Are the Labo(u)rs Out of Touch? No, the People are Racist.
Democracy is hard yakka
Saturday, 14 July 2023, was a night of defeat for the centre left in both Australia and New Zealand. Polls and analyses said both Labour parties would not get what they wanted, but for party members and voters, they had to keep the faith. They had to believe in the good conscience of the people. A good fight is about beating the odds, and to hell with Murdoch’s misinformation.
And yet, the people chose differently. Australians said “No” to the Voice referendum, and New Zealanders said no to the continuation of the Hipkins government. Such negativity. Such irrationality. Such rejection of possibilities for greater things, for reconciliation and healing.
At least since the 1990s, the world has learned the basics of Anglosphere politics. The centre left party is good and centre right party is bad. The centre right, the conservatives, consist of rich men and their arrogant colonial family at the top, and the racist rednecks at the bottom. They are warmongers, they are uneducated, and they are boring.
The centre left, the liberals, consist of funky and plucky smart men and women at the top and the hardworking labours at the bottom. They are welcoming, they are cosmopolitan, and they are fun.
Asian migrants learned to vote for the centre left, and Asians learned to prefer the centre left. Bill Clinton, Mandarin-speaking Kevin Rudd, Barack Obama, all the way to Jacinda Ardern, a real-life Lisa Simpson. Versus George W. Bush, Tony Abbott, and ugh, Donald Trump. The centre left supposedly supported multiculturalism and immigration, while the centre right supposedly clung to their white past and might mock your accent and lunch.
And yet, the centre left has taken the migrants for granted. You’ll always vote for diversity, kindness, and progress. Together we will win since we have the numbers, we have the degrees, and we have the right side of history.
Migrants know that a conservative government does not really affect their visa application, their safety in the West, and their link to overseas relatives. In fact, a centre left government is no easier on migration, might be weaker on law and order, and is no less militaristic.
Asians were generally supportive of government policies during the COVID-19 pandemic, including lockdown policies in Australia and New Zealand. But while American Democrats insisted that assaults and even murders against Asian Americans were a product of Trumpian racism, Asian Americans knew better – the aggressors would never vote for Trump. After all, the #StopAsianHate movement was quickly derailed by Asian American academics, on the premise that it distracted #BlackLivesMatter and harmed the proposed Black & Asian unity against white supremacy. Meanwhile, in Australia, some academics and writers also asked Asian Australians to realise that they were settler colonials too, despite being recent migrants, and to ally with First Nations/Indigenous (“Aboriginal” covers continental indigenous population) activists in fighting white supremacy.
We move on to 2023. The pandemic has been tamed, Labor had governed Australia for months, and Ardern resigned suddenly, saying “no longer have enough in the tank”. A year of lawlessness began, with more crimes hitting streets and suburbs, even without police defunding like in the United States. Both the Labor and Labour parties in Australia and New Zealand pushed the parallel agenda of trans rights and indigenous sovereignty, amid inflation, housing crises, and as mentioned, rising crime.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the referendum question in March, asking Australians if they approve or not an alteration to the Constitution to establish an ‘Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islander Voice’. Yes, for approval, or No, for rejection.
So, what’s the Voice? It will be a body that will represent the indigenous people to the Parliament and the Executive Government on matters related to the natives. Members will represent each state and territory (including the TSI in Queensland), gender, and age.
This body seems superfluous in a democracy, since as Australian citizens, indigenous Australians interested in politics can join a political party, get elected as a member of the parliament, and represent their constituents the way other Australian politicians do. They may also get elected as mayors and council members.
Ah, but that is how one thought in 2013. The 2020s bring up the thought that ongoing colonialism and white supremacy make it impossible for indigenous people to get ahead in life, let alone to be a member of parliament. There are plenty of indigenous Australian politicians from different parties, and they took both Yes and No positions, but that’s not the point.
The point is the anxiety of affluent white liberal Australians. American and European academics, celebrities, and tourists are surprised to find few black people from African or Caribbean backgrounds in Melbourne and Sydney, compared to Toronto or Paris. Anyone who spends three nights in Australia knows it’s not a white place at all – the downtown is crowded with Asian students and Mediterranean workers and patrons, and dozens of languages are spoken in the tram. But Africans, despite their existence, are outnumbered by Europeans and Asians.
In the current American mind, that means Australia is racist. Australia is uncool, Australia is outdated, and Australia might be an apartheid South Africa in disguise. For Melbourne Uni professors, for celebrities making it in London (Cate Blanchett, I love you and I’ve predicted your stance), and for international journalists, this is very embarrassing. The Voice can change that.
And so, the Yes campaign started with government backing, media endorsement, and corporate advocacy. It’s just like kneeling against racism in the Premier League and protecting trans kids in America. It’s fuzzy, it’s friendly, it’s progressive, it’s diverse, it’s healing.
And like those campaigns, it’s a bourgeoise game. Boomers who got another go of the 1960s. Candy-haired uni students. Fashionable journalists and veteran hosts. People who worried less about rent dues, about feeding their children, about being victims of crime, about how the Voice would affect their finances and security.
After all, there were immigrants who understood how racial politics worked in the old country. There were working-class parents feeling uneasy with ‘pay the rent’. There were people who really couldn’t understand why we’d need to change the constitution – as if more bodies and more politicians would make things better.
By mid-2023, analysts had said that the Yes campaign took things for granted and should have made more effort to convince average Australians. But like in the republic referendum of 1999, the Yes side took confidence as strength, not vulnerability. Obviously, the No side was a bunch of racists, uneducated, and bigoted white people who were outnumbered. More ads, more celebrity endorsement, more think pieces, and more land acknowledgments on footy and school functions would persuade common Australians to vote Yes.
The alarm had been ringing just before PM Albanese announced the referendum date on 30 August 2023: More Australians were projected to vote No in most states and territories. The No campaign, with almost no ad on TV, ran two messages: Say No if you’re not sure, and No to the division of Australians.
Predictably, Yes supporters cried misinformation. No, the Voice will not be the third chamber. No, the Voice will not manage money or deliver service. Then they patronised Australians who were still unsure. Don’t be mean. Don’t be racist. Don’t be a conspiracy theorist. Think how the world will judge Australia if this fails.
Australians indeed hardly cared about what the world (i.e., BBC and CNN) thought. The approval failed to reach a majority in all states and territories, except the Australian Capital Territory, also known as Canberra. And it took just two hours to end the contest.
It shows that the ACT is the most educated and most bureaucratic part of Australia. It shows that Western Sydney, a very multicultural and working-class part of Australia, voted No. But the No campaigners couldn’t really celebrate. It was just one week after the massacres in Israel, and soon on Sunday morning, thousands of Australians marched for Palestine, without any sympathy for the kidnapped, raped, and murdered Israelis. This is what multiculturalism is like. This is what decolonisation is like.
Luckily, Australian universities did not hold rallies for Palestine and average Australians wouldn’t know the “this is decolonization” controversy. But average Australians understood what happened in Israel and how it’s framed by Australian students, Islamists, and academics as a righteous fightback. In other words, Australians were not in the mood for progressive politics.
On the other hand, progressive Australia and New Zealand were in a mood for the Resistance. Against the people. Guardian contributors said that New Zealanders wanted change but didn’t know what they signed up to. The Australian media are unforgivable.
Losing by 60% is bad but there are silver linings. Yes won in the cities, so it’s all the fault of the suburbs and the bogans. Aboriginal (again, referring to the mainlanders) Australians voted Yes despite failing to win the Northern Territory. The faults are not from the Yes campaign, but from others. Failure of education. Murdoch’s misinformation (News Corp does not own any network channel, but several newspapers and Sky News Australia). That ghoul Peter Dutton, Leader of the Opposition.
The federal government might want to move on: The Middle East situation is very volatile, China is still unpredictable, and Australians still need to pay real rent and bills. Plus, the defeat of New Zealand’s Labours serves as another warning for Canberra. But state governments, all Labor, will not want to disappoint their voters and donors.
Meanwhile, the Canberra class lives in the same. Never mind their peers in Turtle Island, they are behind the Kiwis of Aotearoa in respecting the Indigenous. The people of Australia have ruined their journey, the petty people with their preoccupations with paying rent and protecting children.