[Theme music starts]

ANGE:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ange McCormack. This is 7am.

The “No” campaign has been heated all year, but this week figures in the “No” camp threatened to turn that negativity on each other. A series of contradictory statements from “No” campaigners has shown cracks in the team putting forward the case against the Voice, and divisions over what they should propose instead.

Today, columnist for The Saturday Paper Paul Bongiorno, on the tensions in the “No” camp and whether it will make a difference on polling day.

It’s Friday, September 22.

[Theme music ends]

ANGE:

Paul, the “No” campaign has been in a bit of turmoil this week, and it all began with an interview with Warren Mundine. Can you tell me a bit about what happened?

PAUL:

Well, Warren Mundine is one of the leaders of the “No” side, along with Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. He's well the most prominent of them. And the “No” camp strategy has been to, well, make people as scared as they can be about the prospect of the referendum getting up and to claim that it is in fact dividing the nation. But on Sunday's Insiders on ABC TV, Mundine, when pressed about what he did want for Indigenous Australians instead of a voice, said a few things that were actually quite contradictory of the very campaign he and Price have been leading.

Audio Excerpt – Warren Mundine:

“One of the things about this debate I’ve always been honest, even though I know people on my side don't agree with me on these two issues and that's treaties, and that's and that's Change the Date.”

Audio Excerpt – Interviewer:

“So you support...you support treaties? Why?”

Audio Excerpt – Warren Mundine:

“I...those, and I say trade these in the plural sense, because we got to recognise Aboriginal culture.”

PAUL:

For example, on treaties, Mundine claimed he'd supported them. In fact, he supported them for 30 years.

Audio Excerpt – Interviewer:

“So we're more likely to get treaties if people vote 'No'.”

Audio Excerpt – Warren Mundine:

“Yeah, because then we have to do the hard on the 15th of October if it's a “No” vote, you know, that's when the real work starts about, you know, as Jacinta said, you know, the senator, she said, we've got to have accountability, we're spending billions of dollars every year and according to the closing the gap, we've got, we're still not going places, so I've got to deal with that.”

Audio Excerpt – Reporter:

“So your message is vote 'No' and the treaties process will really begin.”

Audio Excerpt – Warren Mundine:

”Yeah. And also and also the real things about accountability.”

PAUL:

Well, Ange, that would certainly have been news to a majority of Indigenous Australians who support the Uluru Statement’s call for a voice, then a treaty and truth. So the referendum is actually the first step towards the treaty-making that Mundine says he's committed to. The comments are, well, they’re hypocritical. The “No” campaign has actually spent a lot of time, as I've said, stoking fears that this process would see billions of dollars of compensation and taxes rising to pay for it. Only three days earlier, the other “No” leader, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa PricePrice, rejected the whole idea because he said you can't have a treaty with your own citizens. So it's a mixed message to say the least. And one frustrated, “No” supporting Liberal MP told me that he thought Mundine's comments were just dumb.

ANGE:

But what is the significance of Warren Mundine making these comments and why has it thrown the “No” campaign?

PAUL:

That's a very interesting question and the fact of the matter is Warren Mundine has for a long time been quite a high profile Aboriginal leader. Mundine won the support of the influential right faction of the Labor Party in New South Wales and nationally, because of his views to become the first Indigenous president of the Australian Labor Party. But he had a spectacular falling out with the party and this morning I checked why. And Mundine had been on a promise that he would be nominated for the next Senate vacancy. But when that vacancy came up, instead of him getting the nod, Bob Carr got it and Mundine felt he was jilted and he let the party know and criticised them quite publicly as reporting at the time shows. Well, eventually he quit the party. Since then he's become a bit of a favourite of the culture warriors on Sky News After Dark. And there's been speculation in the press that after the referendum, he intends to pursue his ambition to finally get into the Senate, but this time as a Liberal senator and as you know, there is a vacancy to fill Marise Payne's seat. Although there were reports this week that inside the New South Wales Liberal Party his views on treaties and he's speaking out in the way he has probably means he won't get the nod.

Audio Excerpt – Journalist:

“Warren Mundine said defeating the referendum would make treaties between governments and first nations more likely. Do you share that view?”

Audio Excerpt – Peter Dutton:

“Well, I've been very clear that a government I lead will not enter into billions of dollars worth of treaty negotiations that will just see rich lawyers in Sydney and Melbourne get richer.”

PAUL:

And compounding Mundine's problems with the Liberals, Dutton ruled out ever entering into treaty negotiations if he becomes prime minister because Dutton says he doesn't want to spend billions of dollars on treaties where lawyers line their pockets in negotiations that can last 20 or 30 years. This actually forced Mundine within 24 hours of his comments on TV to say, ‘Oh, well, I wasn't really talking about treaties at all, I was talking about native title and land.’

Audio Excerpt – News Host (Sky):

“When Thomas Mayo and his fellow travellers talk about the need for big national and state level agreements about things like reparations and compensation from colonialism. Well, they make their meaning pretty clear. But when you talk about it, you point out that there's hundreds of small tribes that must speak for themselves and who should have the right to have input into future local land uses that are relevant for their local tribe. So when you say treaty, are you on the same page as people like Mr. Mayo and Senator Thorpe?”

Audio Excerpt – Warren Mundine:

“No. They're out to destroy Australia. Let's not kid ourselves…”

PAUL:

Look, it's all an embarrassing retreat and certainly didn't help Mundine's ambitions.

ANGE:

And Paul, this isn't the first time the “No” camp has contradicted itself or, you know, thrown out an idea and then backed down from it. Are they facing enough scrutiny for being so inconsistent?

PAUL:

Well, that's a very interesting point you raise. And I guess we have to remember the “No” campaign is by definition negative. But if you are going to be negative, you'd think you'd have to be coherent as well. And we saw a very similar thing happen with Peter Dutton's commitment to a second but voiceless referendum. If this one fails and he actually promoted the idea on television appearances a week or so ago, but now under a lot of criticism from his own side and from “No” supporters, he appears to think it's not a very good idea anymore to subject the Australian people fairly soon to another referendum on Aboriginal recognition. But historians have noted that they really don't care. In fact, it's their purpose to sow as much confusion as they can. They'll throw out whatever arguments come to hand and they'll see what sticks. Historian at the ANU, Frank Bongiorno, says that in these campaigns they ‘grasp for any argument that might work with voters - coherence or consistency plays no part at all.’ And I think what Bongiorno and other historians are getting at there is that confusion is the friend of the “No” campaign. The more confused people are about even their arguments, the more likely they might be to stick with the status quo.

ANGE:

After the break what can past referendum results tell us about the upcoming vote?

[ ADVERTISEMENTS ]

ANGE:

Paul, this week the polls continued to look difficult for the campaign, but at the same time, we started to see this huge mobilisation of volunteers and supporters on the streets. How effective might that mobilisation be can really make a difference?

PAUL:

Well, they certainly hope it can make a difference. They say that this isn't an election campaign, this is a referendum campaign. It's all or nothing. They can't retreat to save the furniture, you know, to only win in one state or whatever. They've got to go all out and that's what they intend to do. There was an essential poll last week that actually showed that there were still around 30% of people who were persuadable. They might be “No”, but they could be persuadable. And that's the whole idea of mounting conversations. Having the 20 or 30,000 volunteers make phone calls, talk to their relatives, see if they can win them over to the Yes side. And of course, the campaign got a big boost at the weekend with over 200,000 walking for Yes, in our capital cities and regional centres. And this was well above campaign expectations. And I can tell you that here in Canberra at the Walk for Yes rally, organisers were genuinely surprised by the turnout. The crowd was four times the size of people who had registered to take part. But Ange, you know, there's an interesting wrinkle for supporters of the Yes campaign in both the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory, because if you live in the Territory, you're not a fully franchised Australian citizen, you are discriminated against.

ANGE:

Right. And that's because in a referendum there's this double majority rule. So to win you need the majority of the total votes nationally, but you also need to win the majority, you know, four out of six of the states, but not the territories.

PAUL:

Well, that's exactly the point. These votes in the territory and by the way, there are now 700,000 Australians living in the territories. So not an insignificant number, but they're excluded from that second majority. And don't forget, for the referendum to get up, you do need that double majority, the popular vote plus four of the six states. Now, I've got to say that the way the referendums have been put up, it's anachronistic. It was set up 122 years ago when the Northern Territory was still part of South Australia. And while we were going to get a capital territory, it was an idea that didn't happen for 27 years after Federation. And it's especially unfair in this referendum for those in the Northern Territory because the Northern Territory of all the Australian jurisdictions has the biggest proportion of Indigenous Australians. It's 30% of the population, so that's 30% of the population and the Territory will only get half a say in what happens to recognition of their heritage. Also, it's very instructive to have a look at past referendums that have been very close. In 1951, the referendum brought on by the Menzies government to ban the Communists and Communist Party in Australia. Well, this referendum was a question of political freedom. It was hard fought and the final vote came down to a knife edge where the states split three four, yes and three for no will. That immediately defeated the referendum, but an idea of how tight it was. The popular vote for “No” was only 50.56%. Now those numbers could have been turned on their heads. So it still is important even for Territorians to vote in the referendum because that vote could sway the result.

ANGE:

And finally, Paul, it seems like that whenever there's a reset in this campaign, when we start to have a conversation about the voice, that it quickly gets swallowed up in the news, you know, with the latest controversy or whatever is sticking in the news cycle, just how valuable is clear going to be as we get closer to polling day?

PAUL:

Well, it's a good question. How many things can people take in at the one time? There is a view that people can, you know, walk and chew gum at the same time if they want to. However, pollsters have a way of describing what you're putting your finger on there Ange and it's called bandwidth people in all our lives. We have a certain band with things that are actually preoccupying us at the time that we're taking notice of. And the Yes campaign says to me, even in general elections, a huge percentage of Australians don't take any notice, don't put the election or the referendum inside their bandwidth until they actually have to come to vote. And that's why the Yes campaign is putting so much effort into it and hoping in the last couple of weeks there'll be momentum and people will be starting to think, Oh God, I've got a trip to the polls and vote. What am I going to do? And by then, Yes, would be hoping that they've put enough stuff out there to convince them that it's a good idea to go with the referendum.

ANGE:

Paul, thanks so much for your time.

PAUL:

Thank you, Ange. Bye.

ANGE:

And… On Monday my guest on 7am will be the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. It’s an interview all about the Voice, why it’s important to him personally, and why he’s fighting for Australia to vote Yes. Keep an eye out on Monday for a special episode of 7am.

[ADVERTISEMENT]

[Theme music starts]

ANGE:

Also in the news today,

Josh Frydenberg will not recontest the next election in his former seat of Kooyong, saying it was a decision he had been weighing up for some time. Josh Frydenberg was beaten in the 2022 election by the Independent candidate Monique Ryan. His decision comes after he was announced as the new Australian chairman for investment banking firm Goldman Sachs.

And…

The outcome of the referendum may not be known on polling night, according to the Australian Electoral Commissioner. There have been 1.2 million registrations for postal votes, Tom Rogers said, which is about 200,000 more than there were for the 2022 federal election. If the outcome of the vote is close enough, it may take days to receive and count all the postal ballots.

7am is a daily show from The Monthly and The Saturday Paper.

It’s produced by Kara Jensen-Mackinnon, Zoltan Fecso, Cheyne Anderson, Yeo Choong, and Sam Loy.

Our senior producer is Chris Dengate. Our technical producer is Atticus Bastow.

Our editor is Scott Mitchell. Sarah McVeigh is our head of audio.

Erik Jensen is our editor-in-chief.

Mixing by Andy Elston, Travis Evans, and Atticus Bastow.

Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Hogan of Envelope Audio.

I’m Ange McCormack, this is 7am. We’ll be back next week.

[Theme music ends]