Insanity, Albert Einstein famously said,  is doing the same thing over and over – and expecting different results.

We see this in the great issue of the day, the referendum on the first new and tiniest chapter in our constitution, a blank cheque hidden under that misleading title, ‘Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’. Despite doing the same thing over and over, the political class have failed dismally for many decades to close the Gap.

The latest attempt will be at the highest price ever paid, making Australia ungovernable.

And yet the solution – assimilation – was there under the great Paul Hasluck.

This ensured Aboriginal people enjoy the same rights and obligations as all Australians. Menzies’ 1965 referendum was to celebrate this.

When this lapsed, his successor, Harold Holt rolled over to opposition leader Gough Whitlam’s demands and, abandoning assimilation, included the federal takeover of Aboriginal affairs in the referendum. Menzies had argued these be left with the states, with the grants power used to ensure full assimilation prevailed.

Without a No case, the change was hardly noticed.

And just as Menzies warned, it led to the creation of a massive and wasteful Canberra-based bureaucracy. Assimilation was replaced by segregation and with Whitlam winning government, welfare dependency – ‘sit-down money’ – came in.

This package is the direct cause of increasing moral and criminal anarchy with a truly shameful level of violence to and abuse of women and children, even the youngest, in remote Australia. Nothing the politicians have done since, the billions  poured in, the intervention even of High Court judges and the recent advice of the Productivity Commission, has closed or could close the gap.

Apart from being an even more attractive target for the far left than even the departments of education, the Voice will assuredly make it worse as will the rest of the programme to which the Albanese government is tied, a treaty and reparations.

As John Howard says, the idea that a sovereign country make a treaty with part of itself is both ‘preposterous’ and ‘ constitutionally repugnant’.

Howard, undoubtedly speaking for the mass of Australians, is totally opposed to reparations. The recent Western Australian outrage, which barely reached the mainstream media in the rest of the country, demonstrates how Australians feel.

Noting that the colonisation of Australia was ‘next to inevitable’, Howard believes  the luckiest thing that happened to this country was being colonised by the British.

Not that they were perfect, but they were infinitely more successful and beneficent colonisers than other countries.

Howard is right. Indeed, is there any part of the world not subject to colonisation whether by conquest or settlement? Slavery was a universal institution which the British not only abolished, but then also used the Royal Navy to kill the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

To return to the gap, it is, officially, the discrepancy in life expectancy, health, school attendance, incarceration, etc, between Aborigines and the rest of the population. The real gap seems to be between the rank-and-file 20 per cent of Aborigines living in the remote communities and the Aboriginal grandees including the ‘Lord of the Manor’, as Keith Windshuttle designates one Aboriginal leader on ADH TV.

In the unlikely event that the Australian people, unlike most of the elites, approve the Voice, it will be the most glittering target for the far left neo-communists since they took over control of the education bureaucracy, securing massive increases in funding while delivering what we know from comparative international testing are dramatically declining literacy and numeracy standards, with history replaced by indoctrination. But the Voice will not only fail to close the gap, it will make the country increasingly ungovernable.

At the time of writing, the Prime Minister has still not announced the date of the referendum. This secrecy is consistent with the government’s refusal to reveal full details and the attempts to advantage improperly the Yes case. It is also consistent with keeping the option of letting the referendum lapse. This will occur if it’s not held by 16 December. He says he is going ahead. This of course is no guarantee, and it is likely that his inner circle is presently considering whether or not to pull the plug.

From reports that the Prime Minister has three overseas trips scheduled in late October and until mid-November, many think it likely that 14 October is the preferred date.

No doubt to frighten those who support the concept but are unhappy with the form of the Voice, Albanese is using the fate of the republic as a threat. Admitting there will never be a second republic referendum, the glib ‘If not now, when?’ has been effectively changed to a threat ‘If not now, never’. Many will agree.

Most polls suggest the referendum is lost. Among the few groups indicating a Yes vote in the latest Newspoll are those where the language spoken at home is not English, a surprising 55 per cent to 34 per cent.

Many  come from countries which are anything but democratic. Indeed this is often the reason they have come to Australia. They are countries where the last thing you would do would be to tell the government, a pollster or indeed anyone you did not trust your views on anything political. The tendency in these countries is to assume not answering will raise suspicions. Any answers should be ones which the government will like. When such voters see the powerful, for example, the banks and rich corporations, being mainly on side with the Yes case, the prudent thing will be express a view consistent with them. In private and, I am sure, trusted conversations with some such voters, I have found little support and much suspicion about the Voice. I suspect the universal view would be why should they pay reparations?

The views of the young and university-educated supporting the Yes case reflect the takeover of education by the far left which, too often, Coalition governments have done little to change. Surely this is an incentive for future Coalition governments to wake up and do their duty to restore standards in education.