It seems for opposition leader Peter Dutton “sorry” is not the hardest word but rather “no”.
All summer long Dutton has been peppering the Albanese government with questions and demands relating to the Indigenous voice.
Without ever saying he opposes constitutional entrenchment of a voice, as his Coalition colleagues in the Nationals have done, Dutton seems intent on giving Australians reasons to doubt or outright oppose it in the upcoming referendum.
First there was Dutton’s suggestion to legislate the voice before proceeding to a referendum to demonstrate it works.
Anthony Albanese refused because a constitutionally entrenched voice was what Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders asked for in the Uluru statement from the heart.
Next came the demand that if the prime minister won’t legislate it could he at least reveal a draft bill before the referendum, something the government’s expert advisers have warned could confuse voters.
And now comes his reaction to questions from Sky News and 2GB Radio asking Albanese to rule out that the government might legislate the voice anyway if the referendum to constitutionally entrench it fails.
Albanese dead-batted the question, earning a rebuke from Dutton on Wednesday that he is being “very tricky” by refusing to answer.
“Is he saying to the Australian public if you vote no in the referendum that he will legislate the next day to bring it in?
“If that’s the case, well, pass the legislation now and demonstrate to Australians how it can work.”
Albanese has not answered the question about what to do if the referendum fails because, like all of these tests and traps being set for him, it’s a lose-lose proposition if he does.
Saying “yes, we’ll legislate it anyway” invites conservatives to argue, as broadcaster Ben Fordham did on Wednesday, that the referendum vote doesn’t “count” because “people will be wondering ‘why are we going to the ballot box?’”
Saying “no, it’s referendum or bust” invites the rejoinder that it can’t be that important to get First Nations input into decisions through a voice if the government feels it can do without it.
Wednesday’s doorstop marked another serious escalation in Dutton’s shadow campaign against the Voice.
In recent days the attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, challenged Dutton to answer two questions: does he support constitutional recognition (in a Sunday interview, he said yes he does); and does he accept that consulting Indigenous Australians improves outcomes? Say yes to both, and he should support a voice, Dreyfus reasoned.
Although the questions were posed to him with no suggestion they would be on the referendum ballot paper, on Wednesday Dutton responded that Australians will be asked just one question, not two.
He accused the government of “trying to give moral cover to the voice through constitutional recognition”, which he labelled a “cheap political trick”.
“And frankly it’s pretty tacky from the prime minister to try and conflate the two issues and to try and trick and deceive the Australian public.”
The reason the questions are related is that entrenchment of the voice is the form of constitutional recognition First Nations people have asked for.
The only way the questions can be disentangled is if one thinks it’s acceptable to achieve constitutional recognition without enshrining the voice – that is, with poetic words acknowledging Indigenous Australians only.
Is that, the position of former Liberal prime ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott, what Dutton is tip-toeing towards? Only he can say.
For the moment we are stuck in an endless loop of questions asking for detail – many of which Dreyfus says Dutton already knows the answer to, the closest the mild-mannered attorney general gets to accusing him of bad faith – or demands Dutton knows the government can’t or won’t fulfil.
One last point on the way the two leaders frame the debate.
Albanese frames the request for a voice as coming from Indigenous Australians, from the grassroots up, winning support from a broad range of groups in society, with final details to be ironed out by the parliament.
“This is not my proposal,” he told 2GB. “This isn’t the government’s proposal. This needs to be the people’s proposal.”
In Dutton’s framing, there needs to be a government proposal and Albanese must own it.
On Wednesday Dutton said “if the constitutional question goes down, if Australians say, ‘I just don’t have the detail, I don’t understand what the prime minister is talking about’” – as if that might be the only possible cause of failure.
He insisted that “nobody wants to see the cause of reconciliation go backwards” but warned if Albanese “presides over a model which is botched from the start then that’s exactly what will happen”.
“He needs to be very careful with the tricky path that he’s taken. It might be clever politics, not to provide the detail, but it’s going to result in a very difficult situation come the second half of this year.”
Dutton’s comments – at best a prediction, at worst a threat – foreshadow an ugly referendum campaign, one that will be doubly so because he’s given fair warning of who he intends to blame.
