Some Liberals will come forward in the months after the Voice referendum, admitting that their party had been wrong to oppose it. And illiberal in binding its members to that position.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
And later, when it's undeniable that the country has emerged stronger and more unified for the change, even the hardliners will melt away.
Overly optimistic? Well, I do have form.
I remember writing in 2015 that prime minister Tony Abbott had finally read the national mood on marriage equality. His apparent pivot came as Labor's Bill Shorten threatened to take the running with his own private member's bill. Abbott worried that the issue was getting away from him.
Then, one Question Time in late May, he rose and responded to Shorten's pressure. "This is an important issue," he began. Even this was noteworthy given that Abbott-loyal shock-jocks had belittled "gay marriage" as a boutique concern. Abbott continued. "It is not the only important issue facing our country right now, but it is an important issue ... [and] if our Parliament were to make a big decision on a matter such as this, it ought to be owned by the Parliament and not by any particular party".
To that end, he invited the gravelly Queensland LNP stalwart, Warren Entsch, to seek a like-minded Labor backbencher with whom to co-sponsor a private member's bill.
Was this a moment of relent? Politically, it added up. Why waste his government's limited political capital resisting a change that would come anyway?
Yet just 24 hours later, the dogmatic Abbott revealed (albeit, privately) that Entsch's ecumenical efforts would never reach a vote. It was a decoy. Another delaying tactic.
Last week, the temptation to be optimistic arose again. The issue? Julian Assange's extended incarceration in London's brutal Belmarsh Prison en route to US "justice". The case is a human rights outrage which dishonours transparency and mocks the very tenets of rule of law democracy.
The US has indicted Assange in absentia on 17 counts of violating America's Espionage Act including conspiring to hack Pentagon computers in 2010-11. The cumulative sentence could be as high as 175 years.
Yet Assange broke no Australian law, and was not on American soil at any time in question.
Unlike its predecessors, the Albanese government has confronted this running sore and a resolution finally seems possible. Even likely.
The official stance of America has not changed, but surely it must, as its cherished AUKUS security partner sues for its citizen's release.
Canberra's intent is now palpable.
Consider the response from Foreign Minister Marise Payne in 2021 when Assange's extradition to the US was delayed by a British court.
"We note the UK Court's decision in relation to the application to extradite Mr Julian Assange to the United States, which the Court has made on the grounds of his mental health and consequent suicide risk. Australia is not a party to the case and will continue to respect the ongoing legal process."
This was as tough as it ever got. Respecting Britain's legal system and facilitating an American revenge prosecution always trumped the civil and legal rights of an Australian citizen. There was never any deviation from this through the Gillard, Rudd, Abbott, Turnbull, and Morrison governments.
Now, though, Australia's approach has shifted from supine to energetic.
Australia's High Commissioner in London, Stephen Smith became the first such office-holder to visit Assange.
A Washington visit by Albanese for bilateral talks is also in the advanced stages of planning.
Later this month, Australia will host the Quad partners meeting in Sydney and before that Albanese will attend the G7 in Hiroshima, allowing the Australian PM to further petition President Joe Biden directly.
It would not be the first time.
"We have made our position very clear to the US Administration," Albanese revealed in London on Friday.
Pointedly, he then referred to Chelsea Manning, the long-since pardoned former US Army intelligence officer who supplied documentary evidence of US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks. "When Australians look at the circumstances, look at the fact the person who released the information is walking freely now having served some time in incarceration, but is now released for a long period of time, then they'll see that there's a disconnect there."
Polite, if undeniable, logic.
MORE MARK KENNY:
Here was no less than the Australian Prime Minister, speaking plainly and publicly to his US counterpart, insisting "this needs to be brought to a conclusion".
So likely now is a breakthrough that Peter Dutton has offered the Opposition's support.
"The matters, I think, have to be dealt with and if the Prime Minister's charting a course through to an outcome on that, that's a good thing," he told ABC radio.
Domestically the Biden Administration is struggling to explain the obvious contradiction of slamming authoritarian Russia for holding The New York Times journalist Evan Gerskovich on espionage grounds, while it relentlessly pursues an Australian journalist out of political spite.
Dutton's opposition to the Voice is as depressing and self-destructive as Abbott's efforts to slow the social momentum towards marriage equality.
But by agreeing with Albanese that "enough is enough" in the case of Assange, he has shown a hitherto unknown capacity for articulation when the political maths add up.
That's a revelation of sorts. Perhaps even an optimistic one?
- 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
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.
