The Voice of the Coalition
By Dr. Martha Knox-Haly and John Haly
The failure of the Coalition’s Voice to Parliament has been an unusual congruence of events. No doubt some of you will think we made a mistake in that first sentence. The Uluru page was created in 2017, during the Coalition Government’s tenure. The now resigned coalition minister, Ken Wyatt, as Indigenous Affairs Minister, submitted a final report in July 2021, to the Morrison Government, who designed and funded the Voice with $7.3 million. The Morrison government, under Josh Frydenberg‘s direction, subsequently included $160 million in the 2019 budget for the voice referendum, assuring Australia a referendum within three years. Frydenberg openly supported the voice and expressed confidence that it would succeed. “There is a willingness to enter into the debate to ensure our Indigenous Australians – our First Australians – get the recognition and the outcome that they deserve,” he said.
The Coalition government was not in power in 2023 and so the Labor party took up the baton the Morrison Government handed over, in what looked initially like a carte blanche endorsement of this as a constitutional change. And yet, with the shattering defeat of the referendum, the Labor party appears to have either dropped the baton, or it was knocked out of their hands? How did the 60% support, which had been reasonably stable for a number of years, plummet in just 5 months?
Peter Dutton announced that he would actively campaign against the Voice by April 5, 2023. In April 2023, the No campaign launched a ferocious media blitz through Advance Australia. The impact on Indigenous mental health would be devastating, according to 13Yarn tabling data, where calls reporting racism and abuse increased from 1286 in 2022 to 2124 in the current year to September 2023. Suicide calls and requests for assistance have surged.
Digital campaigners observed patterns of social media activity never before seen in an Australian political context. So, what precisely were these activists witnessing?
On September 27th, Alice Dawkins, the executive director of Reset.Tech (a non-profit organisation that advocates for stricter restrictions on digital threats to democracy), reported that a small number of new accounts distributing repurposed information content received an overwhelming amount of shares in their first days of operation. Dawkins expressed concern that users of X could no longer select politics to identify falsehood in tweets. This could only be intentional, allowing X to continually reject the AEC’s attempts to remove tweets marked as disinformation encouraging a No vote. The comparable and repeated misconceptions across these tweets, according to Ed Coper, Director of Populares, are a “telltale clue that these are organised networks.” Associate Professor Timothy Graham’s research demonstrates the amazing distributional potential of the X social media platform. Graham, an associate professor of digital media at Queensland University of Technology, studied 246000 Voice-related tweets between March 2023 and May 2023. A highly concentrated number of accounts generated no campaign content, with the top 100 accounts sending out one out of every ten tweets regarding the referendum. YES-campaigners attempted to counter falsehoods in the early months, but found themselves in a digital tarpit attracting more views of the NO-campaign material. The top NO-campaign tweets were highlighted by disinformation regarding the proposed constitutional amendment’s provisions, as well as a focus on racism and racial divisiveness in order to instil fear about the Voice. As the referendum date approached, the number of accounts advocating for a no-vote climbed substantially faster than those advocating for a yes-vote.
Digital manipulation was also seen on non-English social media like WeChat. The Conversation examined Chinese voter’s WeChat habits. One user, Yamie Chew started posting No campaign clips instead of pet photos at the end of September. Within 24 hours, the initial video had 10,000 reposts and 1800 likes. In contrast, the AEC video garnered 25 views. Concerns about the Voice’s impact on Australia’s Constitution by no-vote propaganda included racial apartheid, Indigenous privilege, racial inequity, Chinese voters losing their homes, and additional taxation to fund the Voice.
It is currently impossible to determine who the genuine proprietors of these personas and accounts were, and there would have been multiple stakeholders spreading misinformation. However, a review of the official No campaign organisation is instructive.
The AEC penalised Advance (the principal organisation for the No campaign) in 2019 for misrepresenting Independent candidate Zalli Stegall. According to Dr. Jeremy Walker, Advance is funded by conservative think tanks such as the Institute for Public Affairs, Liberty Works, CPAC, and CIS, as well as the Atlas Network. Beyond what Dr. Walker wrote in Independent Australia, he wrote a far more extensive report in UTS ePRESS that can also be found on Researchgate.
Dr Walker stated that the No campaign ‘shares characteristics, aims and methods of the long standing Atlas Network backed disinformation campaign on climate change, motivated by fear that this will strengthen the capacity of Indigenous communities and parliamentary democracy.’ The Atlas network’s purpose is to create thinktanks that generate a constant stream of disinformation. The overarching goals are to further capital’s political goals, abolish wage arbitration and unions, create climate disinformation and policy obstruction, delegitimize Indigenous self-determination consensus, and blame this on social welfare and collective land title. The Atlas Thinktanks advocate harsher penalties for climate change campaigners while opposing elections as a means of undermining democracy.
Mathew Sheahan, Vicki Dunne, and Laura Bradley are Advance’s three directors. Sheahan, Dunne, and Bradley are also directors of Australians for Unity, which featured Warwick Mundine and Jacinta Price as joint spokesmen for the No campaign, according to ASIC documents. Price formerly worked for Advance. Advance’s website claims that they are not a charity and do not take government support, despite the fact that they are registered with the Charities Regulator and have accepted the Government’s offer of tax-deductible donations.
Official No campaign organiser Advance shares a post office box with the Christian Marriage Lobby. Advance was helped by Whitestone Strategic and RJ Dunham & Co., digital businesses. Whitestone registered former Australian Christian Lobby Head Lyle Shelton’s website and worked for Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party. According to its website, Texas-based RJ Dunham & Co. helps Christian non-profit ministries with marketing and fundraising. The Australian Christian Lobby, the Bethel Church in California (which prayed for the resurrection of a two-year-old kid and claimed online prayer could treat covid symptoms), and the Prestenwood Pregnancy Centre in Texas were all former clients. These consultants were part of the environment that influenced evangelical Americans to support Trump.
Advance’s campaigns are reminiscent of an Atlas network think tank. These included strategies that exaggerated differences between groups (e.g., inner-city educated elites versus the rest of the country), fueling the perception of disunity within Indigenous communities (Jacinta Price was featured opposing Marcia Langton, who was instrumental in developing the Uluru Statement from the Heart). A common tactic by Advance was to raise doubt on the integrity of the electoral system. We witnessed this personally when a NO campaigner in Hurstville, Sydney, agreed with an older white male voter that postal voting and amending the constitution were unconstitutional.
The material from the NO-campaign has been described as misinformation. However, the NO-campaign tactics are consistent with the Atlas Network’s objectives, meaning that the campaign was established on purposeful coordinated plans to misinform voters. For decades, the Australian Atlas Organisations have worked with the American Atlas Organisations to undermine climate science’s legitimacy and create the impression that there is a lack of scientific consensus on climate science, even though 97% of scientists agree on the role of dirty fossil fuels in global warming.
Advance Australia sponsored two distinct Facebook campaigns: Referendum News, which featured right-wing commentary masquerading as neutral news, and “Not Enough”, which was directed at progressives. The Advance Campaign included Jacinta Price (as Fair Australia’s voice) and Warren Mundine, while the Progressive Campaign featured Lydia Thorpe. By supporting extreme conservative and progressive perspectives, the objective was to deplete support for the middle-of-the-road option based on incremental change, and to create the perception of a division among the Indigenous population. Price and Mundine’s continued presentation by Advance as representatives equal to the 250 Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander leaders who had consultatively worked for a decade to craft the Uluru Statement from the Heart was breathtaking and callous.
Walker asserted that restrictive disclosure laws conceal Australian Atlas network funders. He highlights fossil fuel companies like Exxon, Santos, and Western Mining provided foundation funding for the Atlas Campaign. ‘The “No” campaign can be safely assumed as being conducted by proxy on behalf of fossil-fuel corporations and their allies, whose efforts to mislead the public on life-and-death matters reach back over half a century’, he claims. The top ten contributors, who provide 30% of Advance’s funding, have no publicly available fossil fuel ties.
However, the source of 70% of No campaign funding remains unknown. One thing to note is that Dutton’s decision to campaign against the Voice mirrored the West Australian Liberals’ approach in a state dominated by the mining industry. The pattern of digital platform manipulation shows a coordinated disinformation campaign, and that the baton was definitely knocked from Albanese’s grasp. It implies that Australia should follow in the footsteps of the British and American governments, who conducted extensive investigations into the names and culpability of digital consultancies during the 2016 hotbeds of radical right populism represented by American presidential elections and Brexit.
This article was originally published on AUSTRALIA AWAKEN – IGNITE YOUR TORCHES
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Return to home pageWe are doomed.
And worse, in US Atlas Koch Network shares donors with Tanton Network based on old fossil fueled ZPG, with white nativist outlets masquerading acting as ‘environmental’ NGOs, focused on refugee/border security, immigration restrictions and population control; including locally.
US KPBS journalist Binkowski writes of this and includes a chart ‘following the (donor/investor) money’ trails in the background:
‘Eugenics, Border Wars & Population Control: The Tanton Network (2022) Nearly everything Americans hear about the U.S.-Mexico border is wrong, and it’s very likely because of one relatively small but extremely well-funded and influential group of American racists.’ (who have also visited Australia).
https://unicornriot.ninja/2022/eugenics-border-wars-population-control-the-tanton-network/
No coincidence they use similar -ve PR or media techniques in climate science denial and misrepresenting demographic data.
Andrew Smith,
Again (& again & again) with repeating your offensive and ignorant claim that all calls for population control (best achieved through female education, emancipation and access to birth control) are just eugenics based on racism.
Concern over human population growth as one of the factors contributing to our unfolding biospheric catastrophe are grounded in basic natural science.
As an example, overall mammalian biomass is now 34% human & 62% domesticate, leaving 4% wild things and human vectored ferals.
Our entry into the Anthropocene epoch and triggering of the 6th global extinction event have gone hand in hand with the doubling of global human numbers over the last half century.
https://images.app.goo.gl/nHDV5KBH4ikxFApP6
The fact that projections predict a peak of 10b by 2100 is not particularly comforting in view of the fact that ice scientists have declared both Greenland and West Antarctic as pretty much doomed to collapse, probably within a century.
That locks in a searise of about 10m, which will obviously have a noticeable effect.
Encouraging an economy of human breeding is just one necessary step towards mitigating against the now-inevitable mass displacement, misery and death caused by our self-induced environmental disaster.
Or am I just being racist against humans?
The Albanese LABOR government is being too slow in legislating for the immediate publication of donations to political organisations like the Institute for Public Affairs, Liberty Works, CPAC, and CIS, as well as the Atlas Network. This publication must include the names plus any & all cross corporation links of the donors.
.
Naturally the Murdoch Media Monopoly requires reining in, best by the anti-competition of its monopoly structure, or better still, by changing the publication laws to require truthy in media at risk of losing publication rights.
Seems that despite all humanity’s development of the epistemology of science and education, and the ability for all to access the arising information, it appears the vast majority of folk will be influenced by sensationalist media, and the gutless, divisive, fear-mongering and loose words, of politicians and their cabal of flunkies, backers and donors.
It seems to matter not that those folk sense that things are not going so well – in fact it could be staring them in the face, but a majority appear to have a tendency to abdicate their responsibilities to belief in the (aforementioned) despots.
So it has been time and again over millennia, perhaps since the year dot – ‘civilizations’ come and go.
Anthropocene or not, one thing is constant, nature will have its way, and if humanity fails to adapt, it’s kaput. So needs must, as before, to obviate suffering and reason, may as well just refer to a preferred designer god, and a preferred designer paradise.
PS: Via the URL in corvusboreus’s comment above, the plunging fertility rate across the world is a salutary warning. And set across all our science and education, and a background of declining ecological circumstance across the world, the instinct to pass on genetic material and to survive, persists. So for the kowtowed, the dogged or fateful, control via the means of indigeneity, nativisim, migration or immigration, may be a bit like shuffling the deckchairs on the Titanic.
PPS: Nevertheless, I try, and because of that sense of being up shit creek in a barbed-wire canoe, I have dug out my floaties and mask, a small tool kit, and some good reading material and dreamings
Clakka,
The repeatedly observed historical phenomenon of human populations, when faced with disastrous circumstance, to retreat into fractious tribalism and exhortation to superstitious solution is not comforting, especially in current context.
Ps, re canoeing, about a decade ago I got water-slammed into a 3/4 submerged fallen river-oak in a relatively remote location.
I clung to the trunk like a flotsam ship-rat whilst my kayak and paddle got sucked under.
My boat re-emerged, my paddle didn’t.
Long story short, I recommend lashing a backup paddle to your boat before entering turbulent waters.
Ps, the tardigrade shall inherit Sol 3.
Note to corvusboreus; Suggest (if haven’t done so already) read Richard Flanagan’s Death of a River Guide. Clakka too. Fastwater gnuing not for the faint of heart. Triggering to read your story as a kangaroo, despite the denial claim… we’re water-shy creatures, hate swimming, detest whirlpools, find barbed-wired gnus tot uncomfortable.
Canguro,
Haven’t yet, shall do.
Genuine thanks for the literary recommendation, seems right up my waterway.
Ps, the other salutary lesson of my aforementioned ‘up-creek’ experience was the value of conducting some basic precautionary reconnaissance before committing to the narrower & faster of a two channel choice (hindsight; ‘duh’).
Corvus Boreus, so you approve of fossil fueled Tanton Network’s eugenics (based on Rockefeller Bros. ZPG), which also crosses the ‘free market’ or ‘libertarian’ (= authoritarian) Koch Network? Though via the GOP they propose restricting access to birth control and keeping ‘other types; secondary?
There is no issue with reproductive education, birth control etc. but if used to put ‘whites’ above all other humanity and/or used as a political wedge, then it’s not much of a +ve social policy, just eugenics; event Planned Parenthood seeded by Rockefeller’s and Sanger does good work nowadays (as opposed 1920-30’s & research in Germany via KWI’s) vs. constraints imposed by the Christian nationalist GOP.
As Clakka said, if you actually look up data vs. following local/Anglo headlines, population stagnation and soon decline has started in many places due to a commensurate decline in fertility rates, everywhere, except Georgia and Israel, it can only lead further downwards after stagnation?
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN
Australian population is propped up by high temporary churn over, especially international students that can spike the population via the NOM net overseas migration (since 2006), spruiked by SPA and media as ‘unsustainable’ population growth, but in fact the fastest growing is in the permanent cohort of 70+ years of age, solution?
AS,
In answer to your first question, no.
In answer to your second, I recommend an increase in humanitarian intake (particularly women & children) from areas where warfare, tribalistic repression and emergent environmental impacts are rendering normal life untenable, whilst decreasing the voluntary import of people for low wages and the profit of privatised universities, in order to stabilise/reduce pollution growth in such a way as to not further facilitate the escalating extinction rate of (non-human) Australian native species .
Anything else?
Let’s just admit it. Most Aussie are easily duped. The rest are racists.
Max,
OK, so I am, by accident of geography, either an easily misled stooge or a racist phuqwit.
Thank you for supplying me with basic operative parameters for my next round of electoral choice.
CorvusBoreus: Linking population and immigration ignores source of such agitprop, fact that permanent population of citizens and PRs dominate and the factors you link negatively, are not supported by any research evidence anywhere, sentiments and beliefs?
Abul Rizvi shared a Pauline Hanson clip claiming immigrants are overloading infrastructure, including nurses under temp &/or permanent migration to work in infrastructure i.e. hospitals; it’s dynamic and changes but too many Australians drew a line in the sand in ’70s or even post WWII?
Also, individual Australians including you, are doing the work of LNP (& too many ALP), SusPopAus, IPA/CIS, NewsCorp & RW media by spreading their negative headlines and nativist talking points further; too easy and lazy.
Andrew Smith,
Your continued avoidance of any of the critical biospheric issues I previously mentioned is duly noted.
Andy from marketing…
ABS (12 month up to March 2023).
Net population growth; 563,200.
Increase through domestic births; 108,800.
Increase through migration; 454,400. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population
Yep, no observable correlation between voluntary immigration and population increase, just like there’s no observable correlation between the drastic increase in numbers of humans and an attendant rapid decline in biodiversity of flora & fauna..
Btw, where IS Boofhead lately ? Has he been “hidden” and why?
He must be a tremendous embarrassment, if the best they can do in his his stead are the likes of Susssssssssan Ley and Bridget McKenzie.
Besides, Andrew Smith, if there is not housing inflation and the ongoing rat race, where is the NAIRU followed faithfully, where is the pain and idiot “labour market discipline”?
CorvusBoreus: What’s observable correlation with data analysis?
Your analysis follows what the nativist RW MSM & SPA do locally on population demographic imported from US; you focus on present temporary churn over noise then ignore the elephants in the room inc. long term trends; you cite the high NOM net overseas migration* churn, which is a ‘barometer’ of border movements (indirectly economy) not linked to formal permanent migration which is capped 190k = 0.8% of population
NOM was expanded in 2006 to 12/16+ month residency test sweeping up more student churn, missed by everyone in media….but inflates and spikes headline population in the short term, then direct to media headlines…..
Another elephant in the room, is the permanent population with long term well below replacement fertility (<2.1), fewer youth, working age cohort stagnant (kept up by modest migration & temps i.e. students….), baby boomer ‘bomb’ of 5.5 million is transitioning to retirement, fastest growing cohort are the 70+ year olds and concurrently, ever increasing old age dependency ratios; can elaborate on the latter trends?
See OECD (2023), Old-age dependency ratio (indicator). doi: 10.1787/e0255c98-en (Accessed on 09 November 2023) https://data.oecd.org/chart/7fji
Lambchop, there are differences between high house prices and lower house values, but much is due to competition between boomers and millennials (5+ million either side) like elsewhere in the developed world, but ‘immigrants’ are blamed, to help put a virtual or mental floor under house prices and values.
From memory, national median price, taking a heuristic shortcut, but then again I’m with others in not trusting much housing ‘analysis’, esp. daily/monthly noise.
Prices got way ahead of real value (not just CPI but costs too) as the national median has not doubled in past decade (based on the investment standard 7% capital price &/or income annually), hence, value decline; seem to correlate with peak baby boomer.
Me thinks FIRE media etc. know what’s coming, like fossil fuels, trying to squeeze as much value out of an oily rag, while they can…
Andrew, it does seem that the millenials are scapegoats for the real dark forces. It seems like “blame Labor/Greens/ Terrorists etc)” rathe than Octopus, PwC and the other internal parasites, when things finally start to break down.
What a nucking futcase! If any party was going to go that route it’s the bloody Libs.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/nov/10/abc-complain-bronwyn-bishop-sky-news-nazi-national-socialism
GL, the beehived blonde is an ossified crone seeking relevance where none is deserved; she should be tossed out in one of the wheelie bins, preferably a red-lidded one; skip the yellow ’cause she’s beyond recycling, and same for the green bin ’cause she’d only turn the vegetation pile putrid with her committed toxicity.
The sky high 60% disappeared because it wasn’t real the’ 40% of same sex marriage no was real and the new no only needed to frighten 20% for the sky’ to fall down on yes and no to ‘bolt’ in.
ps
One of my rabbottians confessed he voted yes and he gave the reason that I felt should have allowed the yes to win.
He said ‘it seemed the right thing to do’
I shall be kind to him at golf and bridge.
pps
To my feeble understanding, men from moslem countries who left their women and children behind are not refugees.
Gosh, what a great big non-surprise regarding, to be honest years long embezzlement, from the bedbug and the parasitic growth.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/five-thousand-dollars-on-jigsaw-puzzles-how-one-nation-s-spending-caught-the-electoral-commission-s-eye-20231102-p5eh86.html
Would Rupert/Lachlan/Stefanovic have kicked up the same stink if it had been The Spud or some other LNP scumbag? Gee, that’s hard to think about…
Scraping the bottom out of the dirt barrel methinks.
https://www.news.com.au/national/politics/dirty-laundry-deputy-prime-minister-richard-marles-stings-taxpayers-for-washing-his-socks-and-a-115-on-a-breakfastforone-in-washington-dc/news-story/ab6fcbc2fa73c76d973b2eff2eb61107
How many reports are needed for ACOSS to hold Services Australia accountable for illegal debt schemes? I asked ACOSS but they dd not respond. Since 2022, I emailed ACOSS several documents regarding the abuse and all they did was a referral to Economic Justice Australia. Services Australia forced me into debts as a result of their review conducted by a “delegate or authorised officer” not an authorised review officer (ARO). I raised this issue with a large number of government officials, ACOSS, Services Australia and none of them made a comment on that.
Services Australia sent me 2 separate debt letters requesting over $4000 of my rent assistance payments. They waived nearly $3700 as they found out I was eligible for the payment, as if it was not clear when they issued a debt notice. In July, they sent me a similar rent assistance debt for around $400. It has been under review for over 4 months and no decision has been made. There must be a lot of job seekers nationwide who lose their rent assistance as a result of the scheme.
Can ACOSS CEO Cassandra Goldie, Mark Dreyfus, Services Australia, Senators Janet Rice, David Shoebridge, etc. comment this?
Will this also include the LNP and other assorted RRWNJ’s?
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/14/animals-sentient-beings-victorian-cruelty-laws