Human rights deal with the proper balance in relations between individuals, society and the state. This makes them an issue of governance more than law. Their advocacy rests on the moral imagination to feel the pain of others as one’s own. Human rights laws treat all citizens as rights-bearing equals in and under the law, with the same immunities, privileges and obligations. Universalising the human rights norm – that all human beings are equal in dignity and rights irrespective of inherited privileges, income inequalities, rank, race and religion – was one of the great achievements of the last century. In more proof that history does irony, while our government is bent on re-racialising Australia’s governance construct by making race the organising principle of a new chapter in the constitution, the US Supreme Court has struck down race-based affirmative action in university admissions.

Are the architects and champions of the Voice panicking yet as public support for it tumbles? Having second thoughts about hijacking the inherent goodwill of Australians to codify grievance in the constitution as arguments against resonate in the wider community? Efforts to shame Australians into voting Yes are backfiring, moving people in a two-step process from a soft Yes into a soft Don’t Know and then a hard No. Enlisting industry and sporting codes is fuelling a backlash. Moral intimidation by the self-appointed custodians of public virtue to shame us into voting Yes isn’t working. In the latest Newspoll, No voters outnumbered Yes nationally 47 to 43 (a seven-point turnaround in three weeks) and in four states. Only Victoria and New South Wales are still trending Yes. Most worryingly for Albanese, support is slipping among Labor voters and the youth. If the referendum fails, Albanese will own it. He rejected the option of splitting constitutional recognition and a legislated voice, rebuffed calls to defer the referendum until after a proper consultative process, and insults and belittles those with good-faith concerns as stupid racists.

The product is fundamentally flawed. Born of racist assumptions, it infantilises Aboriginal Australians and reduces them to wards of the state in permanent tutelage. Its major effects will be to entrench identity politics, make us a more racially divided society, empower a new bureaucracy that will feed parasitically on other parts of the government machinery, make the task of governing more complicated, cumbersome and litigious, and give oxygen to radicals making more extreme demands – and all for little practical gain in the daily lives of the vast majority of Aborigines. Success in closing the gap will come from future generations who break free of the soft bigotry of low expectations, to better their lot through their own efforts by taking advantage of the equality of opportunity in modern-day Australia. Instead of consigning them to permanent victimhood, encourage them to confront and equip them to push through the barriers.

The sales assistant, in the form of the Minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, is not up to the job and no match for the intellectual firepower and cut-through messaging of Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. Nor do Noel Pearson’s petulant put-downs of Voice opponents and Thomas Mayo’s fiery Marxist rhetoric stack up against the calm reasoning of Anthony Dillon and Warren Mundine. Mayo has been filmed paying ‘respect to the elders of the Communist party’ for their ‘very important role in our activism’, and threatening to use ‘the power in the Voice’ ‘to tear down the institutions that harm our people’ and ‘to punish politicians that ignore our advice’. The sales pitch is deeply flawed, riddled with confusion and mixed messages. Why would another body solve Aboriginal disadvantages when all existing bodies with a $30-billion combined annual budget have failed? How will the government prevent the capture of benefits, power and influence by the urban elites? Albanese has tripped over his own cleverness. At a time of falling trust in politicians, he wants voters to sign on the dotted line and trust the politicians to fill in the blanks later. To keep faith with the Aborigines demanding a Voice with punch, he assures them it will be substantive. To allay concerns in the broader community, he insists it will be modest and symbolic. Then why extend its remit to the executive government and not limit it to parliament? The deliberate deception and gaslighting is reduced to deploying the language of recognition and avoiding the V word. The net result, of the refusal to address legitimate questions about core functions and basic structure, is to fuel suspicion and deepen distrust. Paul Keating won his ‘sweetest victory’ in 1993 by attacking John Hewson’s GST complexity: ‘If you don’t understand it, don’t vote for it; if you do understand it, you’d never vote for it!’ Adapted to the Voice, the No campaign has a readymade equivalent slogan: ‘If you don’t understand it, you should vote No. If you do understand it, you must vote No!’

Could any one of the Voice champions please explain which one of these statements from Senator Price is wrong? From the day this ‘emotionally manipulative’ proposal was introduced, ‘We are being divided. We will be further divided throughout this campaign. And, if the Yes vote is successful, we will be divided forever.’ In 2012, Albanese defined his political raison d’être as fighting Tories. That’s what he does. That’s who he is. It’s in his DNA. Is he cynical enough to push the Voice as a wedge issue, as Graham Young asked on Flat White?

The rising chorus from former senior judges, jurists and lawyers on the heightened dangers of judicial activism is met with implausible assertions that parliament will be the final arbiter of what the new constitutional chapter means in practice. By the time of last year’s general election, Scott Morrison had cemented his reputation as a slippery, untrustworthy PM beyond repair. Albanese is depleting his political capital so fast that ‘Each Way Albo’ could achieve the same result in just one term.

The weaponisation of rape allegations in the cause of bringing down a government and the tribal closing of ranks behind Katy Gallagher who clearly misled parliament, suggests that constitutional etiquette and niceties mean little to this government. Speaking on Australia Day in 1988, Bob Hawke declared: ‘In Australia there is no hierarchy of descent; there must be no privilege of origin.’ That is a second great campaign slogan for the No camp. The fact that the words are of an iconic Labor PM will make it all the sweeter to deploy it against the current PM.