Grant on the Voice
Debate on the Voice so far has been dominated by the politics of polarization, fueled by hotheads in the National, Liberal and Green parties, and by legal responses to their strident outbursts.
Writing on the ABC’s website Stan Grant reminds us of the moral principles of the Voice: As we debate the Indigenous Voice to Parliament there is one word missing: Compassion. He draws on the teachings of the moral theologian Johann Metz who stressed that we cannot and should not distance ourselves from the suffering of others. Grant writes that “the totalising, oppressive universalism of modernity has been countered by a post modernity that fractures the world and in our fragments we also fail to see each other.”
Polling on the Voice
William Bowe’s Poll Bludger reports on the most recent Newspoll, which finds 56 percent in support of the Voice, 37 percent opposed, and 7 percent “don’t know”. That last figure is hard to believe in view of the “no” campaign of deliberate confusion.
There are significant differences by partisan affiliation and by age, shown in the graphic below.
The strong support among Green voters highlights the tension in the party resulting from Senator Lidia Thorpe’s strong anti-Voice position, precipitating her decision to leave the party. It’s a sad comment on our politics that our representatives are forced by the media into stating “positions” on complex issues, rather than being permitted to articulate their principles, because Thorpe’s principles do not seem to vary much from those of most other parliamentarians. It’s the demand for a firm “position” that has put her out on a limb.
In view of the age profile of responses we can expect to see a good deal of “yes” campaigning in traditional TV and print media, while the “no” campaign will be prominent on social media.
Besides these partisan and age differences Newspoll reveals that women are more in support of the Voice than men are, and that support for the Voice correlates with education.
The latest Essential poll shows a stronger (65 percent) support for the Voice, but it has no “don’t know” or “undecided” category. It shows similar gender, age, and partisan differences as the Newspoll. It also finds that only 30 percent of voters “feel well-informed about the Voice to Parliament”.
Essential surveys people on their reasons for supporting or opposing the Voice. The main reason for support is “It would give Indigenous Australians the ability to help inform decisions that impact their lives”, while the main reason for opposition is “It would not make a practical difference to the lives of Indigenous Australians”, followed by the almost contradictory statement “It would give Indigenous Australians the ability to influence policy which other Australians do not have”. Coalition supporters stand out in their ability to hold both views at the same time.
1. It is highly improbable that either author was paid to write this article, but the Financial Review has put it behind a paywall. You may find that it opens the first time you click the link: if you do, keep it open or copy the text into a word processor and save it, because the paywall will lock you out if you try to open it again. I believe media should be supported financially and I don’t like dodging paywalls, but instead of offering the reader a pay-per-article service, or free access to opinion articles, the Financial Review offers only the option of a full subscription. It’s a self-destructive business model. ↩
Labor and the gambling lobby
The latest Essential poll shows a boost in New South Wales Premier Perrottet’s approval. Could this have anything to do with his courageous stance on licensed clubs, a stand that contrasts with Labor’s weak policy on poker-machine gambling, which Tim Costello suggested may as well have been “written in the backrooms of Clubs New South Wales”?
If one wanders through the leafy suburbs of Sydney’s north shore, or the well-off coastal suburbs, there won’t be too many clubs or clubs with gaming machines. They’re all out in the western suburbs.
The Centre for Western Sydney has a data-rich report, Paying the Price, about the costs of gambling. It focuses on gaming machine losses in Sydney’s regions, illustrated by maps showing where losses are concentrated. In itself that’s stark evidence for the need for strong action to close down these parasitic businesses. It could have gone on to mention the problem of money-laundering through gaming machine establishments.
On Saturday Extra last week Geraldine Doogue interviewed Charles Livingstone of Monash University, one of Australia’s best-informed independent experts on gambling, who explained how cashless gambling works. (13 minutes) The essential aspect, Livingstone explains, is pre-commitment. The gambler has to set a limit, allocating an amount to a gambling account, and cannot replenish it until a specified time has lapsed – perhaps one or two days. The card (which may be an app on a phone rather than a physical card) is the mechanism to achieve this restraint, and to provide an electronic trail that can detect money laundering.
As Nobel-Prize winning economist Thomas Schelling explained, pre-commitment is the means by which the cool-headed rational “me” makes a bargain with the irrational “me” who will be in the pokies room, who will be subject to the addictive pull of the pokies. It’s hardly a novel idea: think of the yarn about Ulysses and the sirens, where the rational Ulysses, knowing that he will be unable to resist the call of the sirens, pre-commits the irrational Ulysses to be unable to order his crew to sail towards the sirens.
Ethics and economic justice are on Perrottet’s side. Andrew Wilkie has declared gambling reform as a fundamental test for Labor. He is critical of New South Wales Labor, and he also suggests that the Commonwealth could take action against gaming machines.
Although regulation of gambling is usually seen as a state matter, it is notable that the gambling company Sportsbet made large donations to the federal Labor, National and Liberal parties over 2021-22. According to Nine Newspapers Sportsbet paid almost $9 000 for a dinner to support Michelle Rowland’s campaign and another $10 000 just before the election that saw her become Communications Minister. These would be wasted investments if the Commonwealth was powerless to regulate gambling.
Wilkie does not specify the means at the Commonwealth’s disposal to regulate gaming machines, but it could, for example, withhold a portion of tied grants to the states, equivalent to what they are collecting in gaming-machine taxation.
Bipartisanship on the wrong issue – asylum-seeker policy
In October last year the “Instrument of Designation” used to send asylum seekers to Nauru, first put in place by the Gillard government, expired. But until December no-one in the (strangely-named) Department of Home Affairs noticed that it had expired.
So on the first day of Parliament the government rushed to renew it. The Coalition swung behind the government, while criticizing them for laxity.
One voice not supporting its renewal, and calling for deliberation, was Andrew Wilkie. In a short (6 minute) statement to the House he called for a re-consideration of Australia’s treatment of asylum-seekers – immoral and illegal under international law. There are other ways, consistent with international law, to squash the people-smugglers’ business without treating asylum-seekers cruelly, he pointed out.
Voting intention – no joy for the Coalition
Both Newspoll and Essential report on Australians’ voting intention – whatever that means 28 months before an election. Both give Labor a significant 2PP lead. The only consistency in their results, shown in the chart below, is that support for the Coalition is down even from their poor showing in last year’s election.
With the Aston by-election coming up these figures don’t place either Labor or the Coalition in a winning spot. The media so far see it only as a two-party contest, but that may me too limited a perspective.
Other polling
The national mood – we’re becoming more pessimistic
Essential has a question on the national mood: “In general, would you say that Australia is heading in the right direction or is it off on the wrong track?”. The absolute value of the answer is difficult to interpret (of course Coalition supporters believe we are on the path to destruction), but the time series, over the last 12 months, is revealing. We reached a high point of optimism in June last year after the election – 48 percent right direction, 27 percent wrong direction. Since then perceptions have slipped – 43 percent right direction, 37 percent wrong direction.
National satisfaction – a counterintuitive result
Essential has a question about our satisfaction with a number of aspects of our lives – job security, financial security, climate change and housing affordability. It is hard to infer too much from such questions on our attitudes (statisticians tend to avoid questions on attitudes or feelings), but the breakdown by age is revealing.
Unsurprisingly younger people feel less financially secure than older people, and are less satisfied with housing affordability. But surprisingly younger people are much more positive about job security than older people.
That is not consistent with stories about young people working in the precarious gig economy. Nor is it consistent with young people’s over-representation in underemployment data. It is consistent, however, with an economy undergoing structural change, which could result in jobs once seen as secure becoming vulnerable.