The failure of The Voice shows why Labor is crap at Constitutional amendment
Progressives care too much about disagreement to build broad enough support.
When the six Australian colonies were federating to form the Commonwealth of Australia, the drafters of the Constitution adapted provisions from various polities. From Switzerland, they took the notion of amending the Constitution via referendum, including requiring a majority of voters in a majority of States voting Yes for a Constitutional amendment to pass.
During the history of the Commonwealth of Australia, there have been 45 such proposed amendments. Only eight have passed. A further five got a majority of votes but not a majority of States.
Voting in Australian federal elections is compulsory. The House of Representatives has single-member electorates. The Senate has equal number of Senators per State — currently twelve — plus two each from the two largest Territories.
Australia uses a preferential voting system. Voters number ballots in the order of their preference. The number one vote is known as the primary vote. In Senate elections, usually only half the Senators for each State are up for election each time.
The Senate is elected by (pdf) a system of proportional representation. The total primary vote in the Senate is the best measure of the base political support for each political Party.
Agreement required
The only Constitutional amendments that have passed have had the support of both the Prime Minister (PM) and the Opposition Leader of the day.
Such an agreement is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition. While no amendment without such agreement have passed, four that had such agreement failed to pass.
So, agreement across the political aisle is necessary. Indeed, only one Constitutional amendment has ever got significantly more votes than the Senate vote of the Parties supporting it (Surplus Revenues, 1910, it failed) — though some have substantially less. In other words, politicians can be quite good at convincing their own supporters to vote Yes, but are hopeless at convincing their non-supporters to do so.
The results of proposed Constitutional amendments have some clear patterns:
No Constitutional referendum has been passed without the support of the Opposition of the day.
The "Yes" vote for referendums held separately from a Federal election has never exceeded the primary Senate vote for the supporting Parliamentary parties at the preceding Senate election.
There is a stronger correlation between support for referendums and the primary Senate vote of the supporting Federal Parliamentary parties when referendums are held simultaneously with general elections than when they are held separately.
Oppositions are weaker at "delivering" their vote than governments or third parties
Lack of Labor success
Of the eight that have passed, seven were proposed by non-Labor Governments. Labor (ALP) Governments have a truly diabolical record at getting their Constitutional amendments up, with 26 proposals and only one success (Social Services, 1946). This was the only occasion when there was full Coalition support for an ALP proposal.
It was also the successful Amendment with the lowest Yes vote (54 per cent). Apart from State Debts, 1910 — 55 per cent Yes vote, the only successful amendment not to pass in all States, as New South Wales voted against it — all the other successful amendments got over 60 per cent of the vote.
Non-Labor Governments have been much more successful in getting ALP support. Of the 18 amendments proposed by non-ALP Governments, the ALP Opposition supported eleven.
The 1999 Republic referendum is a special case, in that it was not supported by the sitting PM but was supported by the Opposition Leader. It failed to pass.
So, why are non-Labor Governments much more successful getting ALP support for their proposals than the other way around?
Differences in identity
This goes to differences in patterns of identity between conservatives and progressives.
Conservatives typically anchor their identity in things outside themselves. Hence the classic conservative concern for order, for the preservation of things with which they strongly identify.
As their identity is anchored in things outside themselves, it is much less likely that disagreeing with a conservative will be a threat to their identity. This makes it easier for conservatives to negotiate an agreement with those they otherwise disagree with.
By contrast, progressives typically ground their identity in things within themselves: specifically, various moral, emotional and cognitive commitments. This makes disagreement much more likely to seem an attack on their identity.
To put it another way, the default progressive view is that they are just “being moral”, so folk who significantly disagree are failing to “be moral” and one does not compromise with those failing to “be moral”.
Progressives tend to be highly tribal because of the joint investment in beliefs conferring identity, legitimacy and status. They are invested in the same cognitive club. As disagreement is much more likely to be seen as an attack on their identity — indeed, a failure to be moral — it is harder for progressives to come to agreement across the political aisle.
Hence Labor Governments being consistently so poor at getting non-Labor Oppositions to agree to their proposed Constitutional amendments while non-Labor Governments are much more able to get agreement from Labor Oppositions to their Constitutional amendments.
The narrowing Voice campaign
We can see these dynamics operating quite clearly in the 2023 campaign for The Indigenous Voice to Parliament which lost in all States.
Greg Craven — constitutional lawyer, former Crown Counsel of Victoria, former vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University — was a prominent supporter of the Yes case. He wrote an after-the-failure autopsy in The Australian. The piece is clearly an attempt to say “if you are going to attempt Constitutional change, don’t do it like this”.
Greg Craven identifies eight reasons for failure. Three have longer term significance.
The first was endemic overconfidence. The leaders for Yes – including Anthony Albanese – were simply convinced victory was inevitable. They would hear no contradiction. They were told repeatedly that history showed referendums were hard, and those on controversial topics – such as Indigenous recognition – were especially difficult. They reacted with contempt. This referendum was special. It would win at a canter. Indeed, it was said, the answer was so obvious there wouldn’t even be a No case.
They are progressives, so they own morality. This endemic overconfidence — as they owned morality — led to:
The second problem was an absolute dismissal of bipartisanship, especially by the Prime Minister, but also by other Yes protagonists. At one level, bipartisanship simply was unnecessary when there was only one answer.
But it went further. It was clear that, especially in the case of Albanese, a partisan referendum was the desired scenario. This would give him an unprecedented victory, placing him in the progressive pantheon. His conservative enemies, especially Peter Dutton, would be crushed.
As a consequence:
It simply is not true to say Dutton was solely responsible for a partisan referendum.
He was never consulted, as opposed to being told what was happening. The PM’s offers to consider changes to words or content were not real. Dutton was meant to oppose. Eventually, as a matter of politics, he did. But before that, there was an opportunity to at least persuade him towards only modest contradiction, with conscience votes and moderate arguments. This possibility was spurned.
The systematic failure to consult has a much bigger implication about the proposal itself. A friend wittily described the proposed Voice to Parliament as creating an indigenous House of Lords.
A constitutionally-recognised body, based on ancestry, with the equivalent of life peers? Not a bad description.
Actually, it is an even better descriptor than that. A classic epigram about the House of Lords was that it protected the Conservative interest when they were not in office. Swap out Conservative and swap in progressive, and that is exactly how The Voice would have operated.
When Labor was in office, The Voice could be expected to be cooperative. When the Coalition was in office, maximum disruption was to be expected. “Being moral” would, of course, demand it.
The absolute refusal to consider any conservative suggestions to broaden support for the proposed Voice was something conservatives friendly to The Voice expressed frustration about. Those who were unfriendly took it as a huge red flag about how The Voice would operate.
Conservatives supporting The Voice had not thought it through. The complete freezing out of conservative input to the proposal was very revealing.
Greg Craven lists various other problems, then he comes to:
The seventh enemy of Yes was condescension. Whatever the Yes campaign said, it seemed to believe any ordinary Australian who was not convinced was a cretin. The electorate hated it.
The Yes side complained constantly of “misinformation”. There were untruths on each side, but the proponents of the referendum eventually were condemning every argument against the voice not merely as wrong but as deliberate duplicity. This again suggested to the electorate that they were too stupid to sift fact from fiction.
But if you own morality, of course all this is so.
Blinding moralising
If your fundamental view of yourself is that you, and those with whom you agree, are just “being moral”, it becomes that much more difficult for you to concede the legitimacy of disagreement. In particular, to concede — or even see — that the enforcement of acceptable opinion has intensified and narrowed. No, all that has happened is our sense of what is moral has changed: indeed, clearly for the better.
This blindness to the self-righteous restriction of what is acceptable — because you just own morality — cripples the ability to be persuasive. In large part, because you become unable to see how things look to those outside your moral magic circle.
When I pointed out to a highly intelligent, perceptive, informed friend that it was now unacceptable in much of academe to support a position that 60 per cent of the electorate voted for, or belong to half the political mainstream, she seriously cited attitudes to Communists in the 1950s as a sign that all that had happened was what was acceptable had shifted.
Communists were a tiny percentage of the electorate and advocated the violent overthrow of Australian democracy and society. Somehow, that is equivalent to a position 60 per cent of the electorate supported or belonging to half the political mainstream.
There has been no time in Australian history, prior to the current moment, when holding a position that 60 per cent of the electorate had voted for, or belonging to half the political mainstream, would have been unacceptable within large sections of academe, to the extent of foreclosing or threatening your academic career. This is precisely the situation we are now in.
But if all this is just “being moral” then all that has happened is “being moral” has shifted, indeed improved.
This belief that one just “owns morality” that one’s politics is just “being moral” is incredibly blinding. It also generates a strong tendency for progressives to end up being arrogant, self-righteous, condescending shits.
Consider the 1999 Republic referendum. The sitting PM, John Howard was a conservative monarchist. Why not wait in holding such a referendum until there was a friendly PM? Because part of the point was to humiliate John Howard.
Prior to the 1999 referendum, I assembled and analysed the stats on Australian Constitutional amendments, because I was pretty sure this was not going to work out the way the progressives wanted it to. And lo!, I was correct.
Fast forward to 2023, and the sitting Labor PM wants to humiliate an unpopular conservative Opposition Leader via a proposal starting with around 65 per cent popular support and it blows up in their face even worse than was the case in 1999.
Labor cannot say “we were self-righteous shits and it blew up in our face, yet again”. So, instead we get “those nasty Liberals reneged on their agreement” because obviously there is no good reason to disagree with progressives as they are just “being moral”.
And we are back to why Labor is so crap at Constitutional amendments.
References.
Arnold Kling, Three Languages of Politics: Talking Across the Political Divides, Cato Institute, [2013] 2017.
M. Warby, ‘Constitutional Referendums: Bipartisan or Bust,’ Parliamentary Research Service Research Note, Number 46, 6 June 1995.
Most people believe that they are moral, but few are so convinced of their own righteousness that they are willing to dismiss others who disagree with them, much less refuse to talk or listen to them. How do people become so convinced of their own godlike omniscience and beneficence that they are willing to write off millions who disagree as evil or stupid? Nature, nurture, or some combination? Is it that they’ve lived their lives in intellectual bubbles never having heard a rationally expressed view that differed from their own?
Z-man “conservatives are cheering that Harvard replaced their black lesbian president with someone who looks like he is from an antisemitic pamphlet. Meanwhile the public schools are full of pedophiles and drug dealers. No one should care about Harvard’s president, but they should care about who is running the local schools.”