“Not only did Albanese oversee a disastrous campaign for the Voice, in its wake he didn’t even put Aboriginal advancement on the back burner; he took it off the stove altogether,” writes The Gadfly columnist ROBERT MACKLIN.

Peter Dutton has it within his grasp to win this election with a single policy, one he announced some time ago.

All the opposition leader needs to do is sign a pledge to repeat the offer he made during the debate on the Voice for our Aboriginal people: ‘I think it is right and respectful to recognise indigenous Australians in the constitution and we will work with the Labor Party to find common ground. 

“I believe very strongly it is the right thing to do.” 

When asked if he would hold a referendum on the issue in his first term, he replied: “Yes”.

It would be a nightmare for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, but one of his own making. Not only did he oversee a disastrous campaign for the Voice, in its wake he didn’t even put Aboriginal advancement on the back burner; he took it off the stove altogether. 

He passed the portfolio out of the House of Representatives to the Senate into the hands of a NT political non-entity, Senator Malarndirri McCarthy. She has been utterly invisible since her appointment in July. 

Instead of redoubling efforts to rescue our first Australians from the alienation of their compatriots, Albanese turned his back on them. And once raised by Dutton, this betrayal would dog him throughout the campaign.

He accepted the “No” vote as a signal that the populace as a whole opposed the very notion of Aboriginal advancement. That was never true; the goodwill towards First Nations was, and remains, widespread. The real problem was the campaign. 

The Voice itself was a jump too far, a creature of the Aboriginal elite, the few such as Noel Pearson, Stan Grant, professors Marcia Langton and Megan Davis who had – with enormous effort – made a great success of their own careers. They rejected the natural course of the debate – first truth-telling, then constitutional recognition, then representation. Perhaps their pride prevented them from the implied victimhood, but they were equally ill-served by Albanese’s government. 

The prime minister and his cabinet should have known that the great Asian migration of the last 20 years introduced a cohort of cultures with no concept of the British inundation of this continent and the Australian wars that followed. And without that knowledge Aboriginals were just a minority like themselves, so why should they be granted a special place of honour?

They arrived here wrapt in the cultures of their home countries. And succeeding Australian governments gave little time and attention to Australia’s history and its cultural strengths and weaknesses to them, or even to be taught in our schools.

Earlier generations were taught the British history of Australia. But faced with the exposure of an Australian viewpoint, pioneered by Henry Reynolds on the frontier wars, followed by a wealth of historical biography from both white and indigenous authors, the education authorities appear to have retreated into silence. This goes for both private and public schools. 

That leaves the field open for an opposition leader to deeply embarrass the prime minister with his referendum pledge followed by a media pile on.

But here’s the thing: Dutton won’t do it. He’s the man who walked out of the parliament during Kevin Rudd’s apology. He’s the man his former colleague Malcolm Turnbull described as a political “thug”. 

Besides which, his Coalition partner, the Nationals, are led by David Littleproud, whose Queensland electorate recorded the highest “No” vote in the Voice referendum. A banana split, anyone?

With both major parties content to snub our forebears, the custodians of the continent for 60,000 years, the case for voting independent looks ever more fetching.

robert@robertmacklin.com