A maddening country
Why did Australia vote against the Voice referendum?
Alastair Campbell – former communications chief to former British prime minister Tony Blair – blames the media. Speaking on his The Rest is Politics podcast, Campbell likened Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s rogue interventions in the debate to the misinformation he saw in the Brexit campaign of 2016:
Dutton claimed the referendum was rigged … [and] the media didn’t really challenge him on it. They covered it as a big row, a little bit like what we had in [the] Brexit [campaign] where lies were told and the lies then became part of the narrative. And the media is no longer part of that self-righting process within politics. And this, I’m afraid, has been one of the consequences of Trump, Johnson, Berlusconi, et cetera.
Campbell has a point. The traditional media is struggling to keep up with the post-truth antics of politicians. And, with the United States gearing up for another presidential election and Donald Trump currently leading in the polls, the political climate is likely to become wilder.
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Comments (3)
It inevitably became a referendum on the concept of reconciliation. Who in their right mind would think that was an appropriate thing to have a vote on?
As to your claims about John Howard, I stand by my view that it is absurd to attribute such powers to such an unremarkable figure. One might just as easily attribute the present qualities of the Labor Party to Kim Beazley, but how would that be helpful or explain anything?
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