If Labor's slim 2022 election majority was a finely scalpelled resection of the electorate, Saturday's Voice referendum defeat was more of a blunt axe, dividing city and country.
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The emphatic rejection by voters points to a number of confronting realities about our changing society, the role of education and wealth in the assessment of any abstract public good, and the dictates of plain old geography.
This poorly conceived referendum may end up having major and permanent implications for the character of our politics which until now has functioned as a scrap for the great Australian middle-ground.
Its lessons are many.
Crudely put, the electorate is now geo-economically cleaved. The closer you lived to a capital CBD, the more likely you were to have voted "yes". Tertiary qualifications and above average wealth were also indicators.
Of course, the obverse was also true.
Labor did not just fail to carry its own working class base, it got thrashed in its homelands. Of the 77 seats the government holds, it achieved a "yes" vote in just 20. Labor's Minister for Indigenous Australians and the government's chief spruiker, Linda Burney, did not even deliver her own electorate of Barton - no further proof of message failure required.
Where Labor hoped to build on the expected "yes" states of NSW and Victoria with both Tasmania and South Australia, none was secured. None. Moderate Labor-friendly SA delivered not one "yes" seat.
Clearly, the Prime Minister made an error of judgement in proceeding with a referendum in the absence of cross-parliamentary support. Always unlikely, bipartisanship became impossible from November 2022 (ie nearly a year ago) when David Littleproud declared the Nationals would oppose it - under the guidance of rookie senator, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. Peter Dutton was probably never going to support the question anyway.
As one of the longest serving MPs in Canberra - elected in 1996 - Albanese had seen the disastrous 1999 referendum. The decision to proceed regardless was a crazy-brave one born perhaps of his unshakable commitment, hubris, or simply an unwillingness to back down to by his opponent.
Dutton's approach is more easily explained. His first aim as opposition leader is survival. Killing the Voice would cement his leadership by taking serious paint off Albanese and lifting conservative morale.
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Right now, he'll be riding high. He proved himself the superior campaigner. Whether that success carries the cost of making him less electable as prime minister is unknown. The orthodox answer is yes, but perhaps he will continue to divide and prosper?
Having played the role of wrecker, can he moderate his image enough to win back teal seats between now and 2025? He may not even try. He seems instead to be going after the blue-collar Labor base in the suburbs and regions informed by the approaches of Trump and Farage. That's a tough path numerically, but this referendum result suggests Labor's traditional base is fraying.
Scores of habitual Labor voters abandoned their party over the Voice and the elitism they felt informed it. Some might now stay away.
Just one Liberal seat seems to have voted "yes" (Bradfield), whereas it appears all Greens and ex-Liberal Teal seats voted "yes". They seem unlikely Dutton converts just 18 months from now.
Australia may be in for the more divisive insider-versus-outsider politics seen in the US and UK.
- Mark Kenny is The Canberra Times' political analyst and a professor at the ANU's Australian Studies Institute. He hosts the Democracy Sausage podcast.
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.
