The Voice, Marriage Equality and Brexit – a rant

On October 14th there’s a referendum taking place in Australia. It’s about whether to amend the Constitution and create an advisory group that will be a voice/Voice for indigenous Australians to the parliament. Other countries have them and the sky hasn’t fallen. In a sensible world, it would be utterly uncontroversial. But… well….

So, here’s a rant.

A few year’s back there was an advisory postal ballot about whether to allow same-sex marriage. The marriage equality thing got up handily (62% to 38% of those who voted). Which was a relief – if it had been closer, there might have been more acrimony.

The reasons for it getting through was only in part wasn’t a constitutional change (most referenda to change the constitution fail – Australians are a lot more conservative than the ‘larrikin’ mythology would have you believe). I believe it got up because it isn’t the 1970s and 1980s anymore – there are now lots and lots of people who took the brave step to “come out” and in doing so they made it that little bit easier for other people to come out. So now we are at a place, because enough people have a brother, cousin, friend, work colleague who is gay that the old bullshit about predatory behaviour, ‘perversion’ etc just doesn’t resonate. You see the same dynamic in England too – when the Sun tried the ‘gay mafia running Britain’ thing in the late 1990s there was “what the fuck are you ON?” response. They were stuck in the 1980s. So when the proposition was put that gay people should be able to marry, then enough people (especially younger ones, but of course many people with gay kids and grandkids) were like “why are we even HAVING this discussion?” And they knew the sky wasn’t going to fall.

But EVEN THEN, there were 38 percent of bigots and haters.

Now, I reckon most people who voted no to marriage equality are likely to be opposed to the Voice, because, well, hatred of change, hatred of anything that doesn’t fit their 1950s way of thinking. (I don’t know of any polling on this – I’ve not looked).  So right there, that’s a handy base for the No campaign to work from.  They only have to increase that by 15 per cent of the rest of the population or so, and they’re there.

And given that a good proportion of Australians tend not to have close friendships with Indigenous people, and haven’t got past the usual stereotypes (and the old stereotypes keep getting a run in the media, and are still MUCH more acceptable than homophobia, even misogyny), then the Yes to the Voice campaign was always going to need better tactics than it has so far displayed.

And so the now-familiar tactics – from the Brexit campaign, from Trump’s election (and from many many decades ago, but let’s not go there) – are in play. Put into turbo-boosted mode by the usual botnets on Social Media, and carefully crafted memes etc etc.

• Our Way of Life under attack.
• Fight back against the woke elitist, cappuccino folks.
• Make shit up.
  Quote mine.
• Smear the opponents.
• Make lots of “slippery slope” arguments that sound plausible very superficially but are absolutely bollocks if you stop to think about them.
• Lie.
• Make shit up.
• Whip up fear, uncertainty, doubt. 
• Revel in ignorance, give it permission.

There’s a slogan going around – “If you don’t know, vote no.”

Seriously??  How about, “If you don’t know, find out by doing some actual research, examine the claims of proponents and opponents, figure out what is exaggeration, lie etc and THEN vote”  Surely.

So, I think it will fail. In every state. With Queensland and WA “in the lead.”

And the rest of the world will say that Australia is a racist shithole.

This is kind of Australia’s Brexit moment – an opportunity to reflect on who they are, and to think about relationships with other nations and cultures. It’s a chance to think about how they could come to see themselves, of reconciling themselves and understanding a more nuanced and real place in the world.

So, ….

it will probably fail, with horrible consequences (though Australia’s economy will not take the same hit, but its culture might – who knows?)