After the hammer-blow on 14 October comes the inevitable attempt to rationalise the result. Confronting the cold, hard fact that 61% of the Australian electorate rejected the constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians and a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous voice to parliament, we look for a rescue narrative of some kind that will enable us to find a fragile patch of common ground.
If you believe the platitudes – “the Australian people always get it right” – or the spin: that the emphatic result was explained by the “robust common sense” of the Australian people; you might imagine that Australians, having carefully studied the proposal to alter the constitution and the arguments for and against change, delivered their judiciously reasoned response: “NO”.
