Just when we thought it was safe to assume that the No case would win the Voice referendum, along comes the Liberal party on its relentless crusade to snatch potential defeat from the jaws of a probable victory. Peter Dutton has announced that if the referendum is defeated, the opposition will move to have another referendum. The reason for this bizarre policy is said to be that the present referendum is for both recognition of Aboriginals and the Voice to be written into the constitution. So, Dutton says that if this is defeated, he would hold another one which will be a proposal only for recognition, but with no Voice.

This is undoubtedly the most eccentric political proposal I have seen in my lifetime. First, it is simply bad politics, because if you can detect the public feeling at the moment, it is that the people are Voiced-out and want to get the wretched thing over and done with. Dutton’s response to this is to say, well, we think you need more punishment than you have had and, as a reward for persevering through the current referendum, we will inflict another one on you, at your expense of course. He forgets that punishing voters is not a good way of encouraging them to support you. Second, Dutton has just destroyed what was a good and winnable message from the opposition, namely that it is opposed to the Voice and that people should vote No because it will bring the whole thing to an end. But now, people will think that if a No vote will just prolong the agony until the Dutton referendum gets going, the best thing to do might be to vote Yes this time, as that will certainly bring the issue to an end. Third, the cost of a second referendum would be horrendous. To argue for it, when the cost of living is going through the roof and no one but Alan Joyce can afford to go to Woolworths, is profligacy and irresponsibility on a grand scale – as well as appalling politics. Fourth, and worst of all, Dutton’s proposal hammers home the basic point I have been making for months, that the whole Voice nonsense is a Liberal party construction. It was a dead duck until along came Joshua Frydenberg clutching his humble $3.2 million to hand to the left-wing lobby, with no strings attached of course, for the creepily named ‘co-design’ of the Voice. The whole Voice movement came alive from that point, another nod by the Liberal party to big spending, solutions in search of a problem, pointless state intervention and tokenistic virtue-signalling. I was surprised but thrilled to see that Dutton originally said No to the Voice, but I can see now what his token opposition really amounted to: a policy that half a Voice is better than none, so let’s go for a second referendum to make sure we drag the Liberal party at least halfway along the road to what now drives so much of this country and its media, academia, politics, judiciary and society: guilt, apologising for giving Aboriginals the benefits of Western civilisation, handing over real power to one race, making sure that none of the new power elite will be elected except by themselves, and giving them separate rights and separate structures.

As if that were not enough, we now find that Dutton has fallen for the confidence trick that says that the Voice might be going a bit too far, but recognition is moderate, reasonable, balanced and easily defended, so let us write into the constitution that we recognise the Aboriginals as the First Peoples of this country. Well, that policy will get Dutton nowhere and is just as destructive of the unity of the country as the Voice itself. And it is therefore time we were honest enough to say that we oppose recognition in our constitution of one race, to the exclusion of all other races. It is time we faced up to the fact that recognition is just as much a nod to apartheid and racism as the Voice itself, because it is based on race. I can tell you now: if recognition goes into the constitution, with or without a Voice, the High Court will be salivating at the new scope it has just been handed for finding more implied terms in the constitution, just as it did in Love’s case. After all, if Aboriginal recognition is so important that it has been embedded in the constitution, the Court will say, there must be special rules and implied no-go zones to exempt Aboriginals from laws that apply to everyone else.

Meanwhile, two exciting footnotes for you from Victoria, the progressive heartbeat of the nation. First, after procrastinating for months, the Liberal leader John Pesutto, who specialises in expelling women from the Liberal party if they want to be women, announced that he will vote No at the referendum. But the party is always on the look-out for a new fence to sit on and it has just found one: Pesutto will vote No, but he will not actually campaign for No and won’t be urging anyone else to vote No. Such fortitude!

Secondly, we have just had a taste of what life would be like under the Voice. In Victoria, we already have our Voice, called the First People’s Assembly and a truth-telling body called the Yarook Commission which has just proposed a separate Aboriginal structure for law and order, especially bail and sentencing. Naturally, they want a wholesale ‘transfer of power, control and resources… in the criminal justice and child protection networks’ to the Aboriginals who will run it from now on. Then, the First People’s Assembly will generously provide ‘reviews for the Victoria Police chief commissioner to recognise ongoing systemic racism in the force… and understand the history of colonisation’. The old South African regime had nothing on this!