The referendum campaign to enshrine an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, an idea both parties say they support in principle, is already off to a bad start. Unfortunately, it has descended into a highly political, personal battle between the two opposing leaders.
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The "no" campaign has accused the Prime Minister of refusing to answer questions about the detail of the proposal and is now suggesting the government is deliberately withholding information, such as the Solicitor-General's opinion on the wording of the referendum question. The "yes" campaign has accused the leader of the Opposition of deceit in deliberately seeking to undermine the "yes" case.
The tenor of the campaign will probably not improve. Those of us hoping for a campaign imbued with disagreements in good faith, that is honesty and sincerity of intention about such an important topic, will almost certainly be disappointed. Referendum campaigns are no different from election campaigns, which are often demonstrations of bad faith, meaning an intention to deceive.
Past referendums, including the 1999 republic campaign, show quite clearly what to expect. There are always legitimate arguments for and against any referendum proposal, but opponents will often stoop to any argument. There is always a high road and a low road to victory. The recent NSW election campaign, both sides agreed, was an example of the former and the two protagonists, Dominic Perrottet and Chris Minns, expressed the hope that this ethical approach would become the order of the day, Australia-wide. Not likely.
Deception too frequently becomes the order of the day. The intention is to sow confusion and fear. Remember the republic campaign in which opponents made much of the idea that if Australia became a republic, we would be forced out of the Commonwealth. That was an unfounded scare campaign that sowed confusion among voters.
Even more bizarre was the rumour spread by opponents that British pensioners in Australia would lose their pensions if Australia became a republic. This campaign sowed fear among vulnerable people. Both the Commonwealth and the British High Commission in Australia issued clarifications and rebuttals, but the damage had been done.
Bad faith campaigning doesn't have to win the argument to be successful, but merely to sow enough doubt to feed the idea that "If you don't know, vote no".
The same spreading of fear and confusion can be expected this time. For the Leader of the Opposition to describe the proposal as "the Canberra Voice" clearly echoes the 1999 slogan "Say no to the politician's republic".
Attempts to deceive are difficult to counter. Government bodies set up to enforce truth in advertising campaigns are invariably toothless.
The other counterforce to deception and ignorance are independent education bodies. There was one in the 1999 campaign, which attempted constitutional education and clarification of the roles of institutions such as parliament and officeholders like the governor-general and the prime minister. The best minds in the country were given an education budget to spend, but to little effect.
This time the independent Constitutional Education Fund has funding to try to spell out the constitutional implications. It is governed by an impressive, bipartisan board of directors, chaired by former High Court chief justice Robert French. But the task is huge. They themselves reported in 2019 that "trust in the Australian system of government, government institutions and democracy is declining rapidly". They espouse the hope that Australians can be empowered with "factual knowledge to reverse the troubling trend of low trust in government". Such an educational campaign about the Voice referendum is very welcome, but the immediate benefits are likely to be limited.
MORE WARHURST:
There are deeper problems than community ignorance and lack of trust to deal with, however. The first is that deception is only clearcut when it is extreme. Much of what occurs in campaigns is deliberate exaggeration or misrepresentation rather than outright lying. In selling any proposition in business or government, exaggeration of the benefits is commonplace. The same is true of minimizing the uncertainties and costs. The benefits of an Indigenous Voice are clear, but realistically there is some surrounding uncertainty. There is more likelihood of disappointment than danger if the Voice is enshrined. Incremental gains in "closing the gap" are more likely than dramatic immediate practical benefits.
The second deeper problem is that deception and bad faith are often in the eye of the beholder. Contrasting perspectives are deeply ingrained in the minds and hearts of the yes/no protagonists. No amount of clarification or education will shift the opinions of some people. Their views are by nature subjective rather than objective.
That is not to say that there is no such thing as an objective fact. Clearly there is. But the various slants that can be put on the fact in question do differ. Contesting visions of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament depend upon different interpretations of Australian history and society and the place of First Nations peoples within it. We see that whenever we discuss colonisation versus invasion or the meaning of Australia Day.
It pains me to predict that bad faith will abound in the coming referendum campaign. However, little is to be gained by calling it out because the deliberate intention to deceive is hard to pick with any certainty and even harder to eradicate. Certainly call it out when you see it but get ready for a "low road" campaign as we seek much-needed constitutional change for Australia's First Nations people.
- John Warhurst is an emeritus professor of political science at the Australian National University
