A memo to Australia’s ‘Yes’ campaign: you lost

Timothy Cootes

November 14, 2024 2 Reactions

Thomas Mayo, a leading figure in the Yes campaign, has just published Always Was, Always Will Be, a reflection on the post-referendum state of Aboriginal affairs. (For overseas readers, the title refers to a slogan of the Voice lobby – that Australia always was and always will be sovereign Aboriginal land.)

Mayo’s model of the Voice to Parliament would have been a “a black institution, a black political force to be reckoned with.” Its to-do list, he giddily told rallygoers and social media followers, would have included the “abolishment of the old colonial institutions” and the punishment of politicians unwilling to cooperate with treaty-making and truth-telling.

That was before the referendum. One would have thought that he would have revised his vision. Not at all.

Mayo continues to take pride in his “passionate advocacy”. He continues to criticise the tactics of the “No” campaign – which often consisted in quoting Mayo’s own words back to him.

Still smouldering with resentment, Mayo divides Australians into “Bad Actors” (yeah, that’s me) and “the rest of us”. Sending out the call for recruits, Mayo writes: “The more of us who are in this group, and who are well-informed, organised and active, the more power we will have.”

 “The Uluru Statement,” Mayo declares, “is no less true because of the referendum result.” If that sentence doesn’t elicit groaning, his follow-up certainly will: “It also remains the most powerful public document that anyone in this nation has ever produced.”

Sure, a few readers might swoon at sentiments like these, but those are the kinds of people who call Melbourne Naarm, wear pronoun badges, and are besotted with “welcome to country” ceremonies. I suspect there’s not enough of these lemmings—not even in Melbourne—to build a mass movement.

To educate the new recruits, if any should turn up, Mayo offers the Always Was section of the book,

a tour d’horizon of pre-contact Aboriginal history. “Our country has much more than a mere two and a half centuries of human history—civilisation on this continent stretches back more than 65,000 years. This statement is a core truth and should not be regarded as contentious.”

Bad Actor that I am, I feel obliged to quibble with the choice of the word “civilization”, instead of cultures or societies  or tribes. A few pages later, Mayo revises his categories and writes of “an advanced civilisation with hundreds of First Nations cultures”.

Mayo suggests taking some time to feel the “peaceful and abundant life Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people lived.” This brushes aside debates over the existence of violent Aboriginal warfare, ritualized physical punishments, sorcery, infanticide, polygamy, and other non-woke practices.

In his Always Will Be chapter, Mayo contrasts enlightened Aborigines with the real savages and barbarians, who turn out to be—go on, have a guess—the British colonisers. The contemptible white men who settled Australia and framed its Constitution compare unfavourably with the likes of Pemulwuy and other heroes of the “Frontier Wars”. In what I suspect is a rehearsal line for upcoming Anzac Day ceremonies, Mayo intones, “Lest we forget the warriors of the resistance.”

With the history lesson complete and an activist readership sufficiently miseducated, Mayo turns to the work that lies ahead: countering disinformation (ideally via censorship laws), taking on the Bad Actors (fighting them with truth and kindness, thankfully), and pretending that the Voice defeat didn’t happen and didn’t matter. “A superficial ‘No’,” Mayo submits, “cannot override such heartfelt hope.”

What else?

“Your front fence,” he suggests, “is the perfect place to put up an Acknowledgement of Country sign.” If that isn’t cringeworthy enough, he also encourages the re-purposing of “Yes” detritus—old T-shirts, corflutes etc—in order to keep the campaign goals alive.

None of those have been edited after the loss, so it’s full steam ahead on treaties, Makarrata, and the Aboriginal re-naming of your town and just about everything else. Mayo can’t resist adding reparations to this list, and he saves one of his most impassioned laments for the way it has become a “dirty word”.

Finally, on every October 14 going forward, readers should post photos of their time on the campaign to social media: “Share them proudly. You were there – on the right side of history.”

Well, Tom, you were on the wrong side of the voting tally.

As post-referendum politics rolls on, the Bad Actors should accept all the help they can get. So, thank you, Thomas Mayo. He is still doing the heavy lifting of making progressive activism unpalatable to as many voters as possible.

As a secret weapon for the “No” campaign, he was the best. He always was. And, as his latest book shows, he always will be.  

What did you think of the referendum on The Voice to Parliament?  

Timothy Cootes has written for Quadrant, Quillette, and the Spectator Australia. He lives in Sydney. Follow him on X/Twitter @timothycootes. 

Image credits: a rally in Brisbane for the Yes vote / Wikipedia