A Damaged PM Reaps What He Sowed

The Voice has been killed off by the Australian voters, and now Aboriginal flags are being flown at half-mast during this week of mourning and sorry-business. But the Voice was only one of the three things that was sought in the Uluru Statement from the Heart, a document that Albo pledged he would implement in full.  The other two were Makarrata/Treaty and Truth-Telling.

Albo can no longer deliver on the Voice, but what about the other two in the trifecta?  Will he worm out of his commitment, because it is no longer possible to deliver the Uluru Statement in full?  Or, will he go ahead and support the implementation of the Treaty and Truth-Telling at the Federal level, as the Aboriginal “leaders” will no doubt be pushing, after the week of mourning?

Many questions, but like in the debate over the referendum, few answers are likely to be forthcoming.  It is probably fair to say that the majority of Australian voters who wrote “NO” on their ballot papers did so because they received no rational explanation of how creating another expensive Canberra-based institution will close the “Gap”.  Albo may have been resonating with the “vibe”, but those vibrations did not extend to the majority of the Australian voters, who remained still and used their brain instead.

Most Quadrant readers will have been aware that the Voice to Parliament was only meant to be the “foot in the door”, and the real agenda was to set the stage for the Treaty and Truth-Telling process that would establish the sovereign status of the so-called First Nations at the Australian and international level.  To that end, the Aboriginal activists and their Leftist fellow travellers will redouble their pressure on Albo, that man of conviction, to deliver on his promises to implement the Uluru Statement in full.  Albo will probably want to walk away from his train wreck, satisfied that it was the No campaigners who derailed it with their “misinformation and disinformation”, but he will not be allowed to renege on his promise. Rather, he will be pressured to support parliamentary legislation to bring about what the referendum failed to deliver.

The failure of the referendum, with all the time and money wasted, the rancour and division generated, must surely affect Albo’s hold on the top job, unless he can pull a magic rabbit out of his hat.  Perhaps he needs to return to Uluru during this week of mourning, to get a re-charge of his “vibe”, or has Uluru let him down as well?