Editorial
Albanese should fire the starting gun on referendum date
On August 14, 1963, three months before US president John Kennedy was assassinated, bark petitions from remote East Arnhem Land were tabled in the House of Representatives, the first formal First Nations attempt to have their land rights recognised.
Much has changed over the intervening years. Much has not. But, almost 60 years on, the Yolngu people are again prepared to draw a line in the sand.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the Garma festival in East Arnhem in 2022.Credit: Getty
Their Garma Festival begins today outside Nhulunbuy. A four-day celebration of Yolngu life and culture, it is Australia’s largest Indigenous gathering and is poised to give the flailing campaign by supporters of an Indigenous Voice to parliament a much-needed shot in the arm.
Over its 24-year existence the festival has been used as a political soapbox. Bob Hawke, Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott made major speeches at Nhulunbuy. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese used last year’s event to unveil his proposed Voice referendum question. He will be at the festival again this weekend, but other than reiterating his promise that Australians would go to the polls “between October and December”, he has all but ruled out announcing a date at Garma.
An Indigenous Voice to parliament is a transformative idea worthy of support, but the Yes vote campaign seems to have gone missing in action. Meanwhile, the No campaign has been out in the field running rings around it, using every opportunity to present its case and garnering massive coverage and, if the polls are correct, growing support for its cause.
Proponents of the Yes case resolutely defend their campaign, preferring to point out they have been active in community and grassroots levels. They plan keeping their powder dry for a big push when the dates are announced. It is a position articulated by Albanese who undercuts his contention that the referendum is a matter of fairness and high principle by refusing to fire the starting gun on a date on the dubious political chestnut that Australians dislike long campaigns. “It doesn’t need to be that very long campaign. And once the date’s announced, then it will be the campaign on in earnest,” Albanese said.
Winning a referendum is no small task in Australia. Since 1901, there have been 19 referendums, proposing 44 changes to the Constitution, of which only eight have managed to get the green light. That poor strike rate has made governments hesitant to back referendums. The vote in 1999 on Australia becoming a republic, which did not pass in any state, has been the only one in more than 30 years.
But it should also be remembered that the referendum in 1967 that enabled the Commonwealth to enact laws for Indigenous Australians and to remove the prohibition against including them in population counts in the Commonwealth or a state passed with the backing of more than 90 per cent of Australians, the highest level of support for any referendum since Federation.
Shortly after Albanese’s election victory last year the Herald expressed concern that there was little doubt that without the support of most sides of politics, a referendum on a Voice to parliament would have little chance of passing. The politicians have mapped out their territory so it is concerning that, at a national level, the government has allowed the Yes campaign to flounder so badly.
This weekend’s Garma festival, with its expected massive display of unity of purpose and support for a Yes vote by the very people whose lives will be enhanced by changing the Constitution, presents Albanese with an opportunity to put his Yes campaign on the front foot. He should seize the day.
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