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ANGE:

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

It felt like only a matter of time before we’d begin to hear allegations of dirty tricks in the lead up to the referendum. This week, leaked documents and warped headlines have exposed the tactics that are being used to push the “No” vote.

Today, columnist for The Saturday Paper Paul Bongiorno, on how the strategies to reject the Voice are reverberating through the halls of power.

It’s Friday, September 15.

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ANGE:

Paul, there's been a lot of controversy about the “No” campaign's tactics this week. Can you tell me a bit about what's happened?

PAUL:

Well, and the “No” campaign tactics have been to use fear and doubt rather than facts. And there's evidence this is exactly what they know they're about. On Tuesday, Nine newspapers, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald reported that they'd obtained an online training session for “No” campaign volunteers.

Audio Excerpt – Reporter:

“Run by former Liberal staffer Chris Inglis. The “No” campaign training prizes emotion over facts. This is the difference between facts and figures or the divisive voice. Inglis tells the “No” campaign trainees…”

PAUL:

Chris Inglis, the national campaigning chief for the “No” Activist group Advance, detailed the anti voice movement strategy. He instructed “No” campaign volunteers not to honestly identify themselves upfront as “No” campaigners when calling households. And these households, by the way, have been picked by computer to be soft voters or more inclined to be “No” voters.

Audio Excerpt – Reporter:

“That feeling of uncertainty, of fear or doubt that stays, that lasts for a very, very long time. I'm going to hammer in a lot of this emotive language.” There you have it from the horse's mouth. It's about instilling fear. And it's about sowing the seeds of doubt…”

PAUL:

Volunteers were told the “No” camp's job was to make people suspicious of the voice and its supporters. Inglis gave them misinformation to raise those talking points, things like reparations that Australians will have to pay billions of dollars worth. That Australia Day might change, that there'd be separate laws and separate economies in the nation. If the Voice were to succeed, Inglis said, when reason and emotion collide, emotion always wins, always wins. That's a direct quote. This drew a furious response from the Labor government and the "Yes" campaign.

ANGE:

Yeah, right. And so why did this spill into parliament then?

PAUL:

Well, the group that's doing the training, they're actually the organisation behind the leading “No” campaign Fair Australia, and that's directly aligned with the Coalition's shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. And in Canberra the Government hit out at the “No” campaign and in turn the Opposition accusing Peter Dutton of being the leader of a, quote, misinformation and disinformation campaign.

Audio Excerpt – Anthony Albanese:

“Page one of the Herald and The Age today reported: "The “No” campaign strategy: a deliberate strategy of promoting fear, fear, fear over fact", “No” cause to urge to use fear of fact. And that is what we are seeing.”

PAUL:

Albanese in Question Time on Tuesday said there they are telling their campaigners to promote fear rather than hope, promote division rather than unity.

Audio Excerpt – Anthony Albanese:

“Division, rather than unity to promote the interests rather than the better future to promote ignoring rather than listening to promote exclusion rather than recognition.”

PAUL:

And Treasurer Jim Chalmers in Parliament sheeted home the blame to Dutton.

Audio Excerpt – Jim Chalmers:

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. One of the consequences of the Leader of the Opposition's policy for two referendums, not one, is that this will drag out for as long as possible, so the Leader of the Opposition can drip more poison into the world, Mr. Speaker, and that's how he seeks to divide and diminish this country and reap a political dividend.”

PAUL:

Well this caused furore on the Opposition benches and the Speaker asked him to withdraw ‘to assist the Parliament’ in the quaint way the Speaker put it. However, the sentiment was clearly now on the record.

ANGE:

So things are getting more heated as we get closer to the referendum and as the polls look worse and worse for the "Yes" campaign. Can you tell me a bit more about what we're actually seeing in the polls?

PAUL:

Well, as the polls show, the "Yes" campaign is struggling and support is slowly but would seem surely eroding. The latest resolved poll shows only 35% of voters support the voice and 49% oppose it, with another 6% undecided. Kos Samaras of RedBridge polling, he believes all the polls, including his own in the first week of the campaign, suggest the "Yes" campaign has reached the point of no return. Well, Labor's national secretary, Paul Ericsson's, got another take on this. He told the Labor Caucus on Tuesday that the party's research found 30% of voters. That's about 5 million people still in play. But Ange the “No” campaign's focus group research has found that the simple message that's resonating is that the voice is divisive and of course they're helping it to be divisive by making sure that they campaign insisting that the voice is divisive. It's a vicious circle. This week, “No” advocates went further in pushing this message, twisting the words of "Yes" advocate Marcia Langton with a distorted front page lead in The Australian misreporting, her saying that Langton thinks “No” voters were racist and stupid. Only last week, Langton had been trying to set the record straight around a lot of the misinformation and falsehoods being spread by the “No” campaign. When she was at the National Press Club warning the media to do better in its reporting and not to spread lies. Well, this week she's been the centre of false and misleading reporting. Langton was speaking at a referendum event on Sunday in Bunbury in Western Australia. She said, and correctly it's fair to say...

Audio Excerpt – Marcia Langton:

“Every time the “No” case arises one of their arguments, if you start pulling it apart, you get down to base racism. I'm sorry to say it, but that's where it lands or just sheer stupidity."

PAUL:

Well, NewsCorp, in its papers and on Sky News, tried to claim that she was calling “No” voters racist and stupid. There is a real distinction there.

Audio Excerpt – Andrew Bolt:

“So as you can see, there are racist, racist racists everywhere. And Langton's angry gaze. All those voters, all those liberals, all those “No” campaigners. Don't forget the social workers and the police: racists and stupid people."

Audio Excerpt – Reporter:

“Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is still saying, it seems on social media, on Instagram, for instance, that you have branded “No” voters as racist and stupid."

PAUL:

Marcia Langton told RN breakfast on Wednesday morning she's pursuing legal action over the way her comments have been framed.

Audio Excerpt – Marcia Langton:

“By the end of the day. Yesterday, the article had been rewritten three times. The headline had been changed three times. And today I will have to go to a lawyer and ask a lawyer to write to Peter Dutton, requesting that he remove this post from his Instagram because it is absolutely not true. I absolutely deny it…"

PAUL:

The strident Langton pile-on, you know, with the full force of News Corp and its many platforms in print and online amplified. It has to be said by the Opposition in Parliament will, as Langton herself has warned, take a long time for Australians to recover from the viciousness of this campaign.

ANGE:

Coming up – Did the pressure of the referendum force Anthony Albanese into a deal on housing?

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ANGE:

So, Paul, clearly, if this trend continues, the "Yes" vote and the campaign itself doesn't look like it's in very good shape. How is that reflecting on the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese?

PAUL:

Well, I guess it's a bit hard to say at this point of time. Peter Dutton certainly hopes that his opposition to the proposal, the referendum that was put forward by Albanese at the request of Aboriginal Australians. Well it's a way to inflict a loss on the Prime Minister. Even some of Dutton's own backbench see this as a key motivation behind Dutton's decision to oppose the voice. You know, it's much easier to hand a defeat to Albanese in a referendum than in a general election. Mathematically, the “No” campaign has to convince far fewer Australians to reject the referendum than the "Yes" campaign. To win it, “No” need only three states to go its way to deny the double majority of the popular vote and four states. But one of Labor's more astute powerbrokers from the past, Graham Richardson. Well, he believes if the referendum goes down, the damage to Albanese will be minimal. He says a vast majority of Australians don't see they have much, if any, skin in the game and Kos Samaras says his polling finds exactly that, especially in the outer suburbs. And many resent that the focus isn't on their struggle making ends meet, especially if they have escalating rents or mortgage repayments. And then you may have noticed that this week Albanese astutely secured a deal that goes directly to those voters' concerns.

ANGE:

Yeah and while there was all that news on the voice this week the government did pass some major legislation, its key housing bill… Can you tell me a bit more about that?

PAUL:

Well, Albanese is clearly alert to the toll that the issue of housing affordability and supply restraints could have on his government if they're seen to be left unaddressed. At the end of last week, he was overseas meeting foreign leaders, but when he was flying home, housing was top of mind as his plane landed back in Canberra at 9:30 a.m. on Monday. His negotiations with the Greens over his $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, well, they were still up in the air. The Prime Minister was briefed that the Greens were not budging from their demand for another billion dollars for immediate and direct spending on public and community housing. One Greens senator told me he was driven to get a deal. Well, Bandt and Max Chandler Mather, the Greens housing spokesman, they went to the PM's office to shake hands on the deal and a measure of Albanese's relief and gratitude was the precedent given to Bandt in Parliament that afternoon in Question Time. He got the first question normally reserved for the government side.

Audio Excerpt – Parliamentary Speaker:

“I give the call to the leader of the Australian Greens.”

Audio Excerpt – Adam Bandt:

“Thank you, Speaker. My question to the Prime Minister…”

PAUL:

The Greens Leader duly asked the Prime Minister to update the House on the additional funding for social housing agreed to win the Greens support so the HAFF could pass the Senate this week.

Audio Excerpt – Anthony Albanese:

“Thanks, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Leader of the Greens for his question and I am indeed very pleased that the Housing Australia Future Fund now has majority support in the Senate…”

PAUL:

Well. Albanese thanked Bandt, quote, "for the constructive discussions that we've had".

ANGE:

Paul, I guess it seems like the tone of the political debate and the media reporting at the moment, the message about this housing deal might kind of struggle to cut through, it might get lost. Is this the government's biggest challenge right now?

PAUL:

Well, Nationals leader David Littleproud, he got it right when he told the joint parties room on Tuesday: ‘for the next five weeks, the referendum is the only game in town.’ And there's no doubt the "Yes" campaign does want politics to take a back seat from here on in and to really emphasise that the Voice has come from Indigenous people and that it has a majority support from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. And the "Yes" campaign is engaging in a media blitz and events around the country this weekend. Privately, however, there's been more than a few "Yes" campaigners now seriously considering the ramifications of a failed referendum and the stakes couldn't be higher. Not so much for Albanese or Dutton, but in my opinion, for how we see ourselves as a nation.

ANGE:

Paul, thanks so much for your time.

PAUL:

Thanks, Ange. Bye.

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ANGE:

Also in the news today,

Sydney had the world’s third most-polluted air yesterday. A haze of smoke continued to hang over the city from hazard reduction burns that have been underway to try and prepare for severe fire conditions anticipated this summer.

And…

The government has refused to release an intelligence report into the threat climate change poses to our national security, despite a push to do so by the crossbench. Climate change minister Chris Bowen said in parliament yesterday that no Australian government has released a national security report like this “ever” – and the Labor government was acting within that precedent.

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 again next week.

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