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ANGE:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ange McCormack. This is 7am.

The first week of the referendum campaign started with an unmistakable voice: John Farnham. His iconic hit is now the anthem for ‘Yes’ voters, who say their vote is about being on the right side of history. For ‘No’ voters, the ad is superficial - pandering to emotions rather than giving concrete reasons to support the voice. Meanwhile, tactics from the Opposition have included pitching a second referendum, and undermining the 'Yes' campaign’s ad by pointing to a key lyric.

Today, contributor to The Monthly and the Saturday Paper, Yorta Yorta man Daniel James, on the early day strategies of both camps, and the potential for things to become more toxic as the campaign goes on.

It’s Friday September 8.

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ANGE:

Daniel, the Yes campaign kicked off with this flashy new ad soundtracked by John Farnham iconic song You're The Voice. It's been everywhere. Talked about a lot. How has that ad been received?

DANIEL:

The first 48 hours of the ad, I would suggest, was met with a combination of rage…

ANGE:

Okay…

DANIEL:

…and euphoria. Rage from proponents of the conservative 'No' campaign and a degree of euphoria from our 'Yes' campaigners. The ad itself starts off with a Liberal Party how to vote card for the 1967 referendum. But the part that really struck me with it was the section in which it covered the gun buyback campaign under the Howard government, which I think was a message to people that see the ad that radical things can be achieved in this country for the better of us all if we give them a go. And so I think the ad tried to really sort of walk that very fine line of trying to unify us by showing both sides of the political spectrum, taking risks and achieving things on behalf of the country.

ANGE:

And what was there to be enraged by from the 'No' voters?

DANIEL:

It's an interesting question. I think they were actually spooked by it. I think it's such a powerful ad and given permission by an Australian icon to use his version of that song…

ANGE:

Which is an uncomfortable sort of tension. Right?

DANIEL:

It is. You know, John Farnham is the former Australian of the Year. He's someone that is, as far as we know, apolitical and also someone that's deeply in the heart of many people across the country with his own recent sort of health battles. And we've seen the outpouring of love for him during that time. So for him to come out and take a stand and support the 'Yes' campaign. I think it was very, very confronting for the 'No' campaigners, because it remains to be seen, but maybe it is a turning point in the campaign itself. It certainly has seemed to have generated a degree of momentum for 'Yes'. But I actually think that the way that the ad, the video and the ad was launched was actually a missed opportunity. I think it was an opportunity to get together people from all over the country in a place like Sydney Hall in New South Wales, in Sydney, where in 1938 we had the Australian Aborigines League and the Australian Aborigines Progressive Association meet and declare that January 26 should be a day of mourning. So to take it back to that place is also where Noel Pearson gave that incredible eulogy to Gough Whitlam. I think there was an opportunity there to launch it more broadly. I think that the launch of it was actually kind of seemed like a bit of a star studded affair, and that could have potentially played into the narrative around the voice being elitist.

ANGE:

And the Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, you know, pointed to the line in the song “try and understand it” And he used that to point to this idea that people don't understand the detail of the voice and that they're grappling with understanding what it is.

Audio Excerpt – Peter Dutton:

“In a sense it's the appropriate theme song for the 'Yes' campaign, because remember the key line in the lyrics there is, you know, “you're the voice, try and understand it”, and I don't want to sing it, I don't want to break into verse with you here Andrew, but I honestly don't think I think I don't think most Australians understand it…”

ANGE:

What do we know about how many Australians feel informed about this vote and what it's about?

DANIEL:

Well, whether they're informed about that, the polls are looking still particularly grim, showing at the moment that the Voice campaign is substantially behind in most of the polls leading into this campaign. Whether that's because people still don't understand the voice - I think there's definitely a degree of that - I think that the 'Yes' campaigners are definitely trying to play on the emotional elements of the Voice. But I think as the days go by with this referendum, which is still 30 odd days away, I think the polls will tighten it's question of whether they'll tighten enough, because what we're seeing from the conservative 'No' campaign is a very alarmist campaign, one full of hyperbole and misinformation.

ANGE:

And this week, Marcia Langton was at Press Club and she spoke about some of the clever falsehoods that have been weaponised, I suppose, in the referendum campaign. What did you make from what she had to say?

Audio Excerpt – Marcia Langton:

“As a descendant of the Yiman people who were massacred in the hundreds over decades of conflict raised in Queensland under racist laws and now in my seventies? It is clear to me that the winds of change blowing across our continent now are our last hope of surviving as the first peoples with any of our laws, cultures and languages intact.”

DANIEL:

Well, her National Press Club speech on Wednesday was, as per usual, powerful.

Audio Excerpt – Marcia Langton:

“Australian voters have been deceived by the 'No' case and by the relentless negativity and conned into believing that the referendum proposal will not lead to better outcomes.”

DANIEL:

She spoke expertly, but also a matter of factly.

Audio Excerpt – Marcia Langton:

“Facts, not fictions, are crucial in the public square. Our proposal takes nothing away from others. It does not give us any more power than the hundreds of other advisory committees.”

DANIEL:

I think that the perception the 'No' campaign has been very adept at hijacking, to a certain extent, the 24 hour news cycle and what we've seen throughout the course of the campaign to date is the conservative 'No' campaign just throwing bombs at the news cycle and seeing what sticks.

Audio Excerpt – Marcia Langton:

“You know, we've heard words like squalid underbelly maintain the rage thrown about. It's as if the Frontier wars was still happening.”

DANIEL:

We saw it last week when Warren Mundine was saying that he was a victim or being racially vilified by the Prime minister.

Audio Excerpt – Warren Mundine:

“This prime minister from day one had attacked people who had a different opinion to him, called them names, and that opened up the floor for the whole division to stop with all the horrible racial abuse, with all the horrible bigotry that's been going on out there. And it's all Albo. He's the one who started this.”

DANIEL:

That got a run without being fact checked for probably about 24 hours. And yet it feeds into the news cycle, and it colours the picture for a lot of voters out there thinking about the referendum.

ANGE:

After the break - why the opposition is pitching an idea for another referendum.

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ANGE:

Daniel, The opposition have been very critical of the new yes ad of the voice of the referendum in general. But Peter Dutton did start pitching an idea this week. He wants a second referendum if this one loses and if the Coalition wins the next election. Can you tell me a bit about that idea and what you made of it?

DANIEL:

I think it's a case of trying to have the best of both worlds. But one of the main criticisms very early on from people like David Littleproud was that this referendum would do nothing practical for Aboriginal people.

ANGE:

That it would be symbolic or too symbolically.

DANIEL:

Symbolic, wouldn't do much for people in the bush. It would be run by a bunch of Canberra elites. Well, it seems to me that the referendum that they are proposing, which there is very little detail of, by the way, would do less than nothing for Aboriginal people.

ANGE:

So it would also be a symbolic proposal which is symbolic. And if that's the case, then that's fully contradicting, you know, their position on this referendum.

DANIEL:

Absolutely. It was one of the few times in the campaign where it was a unifying eye-roll moment when they both announced that they wanted a second referendum. I think Jacinta Price was caught out by that. There's speculation that she wasn't aware that that announcement was going to be made. But I think after this campaign, I don't think people have the appetite for a second referendum any time soon.

ANGE:

And another line that we've seen from the Opposition, especially from Peter Dutton, is this idea that indigenous leaders or elders don't want the Voice. Yeah. How do you think that is being sold and where and where is that coming from?

Audio Excerpt – Peter Dutton:

“We were in East Arnhem Land, we've been in Palm Island, we've been Alice Springs, Darwin, you know, and we've spoken to a lot of Indigenous leaders…”

DANIEL:

Peter Dutton is very good at using the lines like “The people I speak to…” He was referring to the people that he speaks to and one of the lines that he's been using is that the elders and the people that he speaks to are not in favour of the Voice.

ANGE:

Right.

Audio Excerpt – Peter Dutton:

“…they don't believe that a sort of a, you know, a voice for the elites, as some of them describe it, is going to deliver the practical outcomes for those kids.”

DANIEL:

Well, where are those dialogues? How formal are those conversations? Is there a process there that is feeding into the Liberal Party's policy? Because we know with the 'Yes" campaign we had the Uluru Dialogues and there has been so much conversation around that gathering at Uluru back in 2016, I believe. But what Dutton is saying is hear say we don't know who he's speaking to.

ANGE:

There's no transparency.

DANIEL:

There's no transparency.

ANGE:

About the content of those conversations or who with.

DANIEL:

Exactly. We don't know the context of those conversations. We don't know who's raising the topics. We don't know who's instigating the conversation. Whereas with the 'Yes' campaign, it is well documented where the move for the Uluru Statement from the Heart has come from and where the push for the voice has come from. So it's an ongoing tactic of the conservative not campaign, and it's also something that Jacinta Price and Warren Mundine often do to under the guise, often that, you know, they're speaking to the real Aboriginal people and people in the Northern Territory, not the elites down south as they like to, to, to call some of us.

ANGE:

And we're only early days into this referendum campaign, but we have already seen lies, outrage and racism dominate the debate. At the heart of it, I suppose, is the question of whether Australia is even ready to have this conversation once, let alone twice.

DANIEL:

Exactly. I've always thought that there will be two huge tells about this campaign and what sort of country we are and whether we're mature enough to have this conversation. One will be the outcome of the referendum, but preceding all of that, it is the way that we hold the debate and the conversation. And to date the debate has become toxic. It was toxic months ago. I can only see it becoming more toxic over the course of the next few weeks. And one thing that I reflect on is some of the older Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advocates that we have not only at a national level but at a state level and also at a local community level that are passionate about the 'Yes' voice. This may be their last roll of the dice. This might be the last significant bit of activism that they have in them and the thought of this referendum failing and then being left with that result is something that many of us within the community are very cognisant of and that we feel very, very sad of. Is it something that people will think about, the broader community will think about when they go to vote 'Yes' or 'No' in the polling booth? Probably not. But there is so many different subtexts to this debate and to this conversation and the sadness that we saw from Marcia Langton at the National Press Club when she pleaded with the press to, you know, stop propagating misinformation…

Audio Excerpt – Marcia Langton:

“Our arguments have been entirely misrepresented by the No campaign and in much of the media. For a long time, mostly because of ignorance of Indigenous Australia.”

DANIEL:

…stop telling lies, stop feeding lies.

Audio Excerpt – Marcia Langton:

“I think that the media has a responsibility to lift their game in reporting on these issues. And not participate in pile-ons on persons who are good and decent people.”

DANIEL:

You could hear it in her voice that there's so much in the line for some of our elders and our old people that this may be the last chance they get to see any reform and the way things look at the moment, unfortunately for them and for people who support the Yes campaign, it's looking a bit grim.

ANGE:

And do you think the toll or the potential impact on First Nations communities is being taken seriously by the government?

DANIEL:

Yeah, I'm not sure whether it's being taken seriously by the government. We know it's certainly not being taken seriously by the federal coalition who have refused to meet with members from the Black Dog Institute, which is a mental health agency that has gone to Canberra to meet with parliamentarians, to plead with them to have this conversation, this national debate, in a dignified manner, to try and take the heat out of the conversation that sees people racially vilified every day. Again, Marcia Langton, the National Press Club said that members of the 'Yes' campaign were receiving threats and she was saying that that was happening to the senior leadership of the Yes campaign. It's happening to more than the senior leadership of the Yes campaign. It's happening to Aboriginal people everywhere. Not only are people victims of it, but they are witnessing that loved ones, their friends and their fellow community members being attacked on a daily basis. And the debate has become so toxic that it seems now that when someone asks you out of the blue, out of the blue as a First Nations person, why I should vote 'Yes'? It's almost kind of like being asked, why should you exist in a way? And I think people are becoming very, very jaded by that. And I think it is having a toll. We're forced to have two sides because of Peter Dutton and David Littleproud’s stance on the Voice and that's okay. That's fair play. But don't underestimate for a second that the key strategy that they have in this debate is division. They talk about the Voice dividing the nation. But when you actually look at the facts, it's actually the heart of the conservative No campaign to divide the country, to win the argument, because the conservative No campaign is a central element of the coalition's strategy to get back to government.

ANGE:

Daniel, thanks for your time today.

DANIEL:

Thanks, Ange.

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ANGE:

Also in the news today…

Philip Lowe has admitted the Reserve Bank made the wrong decision during the pandemic, helping to fuel the price inflation we’re living with now, in his final speech as RBA governor. Lowe said that lowering the interest rate to near-zero, pumping money into the economy, in hindsight, was a mistake.

And…

Yesterday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang, on the sidelines of a conference in Jakarta. Albanese used the opportunity to push for the release of Australian journalist Cheng Lei who has been held in detention for just over 3 years.

7am is a daily show from The Monthly and The Saturday Paper.

It’s produced by Kara Jensen-Mackinnon, Zoltan Fecso, Cheyne Anderson, Yeo Choong, and Sam Loy.

Our senior producer is Chris Dengate. Our technical producer is Atticus Bastow.

Our editor is Scott Mitchell. Sarah McVeigh is our head of audio.

Erik Jensen is our editor-in-chief.

Mixing by Andy Elston, Travis Evans, and Atticus Bastow.

Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Hogan of Envelope Audio.

I’m Ange McCormack, this is 7am. We’ll be back next week.

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