You can fool some of the people, some of the time, as the saying goes. But you can’t fool all of the people all the time — and the longer you try and keep the hoodwink up, the more people are likely to cotton on. Anthony Albanese’s ongoing attempt to sneak co-governance — let’s call it what it is, apartheid — on the Australian people by means of the so-called “Voice” referendum is backfiring, badly.
Albanese is refusing to release details of how the “Voice” would work, asking Australians to vote first, and trust the politicians.
Fewer and fewer are apparently inclined to do so.
Support for an Indigenous voice is slipping, with the near universal backing among younger voters and Labor supporters falling since February, amid debate over whether it should be able to advise the executive government as well as parliament.
An exclusive Newspoll conducted for The Australian to test the level of community support among voters showed a narrow majority still support changing the Constitution to enshrine an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice to parliament.
However, this has fallen from 56 per cent at the start of the year to 53 per cent in the latest survey.
On those numbers, the referendum, which under Australian law needs a “double-majority”, is almost certainly doomed to fail.
Even more alarming for the government is that its support is slipping fastest among the groups most likely to support it: women, the young, and the left.
Those saying they were strongly in favour of the proposal fell from 28 per cent in February to 25 per cent in the latest poll.
This was driven by a decline in Coalition voters who said they were strongly in favour last time – from 13 per cent down to 10 per cent.
However, among the total number of voters either strongly or partly in favour, the largest decreases since February were among women, Labor voters and the younger demographics.
Among those aged 18-34, support fell from 70 per cent at the start of February – when Newspoll first asked this question of voters – to 64 per cent in the most recent survey.
The Australian
Those are diabolical numbers for Labor’s referendum. It’s losing support fastest among the very demographics Labor is most relying on. The decline amongst Labor dropped by 6%; among Coalition voters who were already least likely to support it, it fell just 2%.
The sense that Albanese is trying to pull a fast one seems to be growing. Not only is Albanese refusing to release draft legislation, or even a policy position, but the government is more and more openly trying to dodge around referendum law. Where electoral law states that the government must equally fund Yes and No campaigns, Labor are trying to claim that they’re not funding either.
Instead, they’re pouring millions into what they call a “civics education program”, to provide “facts on the voice”.
When the government is asking voters to blindly trust them, such shifty politicking isn’t going to help their case.
Perhaps Albanese should have taken a leaf out of Jacinda Ardern’s book: if you can’t get the people to vote for apartheid, just impose it on them by stealth.
Then again, look how well it all worked out for her.
