Waleed Aly reveals the ‘biggest mistake’ about the Voice to Parliament referendum
Waleed Aly reveals the ‘biggest mistake’ about the Voice to Parliament referendum
Waleed Aly has revealed what he believes is the biggest mistake of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament’s Yes campaign.
The co-host of the Logie-winning Project joined the debate three weeks after the October 14 referendum, as the Yes campaign tries to recover from dwindling support lost in recent months and remains on course for defeat.
He claims the campaign’s “biggest mistake is selling itself as an antidote to history, not the future.”
Aly believes that the Voice debate is now at a point where the details are not particularly relevant and have little to do with the merits of a constitutional advisory body.
“That debate, which was once occupied by dry questions about powers and legal consequences, seems to have given way to a battle for larger stories about national history and identity,” he wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald on Friday.
The Project co-host Waleed Aly (pictured with his wife) claims that The Voice’s “biggest mistake is selling itself as an antidote to history, not the future.”
According to Aly, Australians are split into three broad camps defined by competing approaches to our history.
There are the No voters who wanted to move on from the country’s history or escape it.
It was a deceptively broad public appeal that attracted not only white Australians but also first-generation migrants who arrived here looking for a fresh start and new opportunities.
The second group are the Yes voters who wanted to have a better feeling about the past.
“It arises from a sense of national guilt, but a feeling that is accompanied by a kind of patriotism,” Aly writes.
‘The goal, therefore, is reconciliation, so that a less guilty version of the settler state can emerge. The Voice helps erode the tension between white guilt and patriotism, while keeping things largely intact. This is the way educated people – mostly but not exclusively white – tend to think. That is why we see that the yes vote is slowly being reduced to that cohort.’
Anthony Albanese and Yes campaigners are on course for defeat in the Voice referendum
He fears the dangers of presenting the Voice as a “grand historical moment” is that “you’re asking people to see it as something deeper – a kind of ritual of national absolution.”
The final group consists of No voters such as Senator Lidia Thorpe, who reject the legitimacy of the ‘settler state’ entirely.
Aly says no one knows how many instinctive Yes voters the third camp has convinced to jump ship.
‘The generosity of The Voice is that it deliberately chooses reconciliation over antagonism. It buys in, instead of resisting. That’s an attractive idea to most people, which is probably why the initial support for The Voice was so strong,” he wrote.
‘Making the Voice a response to both the past and the present also adds the full burden of history. And that, I’m afraid, is too much to bear.’
Waleed Aly (left) says The Voice has given way to struggles over bigger stories in national history
Aly’s comments follow a recent fiery on-air conversation with Senator Penny Wong about The Project, when he asked whether the Voice could be the “first step” toward new demands, such as reparations or a treaty.
‘No of course not. You know that Waleed, and I appreciate you telling me that,” she said.
‘But those who have been in politics for a while may remember the apology debate, the apology was opposed by Peter Dutton and John Howard and many in the Coalition at the time and on that basis, on the basis of some of the misinformation or the things you just put before me.”
National support for The Voice has fallen below 45 percent and could produce a worse outcome than the 1999 republic referendum if the current decline continues.