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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

A scare campaign is gathering momentum in the conservative media. Will The Voice to Parliament dictate policy? Are elite interests behind the referendum? And does it threaten the integrity of the constitution?

These are the questions being asked by conservative commentators, mostly in the Murdoch-owned Australian newspaper. But The Australian wasn’t supposed to be opposed to the referendum. There was a time when it was one of its biggest allies.

Today, contributor to The Saturday Paper and author of a book on the Murdoch empire, Paddy Manning, on how the dream of conservative support for the Voice became complicated.

It’s Monday, April 3.

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RUBY:

Paddy not long ago in, I think, what was a pivotal moment in the campaign for The Voice, the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, he stood up alongside the referendum working group and he revealed what the wording would be for the question that would be put to the country in the upcoming referendum. So can you take me to that press conference and tell me about what he said?

PADDY:

The press conference itself was huge, Ruby.

Archival tape – Anthony Albanese:

“The Uluru Statement from the Heart invites all Australians to walk together to a better future. Today we take a very important step forward on that journey. After many months…”

PADDY:

Now things start to get real. The Prime Minister told us what the question would be, very much along the lines of exactly what he'd announced at the Garma Festival last year. So no surprises there.

Archival tape – Anthony Albanese:

“Do you approve this proposed alteration? That’s the question before the Australian people. Nothing more, but nothing less.”

PADDY:

But what was significant, in my view, was the Prime Minister's declaration. Albanese said if we were not to put this to a referendum later this year, it would be to concede defeat.

Archival tape – Anthony Albanese:

“If not now, when? That is an opportunity that doesn't belong to the politicians. It belongs to every Australian equally. One person, one vote. People from all faiths, backgrounds and traditions. All of us will have an equal say. All of us can own an equal share…”

PADDY:

He said it was a modest proposal and a generous invitation from Aboriginal Australia, at the Uluru meeting back in 2017, to walk with Indigenous Australians on a process that would deliver a voice, treaty and truth.

Archival tape – Anthony Albanese:

“I say to… I say to Australia, don’t miss it. Don’t miss it.”

PADDY:

Albanese was clearly holding back emotion. He was surrounded by the members of the working group, people that have spent decades or a lifetime working on reconciliation, and he said we're all in. It was clear that there was a lot of emotion behind this referendum and bringing it on now.

What I thought was significant in the coverage of the press conference was that amongst conservatives, they weren't caught up in the emotion at all. And in fact, in some cases, they found it off putting. So I think that's a key moment where the debate about the Voice really starts to have some clarity. People are starting to coalesce around a yes and a no case, now that we actually have a concrete proposition to debate. And so I thought it was a good time to look at the reaction, especially on the conservative side.

RUBY:

Okay. Well, let's talk some specifics then. Tell me about the commentary that we saw on Sky and what was actually written in some of the flagship papers after that announcement on the referendum wording?

PADDY:

Well, I thought it was interesting that in one, you know, panel segment that was hosted by Chris Kenny, who's a conservative columnist but is also actually a firm supporter of The Voice and played a part in the co-design group under the Morrison government that came up with options as to how it might work. He was talking with the, contributor to, a regular contributor to The Australian, Gemma Tognini.

Archival tape – Chris Kenny:

“While we're on Indigenous issues. I don't want to overburden people with debate on The Voice. So how about each of you give me where you're at on The Voice right now in 30 seconds…”

PADDY:

She said that there are plenty of things to cry over in this country, that's not one of them and Albanese lost her at the moment that he started crying.

Archival tape – Gemma Tognini:

“I don't see Mr. Albanese crying about people not being able to pay their bills and businesses in the Shire, like the ones that you highlighted last week, going out of business. I don't think we can't walk and chew gum, but please let's be proportionate. I think he lost respect for me when he turned on the tears, seriously. There are plenty of things to cry over in this country…”

PADDY:

Gemma made the point that night that the left always overdo it on the emotional side, and that was a point that Chris Kenny himself echoed in a column in The Weekend Australian a couple of days later.

Archival tape – Chris Kenny:

“I think he needs to put out at least a framework of how he would legislatively, not draft legislation, but some key principles…”

Archival tape – Gemma Tognini:

“100%. He's asking us to change our Constitution. For those of you out there going, it’s just the Constitution, it's just intentional. Go have a civics class, you morons.“

PADDY:

Then you had some really scathing assessments coming in from the top political commentators at the Aus, such as Paul Kelly, who called the Prime Minister's model a maximalist model, and Dennis Shanahan, who went hard on the Voice intervening with parliament. Quote, he said the Indigenous voice to parliament does not exist, and yet it has already had a massive victory in entrenching its ability to intervene, in advance, without limit, in any Commonwealth decision. I think that was perhaps the most significant of the contributions in The Weekend Australian last week.

Archival tape – Tony Abbott:

“It's a forever change and the worry is that we will end up effectively with two classes of citizens. Some of us who came more recently, who get one vote, and some of us who have ancestry stretching back tens of thousands of years, who get two. And I think that's a very, very concerning development.”

PADDY:

It was only a couple of days later after after that weekend's coverage that on the Monday morning we see an opinion piece in The Australian by the former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, warning the voice would divide Australians by race and that it represented an attempt by Indigenous leaders to regain sovereignty which would lead, he said, quote, to a massive disturbance to our system of government. Nothing could happen without substantial Indigenous input, wrote Abbott, adding that this is very far indeed from the modest change the PM claims. It's actually by far the biggest constitutional change we've ever been asked to make.

Now, anyone who watched the decade of climate wars that we've just been through knows the ability of someone like Tony Abbott to mount a scare campaign from the right. And so it posed the question, are we seeing, in The Australian, a hardening of the editorial line against the voice now that the actual wording of the referendum has been unveiled?

RUBY:

And so is that what we’re seeing Paddy? Do you think NewsCorp is getting ready to really swing in behind the ‘No’ Campaign?

PADDY:

So, of course, I did contact The Australian and the editor Michelle Gunn but didn’t get an official answer from the editor of the Aus as to whether their line had hardened. I got a one line statement from Michelle Gunn, which said, and this is true, The Australian has given more space to the breadth of the debate, including points of view on both sides of the debate than any other paper or media outlet. And I think a lot of the people that I spoke to accept that that is true.

What was most interesting to me was a kind of take that I got from a former senior journalist from The Australian who's well-placed. Speaking off the record, that person told me the newspaper is up to its old tricks. The Aus does that pretend both sides thing, the person said. So they will always justify everything they run by saying well, everyone deserves to be able to have something to say. News Corp generally, but the Aus in particular, can get away with pretending to be accommodating of all arguments while nonetheless suppressing some and valorising others. So that's what I was told and I think that is on the money. I think that the editors of the paper have in the past, and perhaps are doing the same thing here, are kind of giving the debate a nudge. And while they are running all sides of the debate, it does seem to me you're starting to see a kind of swing towards opposing The Voice.

RUBY:

And there have been a lot of attempts to keep the question of The Voice bi-partisan, to bring conservative voters and thinkers onboard with the ‘Yes’ case. If it does turn out that there is this kind of move on inside NewsCorp, to take a more critical line, does that suggest there is a risk that conservative support for the Voice could be lost?

PADDY:

I think the answer is nuanced, bearing in mind that the Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has yet to announce whether the Liberal Party will support or oppose the Voice. Although it's noteworthy that on Thursday, when the Constitutional alteration bill was introduced to the Parliament to a standing ovation on the Labour side, Peter Dutton didn't even turn up.

It was kind of reprise of his refusal to turn up for the national apology, even though he later said he regretted that. Here is the Opposition Leader not even turning up for the introduction of this historic bill.

The reality is every sign suggests that the Liberals are going to, like the National Party, oppose The Voice. And that sets us up for a bruising debate in the run up to the referendum.

RUBY:

We’ll be back in a moment.

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RUBY:

So, Paddy, can we take a step back here and talk a bit more about how The Australian has covered Indigenous affairs in the past, and how Rupert Murdoch sees that coverage? Because it's something that he has spoken about as a particular strength of the paper, isn't it?

PADDY:

Absolutely it is. And The Australian, you know, established in 1964, has been a long time advocate for a particular approach, it has to be said, but an advocate of covering Aboriginal Australia properly, in detail and making sure that it covers those stories on the ground. It was interesting to me to go back to a speech which Noel Pearson himself gave at the 50th birthday of the newspaper in 2014. He said The Australian brought Indigenous affairs into the mainstream.

Archival tape – Noel Pearson:

“No paper welcomed Indigenous writers and political leaders more than this one. The late Charles Perkins, Marcia Langton, Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Patrick Dodson, Lowitja O'Donoghue, Warren Mundine and more…”

PADDY:

Noel Pearson has a particular approach to Indigenous affairs which is all about taking back responsibility, getting off welfare dependency and it's easy to see how this appeals to conservatives.

Archival tape – Noel Pearson:

“The dialectic of the national debate plays out on the pages of The Australian.”

PADDY:

And it's what Pearson hoped that would garner bipartisan support once, once it had been endorsed, as it was, in the Uluru Statement from the Heart in 2017.

The Voice was originally designed to appeal to conservatives. It was supposed to be the form of constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians that would be most likely to succeed on the right. And this is where the Aus was coming from in supporting the idea of a Voice to Parliament.

If you are going to see, on the conservative media, a loss of support for what was supposed to be a very modest change to the Constitution, to do what even former Prime minister John Howard said he absolutely supports, which is constitutional recognition in our founding document.

RUBY:

And so, Paddy, ultimately what would it mean for the Australian or for the Murdoch media more broadly to take a definitive stance on the Voice if they were to support a ‘no’ campaign? What would that actually mean, do you think, for the chances of a referendum succeeding?

PADDY:

Well, it would make it extremely difficult. We've got two examples in recent history which are kind of instructive here. One, obviously, is the 1999 unsuccessful referendum on the republic. And Greg Craven, who is himself a member of the statutory committee that advised on the wording of that referendum, he is concerned that what we are seeing is a repeat of that 1999 experience, where the support for the proposal that Australia should become a republic splintered over disagreements about the model that was being proposed. Polling as referendum day approached started to soften and ultimately was unsuccessful. And he fears that we are on the same track with The Voice. Yet I think there's another example which is more relevant, and that's the most recent non-binding plebiscite on marriage equality. And in broad, most all polls showed majority support and what supporters of The Voice hope is that, although we may have a bruising debate between now and the referendum day, that there is goodwill amongst the majority of Australians and support for a Voice to Parliament, as was requested at Uluru and in the Statement from the Heart and the invitation to the Australian people to walk with First Nations people and that that majority support will prevail. And the former journalist that I spoke to at the Aus says if the referendum does get up, the Aus will claim victory. They'll say, we supported this all along. But just like the same sex marriage plebiscite, what will happen is you'll have a whole lot of people hurt in the process. The potential for it to get very ugly is obvious.

RUBY:

Yeah. You've said a few times that you think that this could become bruising, Paddy, lead to a bruising debate. So I get the sense that you think that this is just the beginning, that we might be about to see an explosion in opinion articles on The Voice as the referendum approaches in earnest, and that this is set and seems likely to become more divisive.

PADDY:

Yep. I think that's absolutely true.

We know that people like Tony Abbott and we're yet to find out about Peter Dutton, but we know that a relentless ‘no’ campaign can be extremely effective. The potential for a ‘no’ campaign to really take hold and set the cause of reconciliation and constitutional recognition back in Australia, not for one year or three years or five years or ten, but for a generation. The potential is clear, we have precedent for it and it shows that supporters of the Voice are going to need to campaign hard to get over the line.

As the Prime Minister himself said at his tearful press conference, we're all in. That's what the campaign for The Voice is going to need. It's going to need supporters who are all in.

RUBY:

Paddy, thank you so much for your time.

PADDY:

Thank you, Ruby.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today…

The Liberal Party have lost the seat of Aston to the Labor Party, becoming the first opposition to lose a seat to the sitting government in 103 years.

Earlier in the week, Peter Dutton had described the contest as a ‘verdict on leadership’ for both Anthony Albanese and himself – but on Sunday, he accepted responsibility for the loss, saying quote: “by not winning the election, we’ve failed that test, that has been set for us by the Victorian people. That’s the reality.”

And,

Donald Trump will face court on Tuesday this week, after his criminal indictment late last week.

Trump and his legal team met over the weekend at his Mar-a-lago resort, and have been negotiating his surrender with New York authorities.

Members of his legal team told the media they believed they had an agreement that Trump would not be handcuffed when he’s arrested this week.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See you tomorrow.

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