Though the campaign for a referendum recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as the First Nations people of this continent formally begins only on Wednesday, the debate has already revealed much about the state of politics in the nation.

The decision by the leaders of the opposition Coalition parties to turn the question into a partisan political contest has taken its toll on support for recognition of First Nations people in the founding document of the Commonwealth of Australia.

The opportunity to right an historical wrong, to cease being the last of former colonial countries to recognise prior occupation and acknowledge a cruel dispossession has been placed in jeopardy by Peter Dutton and David Littleproud.

Though constitutional recognition was put on the political agenda by John Howard two decades ago and the proposal Australians are being asked to accept or reject was in response by an invitation by other Liberal prime ministers to Indigenous people, it is now hostage to negative expediency.

Pat Farmer’s marathon

It is a development that has disgusted many Liberals, prominent among them former Liberal MP Pat Farmer whose ultra marathon run around Australia to Uluru is a protest and a rallying call.

Farmer was welcomed to Canberra’s Constitution Place on Monday by former ACT Liberal senator Gary Humphries, marathon champion Rob de Castella and Labor frontbencher Andrew Leigh.

Farmer said he saw people “wearing Liberals for ‘Yes’ T-shirts; this should not be a political matter, this is a human rights issue”.

But it is a human rights issue taking a back seat to the imperative for struggling politicians to show they can inflict damage on Anthony Albanese and his Labor government.

Dutton and Littleproud are doing this in the belief, according to some on their backbench, that a referendum defeat could act as a springboard to an unlikely victory after one Labor term at the scheduled 2025 election.

To achieve this aim the Liberals and Nationals leaders are not burdened with the need to come up with consistent, agreed alternatives.

Peter Dutton and Nationals leader David Littleproud.

They don’t have any, all they need is to sow confusion and play to fear and prejudice.

Sowing confusion

Dutton says he’s for legislated local and regional voices, though he gives no details on his preferred model. Littleproud says he’s not for this policy and doubts his party room would agree.

Internal coherent arguments aren’t needed either.

On Monday morning television Littleproud argued against representative Aboriginal bodies in favour of multiple community voices.
It sounded like an argument for another version of the Voice.

But Littleproud also said the Nationals represent “hundreds of square kilometres, hundreds of different diverse communities” that can’t be adequately served by “a couple of representatives going to Canberra” as proposed by the Voice.

What that says about his view of the Australian Parliament with just 151 members representing 26 million people is apparently irrelevant.

Already we are seeing a panoply of arguments from opponents of the Voice and the ‘No’ campaign extending from crude racism to wild exaggeration, none of which have been condemned by Dutton or Littleproud.

A mark of the desperation was Dutton’s attack last week on the Australian Electoral Commission, straight out of the Donald Trump playbook undermining the credibility of the very institution that delivers Australia the fairest elections in the world.

Albanese is far from accepting the referendum is already defeated.

Bolstered by ‘Yes’ campaign polling, he believes a majority of Australians in a majority of the states will support the referendum and he hasn’t given up on Western Australia.

In Perth on Monday, where he had taken his cabinet for a meeting, Albanese did interviews on four FM radio stations to reach audiences not normally engaged in politics.

Government’s challenge

On Lachlan Murdoch’s Nova FM Albanese was asked about the “massive concentration” on the Voice and whether he was forgetting about businesses and other money-making sectors.

The PM said: “You can chew gum and walk at the same time.”

Of course you can, but the government’s challenge is to show it is doing just that when many Australians are struggling to make ends meet.

Pat Farmer’s ultra marathon is a rallying call for the Yes campaign.

The strategy is to keep bowling up major legislation in the weeks ahead including housing affordability and availability, major reforms dealing with wage theft and secure work, and more efficiently taxing multinational gas producers.

All guaranteed to make headlines and to further demonstrate that the Opposition’s ‘No’ stance is in line with its approach to almost everything the government has proposed, including cheaper medicines and energy bill relief.

‘No’ is all they’ve got

“The ‘No’ campaign is all they’ve got,” according to one seasoned Liberal.

“How it will win back urban voters who deserted the party for the teal independents is a mystery,” was the rejoinder.

Albanese intends to show his support for the referendum at major events but will leave it to his ministers charged with Closing the Gap in health, education and Indigenous Australians to be more involved in the day-to-day campaigning.

There is so much at stake, and whatever the result it will be an historic statement of how we see ourselves as a nation.

Paul Bongiorno AM is a veteran of the Canberra Press Gallery, with more than 40 years’ experience covering Australian politics