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Sydney Morning Herald
26-05-2025
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
Pro-Voice Liberal says referendum defeat gave the party ‘a false sense of confidence'
The Coalition's success in defeating the Voice to parliament referendum gave the Liberal party 'a false sense of confidence' about its chances of victory, says former shadow attorney general Julian Leeser, who resigned from his opposition portfolio in 2023 in order to campaign for the referendum. Noting that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese 'seemed to lose his way' after the Voice referendum was defeated in all states in October 2023, Leeser told ABC's Afternoon Briefing that this, combined with Albanese's poor handling of the local antisemitism crisis, 'gave so many in our party a false sense of confidence'. Leeser says he was 'shocked' that the internal polling conducted for the Coalition by Freshwater's Mike Turner used the number of Labor voters who voted no in the referendum in his calculations of a swing against the government, which was instead returned in a landslide and is likely to end up with 94 seats, equalling John Howard's record in 1996. 'On one level, there is nothing wrong with trying to target those Labor voters who voted no in the referendum campaign,' he said, saying Howard targeted those who rejected the republic proposal in 1999, but only to remind them of other issues such as border security. 'I thought it was very strange there was such a focus even on the campaign itself,' Leeser said. Loading 'Part of the reason my colleagues were successfully defeating the referendum was in 2023 the issue did not seem to be one of top priority for Australian voters. Certainly, in 2025, it was completely irrelevant and I had no idea why the issue kept reappearing in our campaign.' While former opposition leader Peter Dutton regularly raised the Voice as one of several examples to demonstrate that Labor was out of touch, he campaigned in the final days of the campaign on the claim that the government had a 'secret plan to legislate the Voice' after Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong told the Betoota Talks podcast that she thought 'we'll look back on it in 10 years' time and it'll be a bit like marriage equality'. Albanese ruled out bringing back the Voice and accused Dutton of 'verballing' Wong.
The Age
26-05-2025
- Politics
- The Age
Pro-Voice Liberal says referendum defeat gave the party ‘a false sense of confidence'
The Coalition's success in defeating the Voice to parliament referendum gave the Liberal party 'a false sense of confidence' about its chances of victory, says former shadow attorney general Julian Leeser, who resigned from his opposition portfolio in 2023 in order to campaign for the referendum. Noting that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese 'seemed to lose his way' after the Voice referendum was defeated in all states in October 2023, Leeser told ABC's Afternoon Briefing that this, combined with Albanese's poor handling of the local antisemitism crisis, 'gave so many in our party a false sense of confidence'. Leeser says he was 'shocked' that the internal polling conducted for the Coalition by Freshwater's Mike Turner used the number of Labor voters who voted no in the referendum in his calculations of a swing against the government, which was instead returned in a landslide and is likely to end up with 94 seats, equalling John Howard's record in 1996. 'On one level, there is nothing wrong with trying to target those Labor voters who voted no in the referendum campaign,' he said, saying Howard targeted those who rejected the republic proposal in 1999, but only to remind them of other issues such as border security. 'I thought it was very strange there was such a focus even on the campaign itself,' Leeser said. Loading 'Part of the reason my colleagues were successfully defeating the referendum was in 2023 the issue did not seem to be one of top priority for Australian voters. Certainly, in 2025, it was completely irrelevant and I had no idea why the issue kept reappearing in our campaign.' While former opposition leader Peter Dutton regularly raised the Voice as one of several examples to demonstrate that Labor was out of touch, he campaigned in the final days of the campaign on the claim that the government had a 'secret plan to legislate the Voice' after Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong told the Betoota Talks podcast that she thought 'we'll look back on it in 10 years' time and it'll be a bit like marriage equality'. Albanese ruled out bringing back the Voice and accused Dutton of 'verballing' Wong.
Daily Mail
03-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Jubilant Penny Wong's cryptic swipe at her critics after her Voice gaffe almost derailed Albo's landslide election win
Penny Wong has made a defiant Acknowledgement of Country on election night, after her Voice gaffe caused campaign woes for Labor earlier in the week. Wong sparked a furore on Wednesday by predicting that the Voice - a separate indigenous body with powers to influence government legislation - will still be introduced despite it being voted down 60 per cent to 40 per cent in a 2023 referendum. 'We'll look back on it in 10 years' time and it'll be a bit like marriage equality,' Senator Wong told the Betoota Talks podcast. 'I always used to say, marriage equality, which took us such a bloody fight to get that done, and I thought, all this fuss... It'll become something, it'll be like, people go "did we even have an argument about that?"' Her backing for the indigenous body came just three days after Anthony Albanese ruled out any attempt to bring back the Voice, telling the leaders' debate: 'It's gone... I respect the outcome (of the referendum), we live in a democracy.' Albanese was forced to respond to Wong's comments and reassure voters that he was not planning another referendum, while the foreign minister made an apparent backflip, telling SBS, 'the Voice is gone... the prime minister has made that clear, and the Australian people have made their position clear, and we respect the result of the referendum.' After Labor swept to victory in Saturday night's election, Wong took the stage at a Labor party in Sydney to introduce Albanese. She made a point of performing a brief Acknowledgement of Country in her speech. 'The power in our 26 million people from more than 300 ancestries... from the oldest continuing civilisation on the planet and I acknowledge the traditional owners, friends we love this country,' she said. Albanese then performed another Acknowledgement of Country in his own speech. 'I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet,' the Prime Minister said to cheers from supporters. 'And I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet.' The Voice campaign was a major blow for the Labor government and Albanese, who hitched his legacy to the proposal. He went to the 2022 federal election with the referendum promise, spoke about it in his first speech as the PM and campaigned tirelessly for most of 2023. Wong's podcast interview earlier this week was seen as a political gift to Peter Dutton, who quickly accused the foreign minister of 'letting the cat out of the bag'. 'Under a Labor-Greens government we see this secret plan to legislate the Voice and Penny Wong has let that cat out of the bag,' Dutton said. 'People will be opposed to that because they thought they sent a very clear message to the Prime Minister that they didn't want the Voice.'
ABC News
02-05-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Just before election night, Trumpian politics rears its head
It was an almost philosophical musing, on the podcast for a largely satirical website, by one of the most politically careful politicians in Canberra. Asked on the Betoota Talks podcast this about the Voice referendum, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said: "I think we'll look back on it in 10 years' time and it'll be a bit like marriage equality." "I always used to say, marriage equality, which took us such a bloody fight to get that done — and I thought, all this fuss — it'll become something, it'll be like, people go 'did we even have an argument about that?'" By Friday, both parties had research showing Penny Wong's comments were hitting the Labor vote hard in some seats. ( Reuters: Kevin Mohatt ) This election has been defined by politicians and pollsters as one on the cost of living. Yet by Friday, both parties were reporting that their research was showing Wong's comments — and the reminder of the Voice issue — was hitting the Labor vote hard in some seats, notably in Western Australia, Queensland and Victoria. The News Corp media were running hard on the line that the comments showed Labor was "arrogant" or "disrespectful" of the will of the people shown in the 2023 referendum. Election essentials: Find out where your Coalition's Voice strategy bites On Friday, Peter Dutton claimed Labor had "a plan" to bring the Voice back, despite flat denials by ministers from Anthony Albanese down. "They have a plan to introduce by legislation a Voice," he told journalists in the Perth seat of Tangney, one of the seats where the issue has bitten. "Now, Australians voted against that. And you would have thought that the prime minister would have been honest but even on that issue he's not being honest." Whatever the extent of influence of Wong's comments and the Voice on the vote will prove to have had on Saturday night, the return of the Voice issue showed that while Trumpian politics might have been toned down somewhat in the wake of Donald Trump's global tariff moves, issues that cause popular anger in parts of the community, or are seen as emblematic of an out of touch "elite", have not gone away. After all, by the last week of the campaign, Dutton was banging the law and order drum, railing against the "hate media", speaking of the school curriculum and changing his tune about Indigenous Welcomes to Country. A focus on tight races The day-to-day story of the election campaign has — as is so often the case — focused on the leaders of the two major political parties, and to some extent on the Greens. There's been new focus on individual seats where independent candidates are competing in tight and sometimes tough races. That story has included the polling story of an extraordinary revival of Labor's fortunes — and those of the standing of the prime minister — as well as the decline in the poll standing of the Coalition and its leader Dutton. That has left polls consistently pointing to Labor dominating the two-party preferred vote — if individual polls differ about the extent of that dominance. On Friday, Peter Dutton claimed Labor had "a plan" to bring the Voice back, despite flat denials by ministers from Anthony Albanese down. ( ABC News: Brendan Esposito ) The implications of that dominance — in terms of the make-up of the parliament — are still hard to predict, partly because there are so many unclear contests involving independents, and in some cases tight three-way contests between the major parties and the Greens. What we definitely don't know so much about is how the vote for the so-called centre-right minor parties, like Pauline Hanson's One Nation and Clive Palmer's Trumpet of Patriots, will play out. It's not that these parties are expected to win seats in the House of Representatives. But there has been considerable focus this week on pollsters reporting a much higher proportion of preferences from these parties are being directed to the Coalition in outer-suburban seats. So one speculation goes to the extent that this might deliver some tight contests to Peter Dutton. This is particularly the case because of the Coalition's decision to do a preference deal with One Nation for the first time in its history. Loading The One Nation effect Anyone who has already voted in this election may have also been struck by the sheer number of such groups appearing on your ballot paper. It's not like you can avoid them by putting them beneath the Killer Tomato Party or the Rights for Turnips Party. That's a lot of preferences all being funnelled up through a series of like-minded groups. It has been speculated that the polling figures for One Nation around the country could potentially presage the party gaining up to five senators in the upper house. Read more about the federal election: Want even more? Here's where you can find all our 2025 Catch the latest interviews and in-depth coverage on For a party that was spoken of as on its way out just last year because it is so utterly attached to the personality of its leader, that is pretty remarkable. Trying to exploit the anger that has fuelled political movements like MAGA and populism in the United States and Europe, and aping Trumpian tactics, became a more fraught exercise for the Coalition in the wake of the US President's erratic tariff tactics and rhetoric. But it would seem to be folly to think that we have negotiated the eddies of culture wars and seen an election fought in more traditional fashion on economic concerns and the hip pocket. What are the implications of how that may affect both the Parliament and our capacity to deal with the complex world we face as we emerge from the curious bubble of a domestic election campaign? Trump has had an out-sized impact on the race. ( AP: Evan Vucci ) Trump's impact on Australian politics When Trump announced his global tariffs policy in early April, it seemed to crystallise how damaging his erratic America first policies could be to all of us. Having early quasi-embraced the Trump brand, for example, calling the US President a "big thinker" of his suggestion to turn the Gaza strip into a resort, Peter Dutton had to change his language about Trump and seemed to walk away from the more generic DOGE-style tropes of current American politics. Trump's moves also worked well for the prime minister, whose steady, down the centre approach to Trump seemed vindicated. Pundits on both sides of politics were mostly predicting a Labor minority government through to a Labor majority as the campaign ended. A majority Albanese government would be a very different beast to the one we have experienced to date, if only because of the confidence and authority a now rare second term win delivers to a prime minister. A majority Albanese government would be a very different beast to the one we have experienced to date. ( ABC News: Brendan Esposito ) That, of course, doesn't guarantee you won't have to deal with a difficult Senate. And the politics of the times would be very much influenced by just how devastating a defeat the Coalition faced. The chaotic nature of the campaign has left little love for Dutton among his colleagues, and the forces of the Liberal and National Party have been left utterly confused about what they have stood for. "We don't believe in that!" was a common barely stifled response by MPs and party operators when they were hearing their leader announce policies they were hearing for the first time during the campaign. Photo shows Brett Worthington looks at the camera wearing a blue blazer and glasses Sign up to the ABC Politics newsletter with Brett Worthington A sizeable cross bench in those circumstances — and indeed in cases of a minority government — could well be the source of both policy provocation and the space that a government needs to prosecute any significant reforms. The focus on the policy chaos in the Coalition has meant there have been few hard comparisons against which to judge Labor policies. But the times will inevitably require a return to politics which doesn't just involve giving people stuff. It is going to involve the return to the art of the exposed trade-off for all parts of the community, for means-testing, grandfathering and constraints on largesse. And it could well involve another art that feels like it has been lost in recent times: exploiting a crisis to transform the conversation. The global situation requires the complete rewriting of the hardwiring of our political and bureaucratic establishment brains. That suggests both a courage and agility in avoiding the populist strata of day to day politics we have not achieved for a very long time. Laura Tingle is 7.30's political editor. Having trouble seeing this form? Try
Daily Mail
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Labor minister Anika Wells fuels speculation The Voice is still alive in party's ranks
Labor frontbencher Anika Wells has appeared to suggest a third position on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament in as many days, reigniting political tensions over the defeated proposal. Foreign Minister Penny Wong sparked a firestorm when she suggested the Voice, like the struggle for marriage equality, was inevitable in a podcast interview with the Betoota Talks podcast. 'We'll look back on it in ten years' time, and it'll be a bit like marriage equality,' Senator Wong told the Betoota Talks podcast. 'I always used to say, marriage equality, which took us such a bloody fight to get that done, and I thought, all this fuss... It'll become something, it'll be like, people go "did we even have an argument about that?" Her backing for the Indigenous body came just three days after Anthony Albanese ruled out any attempt to bring back the Voice, telling the leaders' debate: 'It's gone... I respect the outcome (of the referendum), we live in a democracy.' Sen Wong later echoed Mr Albanese's words in an apparent backflip, telling SBS, 'the Voice is gone... The prime minister has made that clear, and the Australian people have made their position clear, and we respect the result of the referendum.' But now the Minister for Aged Care and Sport has suggested that the Voice may continue in another 'form'. Appearing on the ABC's News Breakfast this morning, Wells was asked directly: 'Voice to Parliament, will it make a comeback do you think at some point?' She responded: 'The Voice in the form we took to the referendum is gone. 'We respect the opinions and the votes of people, they made that very clear, but we're always looking for ways to help First Nations people and for that policy to be tangible and credible.' Treasurer Jim Chalmers has touted Ms Wells as a future leader of the party. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton seized on Wells' comments, claiming it was evidence that 'the Voice, in some form, presumably through legislation, is going to be a part of the Albanese government's next term in power, if they're successful on Saturday'. 'I'll just ask Australians to think about that for a second,' he said. 'You sent a very clear message to the prime minister that you said no to the Voice, and now the prime minister is saying back to you, "well, we've got this secret plan, when we're in government, to reintroduce the Voice in the form of legislation".'
