So we have a date for the most insidious s.128 constitutional referendum in this country’s history. Circle Saturday, 14 October on your calendars and hope this Albanese monstrosity loses, and loses really badly. Of course, no human can know for sure what will happen with such future events but I predicted from the day this thing was announced that it would lose. I took some friendly bets. No one is taking those Yes bets with me anymore. That’s because the polls are pointing strongly to a defeat for this expansive and (if we refuse to play the sophistry game) race-based proposal.

And realise the extent to which Albo and the elites (many nominal ‘Liberals’ included) have done everything they can to game this referendum. It’ll be the first party political referendum in this country’s history where the government did not fund both sides. Albo says he’s funding neither side but the government made Yes monies tax-deductible well before No monies. More to the point, Albo well knew our corporate elites were throwing massive money – not theirs, but their shareholders’ – at the Yes side in a colossally disproportionate way resulting in that side having seven to twelve times more money to spend. This remarkable lopsidedness in referendum resources is a first in Australia’s constitutional history.

Then there’s the Australian Electoral Commission which, disgracefully and in a way that I think undermines public confidence in its impartiality, will count ticks as valid votes for the Yes team but crosses as merely invalid votes. (They have a legal opinion and say this is what they did in the Republic referendum. So? This wouldn’t pass the pub test anywhere in the country.)

And don’t forget the way the question on the ballot has been rigged to focus on just ‘recognition’ and not the establishment of a race-based (or, if you buy the Yes characterisation then, one related to a spiritual and historical connection to the land that only goes to people, mirabile dictu, who bring certain genetic traits to the table) Voice body that will be able to ‘advise’ not just parliament but all branches of the executive. How do you spell ‘sclerotic’ and ‘rent-seeking’ again? And hey, this will be the first referendum in our history where the government is seeking to put a new chapter in our constitution – take it from me this is an indirect encouragement for future judicial activism; just look at how the implied freedom and separation of powers doctrines were ‘discovered’ (I would say wholly made up by the unelected judges) partly based on the separate existing chapters and in the invisible entrails of our constitution and then imagine what the judges in the egregious Love decision would have been able to make of this new Voice provision had it been in existence.

So in big-picture, statistical terms we have the whole of the establishment class in this country on the Yes side – the lawyerly and judicial caste (a danger in itself), the corporate elites, the universities, the bureaucratic panjandra (panjandrums?), the administrators of the sporting codes, those who run our charities, the bishoply caste of the churches, the list goes on right up to some half of the MPs in the Liberal party (more at the state level, fewer nationally). And yet, the average person does not seem to be buying the snake oil these elites are selling. If you have time get down on your knees and thank your lucky stars for the wisdom of our constitutional fathers who made constitutional change subject to convincing over half the voting public rather than simply winning over the political class as is the case in Canada and the US.

Despite all that, then, and without suggesting any of us get the least bit over-confident, this referendum looks likely to lose. I think it could even lose in every state, which would make my 15 October morning one that included a pounding headache and a strong desire for some H2O. Yet here’s the thing. We on the No side need to win the ensuing peace as well as winning the referendum war. And that will take some intestinal fortitude from Mr Dutton. First off, Dutton cannot be manipulated into taking any element of responsibility for the divisiveness of this referendum. That lies wholly with those pushing this thing. Opposing a woefully bad proposal to change the world’s 4th or 5th oldest written constitution, and patently one of its most successful ones, does not make you in any way responsible for fostering division. Albanese forced this referendum down our throats. If and when it loses be clear that he and Labor (oh, and half the state Libs) bear all the responsibility for its aftermath. No apologies for anything. No regrets for taking a firm line. No playing nice. Take the win. The morning after this referendum loses your political position will be the best it’s been since you took over as Liberal leader.

Next there is the issue of those MPs in the federal party room who came out for Yes. Frankly, all this amorphous talk of the Libs being a broad church is sometimes overdone. The core moral deficiency with this Voice proposal is that it undermines the foundational concept of equal citizenship that undergirds life in all successful liberal democracies. Strike that. It undergirds life in all liberal democracies. I don’t want to be part of a political party that has people who aren’t committed to equal citizenship. And a loss in this referendum will make it clear that on our side of the political divide there are many more people like me than like the Julian Leesers of the Liberal party who seem to think otherwise. Call them all in Mr Dutton and make it clear they will never serve in any shadow or actual cabinet in a government led by you. And then let’s hope they get deselected, each and every one.

And that leaves the corporations and charities. Or rather those who are in leadership positions in these bodies. Their behaviour has been disgraceful. They have virtue-signalled not with their own monies but with shareholders’ and with those who gave money to a charity expecting it to be spent on the stated purpose of the charity. It is plain from around the Anglosphere that the very wealthy, as a generalisation, now vote ‘left’ not ‘right’. The Liberal party will have no need to cater to the druthers of a corporate class that has taken sides against the majority of the public on a party-political constitutional issue. These are the same people who these days stand on the side of every fashionably woke social issue going. Start by dealing with Qantas – do I hear ‘more slots for Qatar’ anyone, not least because it kept flying here all through Covid? Then point out to each and every CEO who comes calling that the Liberal party is the friend of the hard-working wage-earner and to real competition, not of the world’s virtually highest-earning university vice-chancellors, or crony capitalists, or the scare-mongering renewable energy rent-seekers, etc.

Win the peace as well as the referendum Mr Dutton and you’ll be in the Lodge the morning after the next election. Ignore those myriad siren songs that pretend both sides of this Voice referendum bear equal responsibility for its aftermath. Not true. It’s the woke, virtue-signalling elites wot done it.