Doing All the “No” Work for Us

Boy, Aborigines sure are a special bunch. Not only did they invent democracy and agriculture, as Bruce Pascoe would have us believe, but they’re also such magical, rarified beings that merely drawing a picture of them is an affront.

When the Australian Financial Review published a cartoon that accurately depicted – and flatteringly caricatured – prominent campaigners for the “Yes” vote in the “Indigenous Voice” referendum, the left erupted into spluttering fury. Over what, exactly?

There has been bipartisan condemnation of a “racist” full-page newspaper ad campaigning against the Voice to Parliament, in which a female MP is depicted sitting on her father’s knee while he hands money to an Aboriginal man below him.

WA independent MP Kate Chaney, who is drawn in the advertisement published in the Australian Financial Review, described the image as a “personal and racist attack” from the No campaign.

The advertisement has Ms Chaney in a teal dress and piggy tails sitting on the knee of her father, Wesfarmers chairman and Yes23 director Michael Chaney. He is handing a wad of green cash with a $2 million price tag on it to Yes campaigner Thomas Mayo, who is wearing a red shirt with a hammer and sickle on it.

The ad, authorised by the Advance group, describes Mr Mayo as a “radical activist” and sits under a caption that reads: “Don’t worry sweetheart, it’s just shareholders money.”

Where’s the lie in any of that? Wesfarmers did donate $2m of shareholders money. Mayo is a radical activist and a regular speaker for the successor group to the Australian Communist Party. He speaks of paying respects to “the elders of the Communist Party”. He addresses rally-goers with the Communist sobriquet, “Comrades”. Mayo demands that Australian homeowners pay part of their incomes to Aboriginal elders, “without any government oversight or intervention”.

Despite frequently railing against “institutions”, Mayo is only too happy to take millions from one of the biggest corporations in Australia.

Wesfarmers this week confirmed it donated $2 million to the Yes campaign, which has also received donations from mining giants BHP and RioTinto.

So, how is it “racist” to depict the truth?

It isn’t, of course. All that’s happening here is that the chattering left are following orders. It was only a couple of weeks ago that the far-left activist group running the “Yes” campaign, GetUp, leaked their campaign strategy: “Call our opponents racist”. These people are as easily manipulated as they are predictable.

Still, the reaction is priceless: every time they open their well-fed gobs, the elitists of the “Yes” campaign only ever drive more people to the “No” camp.

“I just think elites like Ms Burney and the CEOs of the big companies yelling at Australians telling them that they are racist if they don’t vote for the voice, telling them that they are hard-hearted, or suggesting that our international reputation will be tarnished … that’s not the way to win a vote,” [Peter Dutton] said.

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No, it isn’t. So, just let them go at it. They’re doing all the work for the “No” vote for us.