Mark Kenny | Australia's great dividing range revealed during Voice to Parliament referendum

The increasingly personal "ex-Twitter" was awash with bruised egos claiming they might have been "yes" voters had they not been insulted or "guilted" by Voice advocates. Deep stuff.

This reveals the lie in their calls for a politics that is not rigged in favour of corporates, political insiders, and the wealthy.

Were that the real concern, then Australia's refusal to acknowledge the pre-existing populations in its founding document would be a matter of burning injustice. After all, which cohort has been more egregiously wronged? And who could be further from power than a population denied its county and left with a life expectancy 10 years lower than the broader population?

Instead, the discussion about substantive constitutional recognition of First Nations' unique status degenerated into an indulgent melee rent with attacks on media, privileged indigenous leaders, do-gooder politicians, and the educated.

Scurrilous conspiracy theories flourished as a constitutional amendment designed to strengthen the national fabric was used instead to tear it wider.

This upwelling of infantile umbrage was among several Trumpian inversions running amok in this first ever referendum in the social media age - a toxic theatre for an abusive public discourse throbbing with fear, racist abuse, and callous historical indifference.

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Recall the opportunistic attack on Professor Marcia Langton for calling out racist notions lurking underneath the "no" messaging. Notions which demonstrably had summoned up some of the ugliest sentiments expressed in generations.

Suddenly, Langton's lived experience as an indigenous person was stripped from her as the crime of naming racism became more heinous than any actual racism - even in mainstream media. Could we be any more lost?

So much for the past decade of acknowledging country, using Aboriginal place names, and the sense of pride in Indigenous heritage expressed at our civic ceremonies, sporting and cultural events. The ubiquity of these was, if not illusory, then at least, unrepresentative.

Of course, the mother of all Trumpian inversions was how the inherently unifying proposal for a Voice protected in the constitution became itself an attempt to be "divisive" and "racist".

These tags, through their endless repetition, became functionally "true" in social media's ersatz reality of "alternative facts".

Among the savage lessons of this benighted experience is that a referendum question must now clear a triple hurdle. First, it must traverse the bad-faith minefield of bizarre conspiracy theory if it is to secure a majority of votes nationwide and also score a majority in four of the six states.

Social media has eviscerated public trust ensuring that constitutional reform is all but dead. Mind you, it always was pretty unwell. We know the record - just eight of 44 questions have ever been successful, and just one of those from a Labor government. And of course, all eight enjoyed bipartisan political support. Perhaps then, the fourth hurdle, was history itself.

Together, these facts make it hard to understand the naive confidence of the "yes" side heading into this drawn-out 17-month ordeal.

This is not mere hindsight. Many of the problems the Voice faced were plainly visible from the beginning.

The standard retort when you raised such matters with government ministers was that Australia was a different country in the 21st century, more inclusive and tolerant and preternaturally fair. The old rules about referendums and party allegiances, we were encouraged to believe, no longer applied.

In fact Australia is different, but not as described. Rather, it is more frightened and disjointed with close to a third of voters - the social researcher Kos Samaras has described them as the "unsuccessful Australians" - now profoundly suspicious of parties, government, media, and expertise generally. We saw this during the pandemic, after which this referendum had the misfortune of being staged.

More than a year ago (August 2022) this column warned that a comfortable "cosmopolitan consensus" in which the Voice vibe enjoyed 60 per cent support, could not simply be banked.

"The "no" case will enjoy smooth sailing, propelled by trade winds of simplicity, nostalgic myth, and undercurrents of racism and fear ... [whereas] the "yes" case will present as divided from within, complicated and unsettled." Check.

And there was this prediction about the power of an increasingly linked-up outsider constituency: "The point is, this cohort, which is impervious to reasoned argument and exists beyond the established channels of media discourse, is probably wider than appreciated in elite circles." Check, again.

To be fair, the "yes" campaign(s) did eventually outspend the "no" side in online advertising, reflecting a belated recognition of the real battlefield, but it was unnecessarily late in the game.

An analysis by a group of academics with expertise in political communications and polling, found that the "yes" side was particularly active in the final campaign period.

"The Yes23 campaign has outpaced other paid referendum campaign groups in its online advertising spending on Meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram), the most-used platforms for online advertising during this campaign," wrote Professor Andrea Carson and her co-authors in The Conversation last Wednesday.

"Four of the top five online advertisers are supporting the "yes" campaign, with A$364,000 in total advertising spending this past week. Yes23's ad spend is distributed fairly evenly (relative to population) across the mainland states, reflecting its goal to attract national support. The top "no" campaign advertisers on Meta spent just $46,000 this past week."

This disparity reflected the narrower strategic goal of the "no" side which needed only to secure Tasmania or South Australia - the two smallest states by population - assuming Western Australia and Queensland were already in the bag. Importantly, no referendum has ever succeeded without the agreement of Queensland voters - a fifth hurdle?

These facts make it even harder to explain the relative insouciance of the "yes" campaign through 2022 and for most of 2023, and indeed its failure to come up with a better slogan than "yes" which told voters nothing.

What about "Yes for a better Australia" or "Yes for a just Australia" or indeed, "Yes for a unified Australia"? "Yes for a stronger Australia" even.

Trends identified by aggregating poll data suggested the contest was probably already decided by the time the "yes" case got formally serious anyway.

But why this faith in a late campaign effect? In July, Anthony Albanese defended withholding the date of the referendum from his forthcoming speech at the annual Indigenous Garma Festival.

"I don't think that Australians appreciate very long campaigns," he remarked.

Really? The "no" case's long campaign seemed to work a treat. The rule book on long campaigns might have to be junked, alongside smug claims of Labor's superior ground game in the social media age.

The reason Labor's Voice over-arching campaign was so supine remains a mystery.

Dutton on the other hand proved to his colleagues that he is an effective campaigner - ruthlessly focused and shameless when spruiking flagrant contradictions. Honing in on a significant tactical win last Tuesday, he hit all his marks about the Voice being divisive, confusing, dangerous etcetera, adding "we don't want a repeat of ATSIC, and we want practical outcomes".

Well, quite. It was a sign of the shallowness of the debate that he could mouth a key argument for a constitutionally protected Voice but make it sound stinging nonetheless.

It is now clear that Albanese's game plan failed to war-game an Opposition Leader in maximum wrecker mode, much less Dutton's clever drafting in of the articulate young Aboriginal figure, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.

But wasn't it always likely? Opposition leaders who pick up the pieces after losing government rarely become prime minister. Dutton's best chance of surviving long enough to get a shot at the prize involved damaging Albanese's authority and his capacity to deliver.

While a rampaging Dutton was key, it was one of several headwinds the Voice faced. The cost-of-living crisis was also critical. Proceeding in such circumstances with what became a third-order issue for many voters was a calculated risk. It backfired.

Other things went wrong too, almost to the point of the proposal being jinxed. Labor's best advocate and the "father of reconciliation" Senator Pat Dodson suffered a cancer diagnosis, sidelining him for almost the entirety of the greater campaign period. An authoritative and inspirational advocate, Dodson's re-emergence at campaign's end came too late to change things but it did underscore how pivotal he might have been.

Hopes of late bounce were also dashed by the horrendous atrocities unleashed in the Middle East by Hamas terrorists. Anti-Semitic fanatics chanting "gas the Jews" on Sydney's streets ensured the full horror of these sub-human hatreds had their local airing in the news feeds. We might have taken the lesson that healing is always better than hating, but ...

What have we learnt? That while the alternative prime minister seems to be an unrestrained wrecker, this was our work. For we are a country unsure of both past and future, united only by what we are against. Advance Australia Fair? Sure, minus the advancement, and the fairness.