Aussies & NZ: You're the Voice Try and Understand It

[Bironic]

Just googled a bit about the voice referendum, doesn’t strike me as very radical or extreme… what exactly makes it so controversial/unpopular ?

Are no voters mostly just saying let’s fuck over the government? Sort of a protest vote that doesn’t have much to do with the actual constitutional change?

[karaddin]

The no campaign effectively weaponized ignorance - "if you don't know, vote no" was literally their campaign slogan. Historically referendums in Australia never pass without bipartisan support, our opposition party decided to campaign against it to make it a political issue so scare campaign did the rest.

[Paxter]

That vote should never have proceeded.

And actually WA wasn’t that bad on a relative basis! So I lost my bet.

[Many-Faced Votary]

11 hours ago, Bironic said:

Just googled a bit about the voice referendum, doesn’t strike me as very radical or extreme… what exactly makes it so controversial/unpopular ?

The power of the press Rupert Murdoch. A majority supported the referendum before the sustained and vile "no" campaign.

Unfortunately, this is the result that was to be expected, but it's heart-wrenching even so. What a horrific message this sends to and about Aboriginal Australians.

[Bironic]

4 minutes ago, Many-Faced Votary said:

The power of the press Rupert Murdoch. A majority supported the referendum before the sustained and vile "no" campaign.

Unfortunately, this is the result that was to be expected, but it's heart-wrenching even so. What a horrific message this sends to and about Aboriginal Australians.

It doesn't send a very good message internationally too...

Yes someday historians will look back at the last 40 years and point out that a lot of the bad shit that happened came down to Murdoch and other right wing media tycoons...

[The Anti-Targ]

Democracy's best defense against tyranny is a well informed electorate. For most of modern democracy's history there has not been much effort to create a well informed electorate, and an increasing large effort to keep the electorate ignorant and mis-informed.

[Jeor]

I think the blame lays equally at the Yes campaign's lacklustre messaging as well as the No campaign's appeal to the worst in voters.

For the Yes campaign to blame Dutton, Murdoch, and the media is, at best, a copout to me (and for the record, I was a Yes voter) and at worst, duplicitous and trying to paper over their own failings. The fact is, the Yes campaign was abysmal and Albo/Labor were incompetent. Many people thought Albo should have never proceeded to the referendum (or done constitutional recognition only) as there were plenty of warning signs before the date was locked in; the fact that now a 39/61 vote stands in history is partly due to his obstinacy as much as any racist signalling and scare tactics. 

Labor are not clean in these methods (Mediscare, anyone?) and should have expected a very tough campaign the minute Dutton opposed it. But there wasn't a unifying or cut-through message that Yes could give. On the one hand, the Voice was a momentous, fundamental change that would lift the admittedly very poor indigenous outcomes on most things; on the other hand, it was only an advisory body with very little power and no one should be scared of it. In the end, Yes couldn't really explain how both of those arguments could work together.

The Australian voters have said they don't like the idea of a constitutionally-enshrined Voice (which had little detail as to how it would work and who would be on it). That's actually a pretty narrow thing to have said no to. I think everyone would agree that more needs to be done, it's just that this particular thing isn't it.

There's also hope in that Yes voters were young people and wealthy people. Those two ends of the political spectrum are rarely united and show that these issues mean a great deal to two sections of society that will have a lot of heft in the future.

[Paxter]

I agree that there was a degree of hubris and overconfidence on the Govt side, which didn’t help matters. But ultimately, if we’re going to play a blame game, this is down to Australian voters. They are every bit as narrow-minded, uninformed and uncaring as they ever were. 

Some of the stuff flying around in my family Whatsapp is disgusting. Go WA.

Oh and constitutional recognition failed in ‘99. Why bother trying that again? No payoff anyway for Aboriginal people.

Edited October 15, 2023 by Paxter

[Paxter]

3 hours ago, Jeor said:

There's also hope in that Yes voters were young people and wealthy people. Those two ends of the political spectrum are rarely united and show that these issues mean a great deal to two sections of society that will have a lot of heft in the future.

I see no hope in that fact. Exactly the same happened in ‘99. Only a handful of electorates flipped over between the two votes.

[karaddin]

I'm certainly going to agree that Albo/the yes campaign did a poor job of selling it to voters, but I think it's a bit rich to act like campaigning badly is equivalent to running the campaign against it. 

He should have canned it as soon as Dutton started campaigning against it and the polling tanked, but Dutton is still worse. And unlike many of the no voters I don't even give him the out that he was made to be concerned about the details. At least the political opportunism on his part doesn't seem to have worked out for winning him votes even if it succeeded at tanking the referendum. The sooner we can get him out of the coalition leadership the better for the country.

[Jeor]

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

I'm certainly going to agree that Albo/the yes campaign did a poor job of selling it to voters, but I think it's a bit rich to act like campaigning badly is equivalent to running the campaign against it. 

Yes, campaigning badly and campaigning against it are not morally equivalent, I'll agree with that. But in terms of the contribution towards the final result, I don't think it's the right allocation to blame it all on Dutton/media types. There's plenty of blame to share around and Albo/Yes carries a fair chunk of it.

[Paxter]

4 minutes ago, Jeor said:

Yes, campaigning badly and campaigning against it are not morally equivalent, I'll agree with that. But in terms of the contribution towards the final result, I don't think it's the right allocation to blame it all on Dutton/media types. There's plenty of blame to share around and Albo/Yes carries a fair chunk of it.

I firmly believe this could have been the most incredible Yes referendum campaign in history and The Voice still would have lost. The Libs' opportunistic stance, voters' own ignorance and the difficulty in selling the proposal were the key drivers behind the loss. And Albo should have known all of this going into it. 

[The Anti-Targ]

11 hours ago, Paxter said:

I agree that there was a degree of hubris and overconfidence on the Govt side, which didn’t help matters. But ultimately, if we’re going to play a blame game, this is down to Australian voters. They are every bit as narrow-minded, uninformed and uncaring as they ever were. 

Some of the stuff flying around in my family Whatsapp is disgusting. Go WA.

Oh and constitutional recognition failed in ‘99. Why bother trying that again? No payoff anyway for Aboriginal people.

I see a bit of a parallel to one of the narratives that affected the election on this side of the ditch. In out case it was co-governance, i.e. the role of Maori tribes in decision-making. The push, at this point, for co-governance has not sought in any way to remove the absolute sovereignty of parliament, nor to set up a parallel legislative or regulatory system. But the narrative of those opposed was all about claiming the co-governance concepts are seeking to violate the 1 person 1 vote principles. Many commentators have said that the outgoing govt and supporters of co-governance did a very poor job of explaining it, which left opponents with a very easy time of manipulating people's understanding. Problem is explaining something that requires people to pay attention for more than 20 minutes to get a proper understanding is much harder than someone on the other side saying "They are trying to take away your rights, we must preserve one person, one vote".

[karaddin]

Yup that's absolutely part of the problem. "If you don't know, vote no" is absurdly simple and as a consequence.... It's effective.

[The Anti-Targ]

I think this is a pretty good analysis of our election and what it means for the immediate future.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/nz-election-2023-labour-out-national-in-either-way-neoliberalism-wins-again/UVJDAJVQZFGC3EFU4TVE4L4JU4/

Quote

Election 2023: Labour out, National in - either way, neoliberalism wins again

For an election ostensibly fought over a “cost-of-living crisis”, there was a strong unspoken consensus between the two major parties: most people’s living standards needed to reduce to thwart inflation. Regardless of the election result, a form of austerity was always going to win.

Both National and Labour essentially agreed with the Reserve Bank hiking interest rates to bring down inflation - a crude market discipline likely to cause redundancies, suppress wages, and increase debt and inequality.

Such policies - classically neoliberal, specifically monetarist - are presented as if there is no alternative. Yet other countries have successfully used other measures to protect living standards, including wealth taxes, rent caps, windfall taxes on excessive profits, and major subsidies on energy payments.

And I think this is why Labour lost. They presented more or less the same big-picture view as National except a lot of people with no particular party loyalties don't like them anymore so they wanted a new crew to more or less steer the same course. 

Edited October 17, 2023 by The Anti-Targ

[Squab]

The Voice referendum needs to be made into a movie. A truly David and Goliath battle with an Indigenous woman as lead.

Opposing a plan to divide the nation by race, an indigenous mother of 4 from Alice Springs fights and wins against the combined money and power of:

• The federal government
• Every state and territory government
• Every federal independent politician (except Lidia Thorpe)
• Parts of the federal opposition
• Most living former PMs
• Sydney and Melbourne Mayors
• All state and federal branches of the Greens and Labor parties
• Some state branches of the Liberal party
• Numerous local governments across each state
• Numerous legal professional groups, law firms, lawyers and former judges (Lawyers seemingly thought it sounded like a great idea)
• All major sporting codes (including AFL, NRL, Rugby Australia, Cricket Australia, Netball Australia, Football Australia and Tennis Australia)
• Many of the biggest professional sporting clubs
• Many prominent athletes including Ash Barty, Alyssa Healy, Patty Mills, Cathy Freeman and the captains of both winners of the major football codes played only 2 weeks prior to the referendum 
• Many major companies including NAB, CBA, ANZ, Westpac, Wesfarmers, Telstra, Coles, Woolworths, BHP, Rio Tinto, Woodside, Newcrest and Qantas who offered to fly YES activists for free and paint planes with YES campaign livery
• 2240 different business directors across Australia
• All religious organisations and leaders except the Australian Christian Lobby and the Australian Jewish Association
• Most if not all Universities, climate action and LGBTQIA+ groups 
• Numerous health organisations
• All the unions
• Numerous musicians and bands including John Farnham who donated his song “You’re the Voice” for the campaign. The song remains the top single off the 3rd highest selling album in Australian history
• Cate Blanchett
• The Hemsworths
• Nikki Gemmell
• Jack Thompson
• Tim Winton
• Adam Hills
• Taika Waititi
• Jason Momoa
• Shaquille O'Neal
• And last but most certainly not least, MC Hammer.
   

[Makk]

On 10/16/2023 at 4:50 PM, The Anti-Targ said:

I see a bit of a parallel to one of the narratives that affected the election on this side of the ditch. In out case it was co-governance, i.e. the role of Maori tribes in decision-making. The push, at this point, for co-governance has not sought in any way to remove the absolute sovereignty of parliament, nor to set up a parallel legislative or regulatory system.

I have read through the entire report (assuming you are talking about the 68 page report commissioned about 5 years ago) and I don't believe that is correct. The idea of co-governance and how it was to be implemented was defined as...

"Arrangements in which ultimate decision-making authority resides with a collaborative body exercising devolved power – where power and responsibility are shared between government and local stakeholders."

The report itself was not a framework, it was more a bunch of discussion points that started by examining existing co-management and co-governance situations and how they currently work and then just a lot of conjecture and brainstorming how and mainly why they should be developed. But if you are to meet the spirit of the definition in any way, it is absolutely going to require multiple new regulatory systems. I don't actually think co-governance was an election issue at all. There may have been a little scare-mongering but there is not any policy developed and no way Labour could have brought this in on any scale if they got another 3 years.

[The Anti-Targ]

35 minutes ago, Makk said:

I have read through the entire report (assuming you are talking about the 68 page report commissioned about 5 years ago) and I don't believe that is correct. The idea of co-governance and how it was to be implemented was defined as...

"Arrangements in which ultimate decision-making authority resides with a collaborative body exercising devolved power – where power and responsibility are shared between government and local stakeholders."

The report itself was not a framework, it was more a bunch of discussion points that started by examining existing co-management and co-governance situations and how they currently work and then just a lot of conjecture and brainstorming how and mainly why they should be developed. But if you are to meet the spirit of the definition in any way, it is absolutely going to require multiple new regulatory systems. I don't actually think co-governance was an election issue at all. There may have been a little scare-mongering but there is not any policy developed and no way Labour could have brought this in on any scale if they got another 3 years.

I don't think it should be dismissed as such. It was a significant narrative for NZF and Act, perhaps they didn't explicitly say "co-governance" in some of their PR, but "one-person, one-vote" was basically taking aim at co-governance, and when they both accused the current government of racist policies they were also directly aiming at co-governance, among other things. I do think though that inflation and cost of living, and just the bad taste of a loss of social cohesion arising from the second half of the pandemic were the main factors causing such a big drop in Labour support. 

For the sake of us all I hope the new government doesn't have to deal with a terrorist attack, a global pandemic and several natural disasters somewhat exacerbated by creaking infrastructure that has been neglected by multiple governments, probably at least since the late 80s. The govt before last had one major earthquake and a few moderate ones to deal with. So there's been a lot going on in the last 15 years and we could definitely use a break. Only I think some events connected with climate change are only going to keep ramping up.

[Paxter]

The RBA's economic tightrope walking continues.

Headline inflation came in a little hot yesterday, at 5.4% annualized. The expectation was 5.3%. And even the trimmed mean (which takes out the most fluctuating prices, like fuel) came in slightly hotter than expected at 5.2%. 

The cash rate remains at 4.1% (compared to over 5% in the US), implying negative real interest rates in Australia. This isn't particularly restrictive compared to other countries and is hurting the Australian dollar, which has a flow-through effect on imports. 

But of course there is the matter of household debt in Australia, which is over 100% of GDP (high compared to peer countries)...the RBA doesn't want to trigger more household pain and a credit crisis. 

[Jeor]

I think they'll probably do one more rate rise (but probably not two like others are predicting). The new RBA governor Bullock needs to show her inflation-fighting credentials, and standing pat at this next meeting would send a bad signal. Petrol was a big component of inflation which doesn't really lend itself to rate rises (which aren't going to crimp demand for petrol or make it cheaper) so that might be the only thing on a technical basis that argues for continuing the pause.

Albo and Biden loving it up again. Albo has spent a lot of time on foreign affairs and overseas trips. It's good PR and I think he has generally done a good job in foreign affairs, but sooner or later voters are really going to want him to focus on domestic issues (but not the Voice, as shown at the referendum).