The profound misunderstanding why over 60 per cent of voters rejected the Voice referendum’s proposition is demonstrated in a May 29, 2024, column by one of Australia’s most respected quality thinkers and writers on politics: Paul Kelly, Editor-at-large of The Australian, where he is discussing a new book by Damien Freeman.

Judging by the plethora of published comments on the referendum since its failure (or its success if you voted ‘No’), even many of the ‘No’ voters themselves didn’t articulate the hidden, belligerent agenda that they instinctively rejected. The oft-cited ‘dividing us by race’ was just the obvious top layer; beneath that was the real reason. It was intended as a power-shifting revolution.

I’ll get to that in a moment, but first to Kelly’s column. It begins:

A new book on the Indigenous voice’s failure written by one of its architects warns that Australia is moving into a dangerous phase of its national life, marked by a breakdown between progressives and conservatives where national interest policies are increasingly unobtainable.

The book – The End of Settlement: Why the 2023 Referendum Failed, written by lawyer Damien Freeman – while critical of Anthony Albanese for the failure of the voice, puts the defeat in a deeper framework. Freeman concludes that Australian politics hovers at the edge ‘of a more hostile society’ that risks being paralysed by division.

And it ends:

Freeman makes accusations against both sides: that the Yes side refused to compromise and the No side ran on populist politics. Unsurprisingly, Freeman is reluctant to concede the moral and intellectual justice of the No side when confronted by the final referendum question.

His book, however, is more critical of the advocates of the Voice: the conduct of the campaign was their responsibility and they turned their backs on the need to negotiate and navigate.

Is Australia a nation now splitting into two cultures?

To begin at the end, my answer to that question is yes, but in my opinion the two cultures are not split along lines suggested by Damien Freeman; not in this context. It’s not simply progressives v conservatives; and it’s not black v white. It’s more like radical ‘blak’ v the rest. And ‘blak’ is a tiny minority, sometimes boosted by the radical Muslim (and latterly, Muslim support chanting) cohort.

The two cultures comprise a) the vast majority of Australians and b) a small radical (and loud) minority pursuing the real agenda of the Voice: a substantial power grab cloaked as a ‘patient, gracious call for a voice’, as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese framed it. But yes, the division is hostile. The hostility comes from the refusal to accept the voters’ verdict.

Given that so many champions of the Voice didn’t recognise its radical agenda, in my opinion, we can be forgiven for thinking Albanese himself was blinded by a well-meaning ambition to propel the Aboriginal community towards an outcome that improved the lot of remote communities as the central objective.

Just on that, my view is that the plight of remote communities is well known already and has been for decades. What is confounding well-intentioned efforts and billions of dollars to improve it is the intractable socio-cultural issue. A reluctance to begin a process of assimilation, as if that were evil. Unless required of migrants.

The notion was pretty well recognised by a population living with the issue of remote community dysfunction for generations. It fed, perhaps silently, unannounced, into the consciousness of voters, draining support from the 70 per cent at the launch of the campaign to 40 per cent by decision time.

Perhaps being a migrant I saw the agenda at the heart of the Voice proposition in a harsher light than many of the native born.

So – what do I mean by the hidden agenda? I suggested in the wake of referendum (October 2023) that there was something lurking at the heart of the Statement from the Heart: ‘Voters sensed the presence of something else within the package as they handled it and felt the sharp edges of grievance and revenge within. These sharp-edged elements were kept away from the public square. There was the real agenda … We weren’t voting “yes” or “no” on the high notes of recognition and reconciliation (I’ll come to that one later), but on a package that, like a transformer toy, would open up to unbundle its weaponry.’

I was not the only one.

‘A month before the referendum, Chris Battle and Keith Windshuttle wrote about ‘The Hidden Documents Behind the Uluru Voice’ in Quadrant (13th September); they opened the packaging and revealed some of the payloads. Battle begins: “It would be more accurate, and truthful, if the Uluru Statement from the Heart was renamed “The Uluru Manifesto” because, like The Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels, it is a document declaring a revolutionary political plan of action. According to my dictionary, a manifesto is a public declaration of policy or principles, and that is precisely what the Statement is, particularly when read in the full context of Document 14.’

That document begins with the announcement of hostilities in a spectacular piece of historical reverse engineering: ‘Our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first sovereign Nations of the Australian continent and its adjacent islands…’

Here was the ‘patient, gracious call for a voice’. Voice champion Megan Davis said: ‘The Voice to Parliament is a structural reform. It is a change to the structure of Australia’s public institutions and would redistribute public power via the Constitution, Australia’s highest law.’

These sentiments seeped out into the Australian consciousness – and marinated.

Battle and Windshuttle go on: ‘We should be mindful that Aboriginal activism had its genesis in the Communist Party, as revealed in Geoff McDonald’s Red over Black (1982) and The Evidence (1983), and so we should be fully aware that the activism behind the Voice still holds to the old party-line doctrine of liberating the oppressed victims of colonialism and capitalistic imperialism.’

As for reconciliation, I have argued for years (eg The Spectator Australia cover story, Apology not accepted, Sept. 2, 2017) that it is up to Indigenous Australia to accept the outstretched hand of reconciliation, evidenced by the overwhelming demonstrations of goodwill with countless formal and informal apologies for past deeds, and a structure of the welfare and social regulations that make discrimination against Indigenous Australians an offence – as well as a social taboo. I often quote writer and philosopher Hannah Arendt in this context: ‘Those who hold on to … grievance are often regarded as displaying not sensitivity or honour but belligerence.’

As I was writing this, The Australian reported that Anthony Albanese and Linda Burney are invoking Cabinet in-confidence to keep secret government discussions on the future of a Makarrata commission, despite more taxpayer money being spent on the truth-telling body in the wake of the Voice referendum failure.

Burney said the government remained ‘committed to truth-telling and $5.8m remains available for that. Of course, the work of truth-telling and treaty continues on at a state and territory level, and we do not want to get in the way of that’.