MUCH goodwill was garnered by Scott Morrison when anointing Ken Wyatt as his Minister for Indigenous Australians after the 2019 election. Note that title, because it was designed to be noticed.
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Despite a reputation for stone heartedness, Morrison's party had long boasted of furnishing the first Aboriginal senator Neville Bonner, who represented Queensland for a dozen years from 1971.
Still, from Bonner's sad account of his time in Canberra, it is clear he was the exception that proves the rule. Note that too.
"It was worse than being out droving," Bonner recalled of his social rejection.
"There were hours just sitting in my office and I went home alone to my unit at night. There was never one night when anyone said, 'Hey, let's go out tonight'."
Nearly half a century on from Bonner's lonely arrival, Wyatt's elevation was celebrated as another milestone in the long, hard road of inclusion and representation. Progress had been glacial but the nation's first Aboriginal member of the House of Representatives (2010-2022) was being promoted to government's top table, Cabinet. And, he would be the first Indigenous person to hold the post.
So named, Wyatt toiled purposefully but gaining traction in Cabinet proved no easier than gaining entry. It was almost as if the PM had got what he wanted through the announcement alone.
Externally, though, the pressure was on. While the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart had been holed by Malcolm Turnbull's "third chamber" canard, hopes rose that Wyatt could revive its threshold aspiration, that of constitutional enshrinement.
Of course, the Morrison government never had any intention of delivering this and even though it proposed a "legislated" Voice instead, it never did that either.
Wyatt, that trophy of Liberal progress, had proved the rule by exception again. He has now quit the party altogether, gutted at Peter Dutton's crude misrepresentations of the Uluru goals as elitist, Canberra-created, and a gravy train.
This history is important. It doesn't just contextualise Wyatt's disgust, it contextualises the appointment and departure 10 months later of his Liberal successor, the pro-Voice Lesser.
And, through the third-act reversal of appointing Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, it exposes the counterfeit nature of manoeuvres undertaken by Dutton since taking the reins.
Manoeuvres that have seen him nod and wink while playing for time, but always with the aim of killing the Voice so as to deny Anthony Albanese a win.
In hindsight, it seems pretty obvious both Wyatt and Leeser were named primarily for the announcement effect. Their respective bosses had no intention of allowing their party to adopt the progressive solutions they advocated. Nor even the basic Liberal value of a free parliamentary vote.
Which brings us back to the title given to Wyatt and retained by his Labor successor, Linda Burney, the current Minister for Indigenous Australians.
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Significantly, this is the title still attaching also to Dutton's hand-picked referendum wrecker, Nampijinpa Price.
Here, Dutton establishes another "first" - the appointment of a shadow minister "for" Indigenous Australians who is by declaration, "against" the larger part of the community she to claims to speak for.
On day one of her promotion, Nampijinpa Price herself acknowledged, by way of both word and deed, the crucial support of the media company which had impelled her unusually swift rise, News Corporation.
Said the delighted Sky After Dark host, Andrew Bolt: "Congratulations, what is the big thing that you want to achieve in this job?"
"Well I think first and foremost is to ensure that we secure the 'no' vote in this referendum going forward so that we can protect our country from dismantling the democracy that currently exists," responded the rookie Country Liberal who sits with the Nationals in Canberra.
There it was, out in the open. In place of a Voice, a muzzle.
Now stripped of its softening disguise, the Coalition's top priority for its shadow minister "for" Indigenous Australians is to discredit an exhaustive multi-year process of consultation and consensus-building within the population she has been promoted to speak for and develop policy with. What kind of start is that?
A more aggressive declaration in a field where recognition and reconciliation have long been the central tenets, is hard to imagine.
A skilled communicator who clearly believes in her perspective, Nampijinpa Price is nobody's fool - although one cannot be so confident of the two parties she has so comprehensively beguiled. The Nats folded in November in a triumph of policy before evidence. It was merely a matter of time then for a Liberal Party in thrall to its Joycian rump.
But the ground on which they all stand to silence the Voice keeps crumbling.
The Solicitor-General's advice is the latest example. Opponents had demanded its release, insisting it was being kept secret by the government because it raised concerns about the Voice's unintended consequences.
Rather, Stephen Donaghue KC found it would enhance governance, improve representation, and posed no risk of frustrating government decision-making.
"In my opinion proposed section 129 is not just compatible with the system of representative and responsible government prescribed by the Constitution, but an enhancement of that system." Donaghue advised.
Yet killing the Voice will remain the Coalition's "big thing". That is telling.
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.
