Race and class and race and yes and no

Time for progressive politics to recognise what it is up against

Yes-and-No questions are no way to judge a nation’s politics.

Nothing distorts the complexities of why voters choose certain outcomes than to force them into and either/or option, and nothing better guarantees negative campaigning than an either/or option, as the Voice referendum we have just been through has perfectly illustrated.

Still, if we can’t avoid the oversimplification that comes with something like a referendum—which is necessarily a Yes-No vote—we should at least try to not bring the same oversimplification to any subsequent analysis of the result. Whatever caused people to vote the way they did on Saturday will vary immensely, even if the result itself allows for no such complexity.

The beauty of a Voice to Parliament was that it enshrined deliberation rather than an either/or appraoch to some of our most complex issues of social policy and that is another thing to add to the list of what we lost on Saturday.

So, it is worth noting that Dutton’s low-and-divisive approach mig…