Public ideas
Looking for Australia
In the campaign for the Voice referendum the “No” case was helped by voters’ ignorance of our Constitution.
Julianne Schultz, Professor Emerita of Media and Culture at Griffith University refers to this in her Democracy Sausage podcast Yeah, nah, what’s Australia?.
The Voice, as seen by those who worked so hard and so long, was about what sort of country we live in – what is Australia? But it became a scare campaign fuelled by lies, and even its supporters were dragged into arguments about administrative details.
A better understanding of our Constitution would have helped, but Schultz goes far beyond a call for constitutional education. Rather, she asks if we can engage in the ideas that define Australia as we did in the years leading up to Federation. The idea of Australia should develop over time: we are not the same society as we were in 1901.
It’s worth recalling that in those years communication was difficult and there was a severe depression in the eastern colonies. Nevertheless there was an enlivened public debate throughout the colonies.
She mentions the irony that in the Voice arguments, and in other situations, many Australians seem to have a better understanding of the US Constitution than they do of ours, and often assume that some of the American clauses are in ours.
It is striking that in America, both in scholarship and in popular culture, there is a great deal of national introspection – an ongoing search for the soul of the nation (now under severe challenge from the Trump election). Understandably Germany has been going on a similar path since 1945. We seem to be on the other extreme however.
Schultz is author of The idea of Australia: a search for the soul of the nation.