Losing on the Voice shouldn’t cost Labor the Election. Here’s what they have to do.
The defeat in the Voice referendum should not necessarily spell doom for the Labor party in the next election. Labor can still win if they manage to control the narrative.
It’s pretty rough seeing the Voice results come in. Given the polling, I was amply prepared for a ‘No’ vote, but it still hurts: South Australia, what went wrong? But worse still would be if Peter Dutton benefited from sabotaging the referendum and became the next Prime Minister of Australia. In this piece I want to discuss the risks now for Labor and how to avoid them.
How the Voice vote could hurt the ALP
Pollster Kos Samaras describes a large constituency of voters for whom cost-of-living is top of mind, who were being ‘economically destroyed’, and who didn’t see anything in the Voice proposition that connected to them. The risk for the ALP is that the referendum outcome helps lay the foundation for an enduring narrative of an ALP that is elitist and out-of-touch, which champions abstract progressive causes over actually improving the conditions for people who are struggling. If this narrative takes hold and bad economic conditions persist, voters will punish Labor.
I don’t think the ‘No’ vote, in itself, spells doom for Labor. So far, it seems like voters have been cool on the Voice, without turning against Albanese or the ALP. But this does feel like a crossroads. If Labor fails to strengthen a narrative reaching these struggling voters, assisted in part by actual policy commitments, they will be vulnerable.
What the ALP should do now
More likely, I think the referendum doesn’t have much negative impact on Labor. I see two approaches for what they can do from here to avoid a negative blowback: one approach minimises it as an issue altogether, the other aims to turn it into a strength.
The ALP could move on and stop talking about the referendum. To the extent there is already a narrative about the ALP, I don’t think it’s very established or striking: it’s basically just a steady hand on the tiller, a government that has your interests at heart and is ploddingly doing what’s best. This could probably be enough to win Albanese the next election, if they can sustain this and offer some more evidence to make it believable, leaving discussion of the referendum behind.
But a bolder play would be for the ALP to try to make this an electoral strength. Rather than focus on its advocacy for a ‘Yes’ vote, the ALP could speak to the referendum as evidence of following through on election promises and demonstrating principle: voters can respect principle in general, even if they disagree on the specific issue (Lakoff’s The Political Mind and Weston’s The Political Brain are the best books on this). The way that Albanese responds to the many voters who said ‘No’ could also demonstrate humility and respect for these voters: the way you respond to a setback can communicate a lot of positive things about your character! And then, perhaps in a more targeted message, the ALP could use this development against Dutton in Teal seats. This would make it much harder for the Coalition to return to Government.
This will require more than just good talking points. I think people over-rate the significance of policy announcements and under-rate the importance of narrative. That said, once you know the narrative you are trying to establish, strategic policy is used to help illuminate the message. But the policy is chosen to embed the narrative! In short: the ALP needs to be deliberate about the narrative they are cultivating, but then make sure to put enough meat on the bones to make it believable.
Conclusion
If the ALP loses the next election, I don’t expect it will be linked to the outcome of the Voice referendum, unless the party does a truly awful job of controlling the narrative from here. The ALP can plausibly reduce the salience of the referendum, instead focusing on cost-of-living, which is absolutely dominating the day-to-day concerns of many, many voters. To the extent that the referendum will be affecting votes in 18 months’ time, it can be used to drive a wedge between socially-progressive Liberals and Peter Dutton, and to illuminate certain positives of the ALP, such as a willingness to keep promises, show some bravery, and respectfully listen to the will of voters.