When betting your leadership against piddling concerns like the nation's unity, it's important that the 'Price' is right and you have enough 'Cash'.
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Between these two right-wing warriors, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, and Michaelia Clare Cash, Peter Dutton has crafted an even more aggressive frontbench in a reshuffle forced by the resignation of his pro-Voice shadow attorney general and Indigenous affairs spokesperson, Julian Leeser.
An uncompromising spear-chucker, Senator Cash will take the attorney general's brief, and Senator Nampijinpa Price, Indigenous affairs. In other words, the rookie Territorian will now attack the Voice with the extra authority of a formal front-bench post.
Having committed to the path of most resistance, Dutton is declaring that its defeat is the hill he is prepared to die on.
Despite his party's repudiation in 2022 and notwithstanding his abject failure in the Aston byelection earlier this month, Dutton's response to a more moderate mainstream is to double-down on the conservatism. And dial up the division.
It is quite a gamble. When you're hot, you're hot. Trouble is, Dutton's not. Rather, to paraphrase the great Douglas Adams, his Liberal Party is beginning to feel like a military academy - bits of it keep on passing out.
Karen Andrews, an ostensibly policy-focused frontbencher who was disgracefully dragged into Scott Morrison's shabby election-day chicanery on asylum seekers, has also stepped down, and while mincing her words, will not campaign for the 'no' case.
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Others could follow her out, from the frontbench and/or from the parliament. Morrison being one of them.
The significance of Leeser's resignation has, if anything, been under-appreciated. Remember, he was Dutton's own choice, his handpicked spokesperson tasked with designing the central policy approach of the Coalition. Leeser's support for the Voice was fully known, and his selection, still less than a year ago, came after Anthony Albanese publicly declared his support for the Uluru Statement from the Heart "in full".
Given that nothing fundamental had changed in the Voice proposition in the nine months since Leeser's appointment, the only conclusions are dire. Either Dutton expected Leeser to abandon his principles to hold his spot, or Dutton had initially sold a more conciliatory tone on the Voice. Guess which is more plausible.
Either way, the die is now cast. Dutton probably thinks his back-up move is a strategic master-stoke, pitting Nampijinpa Price directly against Labor's Linda Burney.
So eager was Dutton to sap the moral momentum of the 'yes' case that he surrendered another frontbench spot to the Nationals, the junior party that had cemented its opposition to the Voice last November - months before the draft wording had been finalised.
If all this feels like desperate tactics and bad faith dealing, it is because it is.
Mark Kenny
Mark Kenny is The Canberra Times' political analyst and a professor at the ANU's Australian Studies Institute. He hosts the Democracy Sausage podcast. He writes a column every Sunday.
Mark Kenny is The Canberra Times' political analyst and a professor at the ANU's Australian Studies Institute. He hosts the Democracy Sausage podcast. He writes a column every Sunday.
