Joiners And Non-Joiners

Months have passed and finally I post about the recent referendum proposing a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous advisory body to the Commonwealth. I had written other things online (a few comments in The Guardian and a few with friends on Facebook) at the time. My focus here is on what the results say for more than Indigenous representation but for civil society as a whole.

It is tempting to compare the referendum with past electoral events. The 1999 Republican Referendum concerned a key aspect of Australian identity but had the same implications for all Australians. The 2017 Same Sex Marriage postal survey (intended as a plebiscite) concerned particular Australians but was imposed on them by the political game-playing of our last Federal Liberal-National Government. In contrast the recent referendum for an Indigenous Voice was developed and proposed by the Indigenous community itself.

Pursuing that proposal was an election promise of the current federal Labor Government. Once that happened there pretty much had to be a referendum even if its chances looked shaky. And those of us committed to a kind of reform that is informed by those directly affected by it had to take a stand.

The problem then looked like a lack of bipartisanship. History showed that referenda only pass if both major parties support them. And the conservative Liberal-National Opposition at a federal level soon decided to oppose the proposal. The conventional wisdom then is that if only we could have had bipartisan agreement then the referendum would have passed. I wonder. We needed to get a "majority of votes in a majority of states" but fell short of even a majority in the electorate overall. I want to look more closely then at the political landscape.

Labor were united as a party behind the Voice but surveys showed many recent Labor voters decided to vote No. Would bipartisanship have swayed them? Possibly if (as I suspect) many more than we assume are swinging voters. Nonetheless it shows political sides are rarely monolithic. That is even more so with Liberal-Nationals. A National federal parliamentarian became an independent to campaign for the Voice. A Liberal federal shadow minister moved to the backbench to do likewise. And at a state level whole party divisions including state leaders prominently supported the Voice. Conversely the Voice supporting Greens lost a senator to independence over the radical notion that constructive reform is never satisfactory. Votes went in all directions from the perspective of party politics. And that is just one way of looking at society.

There is a complex array of interconnected voluntary associations that seek to involve and advocate for many distinct yet overlapping groups within wider society. An impressive number of such organizations endorsed the Voice. These crossed all sorts of historical divides - labour and capital, Christian and Muslim, nerdy academics and sporty jocks. I noted this and had hoped it would have an impact on the campaign. And I think it did. Such organizations draw on and communicate with those who tend to get involved in the connective structures of society. One intersting survey even suggested that Yes voters were more likely to be involved in various community groups.

There were plenty of volunteers for the Yes case and my hunch is we had a better face-to-face campaign than the No case. Estimates say there were something like eighty thousand Yes volunteers (almost one for every ten Indigenous Australians). It defintely felt to me like we had a better presence on the ground. And this made sense to focus on as a way of circumventing the political distortions of the World Wide Web. Yet it seems those distortions now seep into all other aspects of life. And how many of us are even aware of, let alone pay heed to, the organizations formed to advocate for us? We lost despite that on-the-ground campaign (which it transpires was better funded than that of our rivals). We lost despite all those endorsing groups. And suddenly it looked to me like the Yes and No votes were populated by joiners and non-joiners respectively.

To put it starkly, this could even be described as a divide between civil society and mass society. Some individuals are still integrated into various forms of community (something Indigenous Australians have long understood) while a growing number are loosened from such links and must form others for themselves. Some of my thinking is informed by reading Disconnected by Australian academic and politican Andrew Leigh. And maybe I'm exaggerating. This was just one vote and what it suggests hardly aligns with a host of recent Australian elections. But I do worry about the seeming drift from pluralism to populism in our political relations.

Cultural forces could be part of why we lost. However I cannot overlook institutions. Our electoral rules are among the best in the world (never mind what some suspicious No voters felt in bringing pens they 'trusted' to the ballot box). But there is one key flaw in how we conduct referenda. In every committee or general meeting I have ever attended there is always the option of abstaining in a reductionist yes-no vote. But in referenda we only get two boxes to choose between. Voting informally is an option but is hardly one that electoral commissioners can advise. There should explicitly be a third box for those who cannot decide and do not wish their vote to be counted in calculating a majority. The slogan "if you don't know then vote no" would then become the truly uninvolved "if you don't know then don't vote" and it would become more difficult to manipulate apathetic voters.