What the ghosts of campaigns past - and Dirty Dancing - can teach the PM about the voice referendum | Katharine Murphy

When I look at Anthony Albanese I see a prime minister surrounded by ghosts. Mostly this is a benign sensation. Ancestors and events leaving their imprint, either in wisdom or scar tissue, is a happier proposition than prime ministers too arrogant to learn.

Albanese has been learning the art of activism since his teens. He's studied how leaders campaign to achieve (or fail to achieve) their objectives since the Whitlam era because he wants to inherit the hive mind.

For this prime minister, the lifelong learner, ghosts of campaigns past are numerous and their lessons varied. When it comes to championing the voice to parliament, three ghosts are present and relevant at the moment. The first is the ghost of 1999 - the lessons of the failed republican referendum. The second is 2017 - the marriage equality debate. The third is 2009 - the parliamentary tussle around the carbon pollution reduction scheme.

The lesson of 1999 is simple. It's don't get bogged down in detail. You need enough of it to reassure people they know what they are voting for, but not too much, because detail can be weaponised to split the yes case and torpedo a referendum.

Now to the lessons from 2017. Indigenous Australians have to lead this campaign for the voice, backed by a coalition of the willing. Before I unpack this thought further, it would be useful if people engaged their EQ just for a moment to understand just how hard this will be, just how much we are asking of First Nations peoples, by requiring this particular community to carry this thing.

If my point seems mysterious, let me spell it out. We are asking a group that has faced institutional injustice (a polite way of putting things) for a couple of centuries to submit to a process where the majority (again) gets to determine the rights of a minority. During the referendum campaign, Australians will be asked to arbitrate on whether or not Indigenous people get an enshrined process for consultation on policy that affects them. This is a threshold question in a long journey of reconciliation, and there is absolutely no guarantee of success.

Leading with patience and clarity, with everything on the line, fighting the long shadow of injustice, staying focused when a parade of windbags and ratbags seek their "look at me" moment in the spotlight, while people with benign intent also queue up with their utterly reasonable nit-picking questions, requires levels of resilience that feel superhuman.

But Indigenous people have to lead because if the voice is a bottom-up campaign, if this is an inexorable march towards what is only just and fair, then I suspect yes prevails. The lesson of 2017 is deliberative processes can be imperfect, ugly and painful, but progress is sometimes linear. Ratbags and windbags have big megaphones, but they aren't always persuasive.

One more observation before we move on. The voice is a landmark reform and this cause absolutely needs allies, but it absolutely does not need tone-deaf endorsements by privileged thought leaders. This entirely well-meaning behaviour can be readily weaponised as a cri de coeur from Australia's hand-wringing elite. I really need to stress this point: one of the worst things that could happen at a time when inflation is running north of 7%, interest rates are rising and families have utterly reasonable anxiety about how they are going to pay their energy bills, is white millionaires and their advisers thundering in to "help" by telling people to vote yes to the voice or George Clooney might shun them at Davos. Not. Helpful.

Now we've arrived at the ghost of 2009. I feel certain there have been voice supporters in the community watching Albanese over the summer wondering why the prime minister hasn't gone harder at Peter Dutton for staging his give-me-the-detail-or-the-voice-gets-it panto.

I say panto because Dutton isn't an idiot. Dutton is well aware that: 1. There is plenty of detail around, and there will be more before the referendum gets to the sharp end; 2. He will be a central player in deliberating the detailed architecture of the voice if the referendum succeeds because he's the leader of the opposition and parliament will legislate that detail; and 3. Albanese will actually want this new advisory body to having the blessing of the whole parliament if that proves to be possible, because institutions tend to endure without the tedium of confected partisan outrage when everyone owns them.

Given the Dutton panto is performative, provocative, and could easily escalate to being completely corrosive, why hasn't Albanese grabbed the rhetorical flame thrower? I suspect it's because pre-emptive death matches can have consequences protagonists don't always anticipate.

Back in 2009, Malcolm Turnbull tried to work with Labor to put a price on carbon. This was a necessary reform, but there was significant hostility to the idea in the Liberal party base. Turnbull's advocacy was creeping towards untenable, but Kevin Rudd couldn't resist making it more uncomfortable with some biffo on the way through. That was a misjudgment, one that contributed to a partisan conflagration that poisoned the polity and set back the cause of climate action for a decade.

The point here is Dutton hasn't said no yet. In the event there's a post-Christmas miracle and Dutton decides to say yes, he'll be taking on elements of his own base deeply hostile to this change. Remember too that the moderate wing of the Liberal party was decimated in the 2022 election, further diminishing the clout of the progress caucus in Canberra.

Devotees of Dirty Dancing might invoke a mind-focusing maxim to illustrate this point - nobody puts baby in a corner. Albanese is trying to give Dutton some room to move. Dutton has been stalling, mulling whether there's a universe where he can say yes, or walk a middle course (giving his people the option to exercise their consciences), or whether he will say no and set the country on fire, Tony Abbott style, in the hope of fatally weakening Albanese's prime ministership.

The risk of plain-speaking confrontation at this juncture is baby is edged further into his corner. I strongly suspect the government doesn't want to furnish Dutton with an alibi to escalate - say no, and blame them for engaging in gratuitous partisanship.

If Dutton is going to say no either because he's captured by his shrinking base, and can't do anything else, because he's that rightwinger, or because he senses a path to blast back into the political contest by wrecking, I suspect the logic is he should own that strategic call. No plea bargains.

This has been a column about ghosts.

But I need to conclude this weekend by tracking back to the core characteristics of the politician currently resident in the Lodge.

A control freak - and I've covered those prime ministers - wouldn't take the risk Albanese is taking now. Dutton's panto would have been called out, and sharply, for what it is, and the contest would be dialled up to 11.

We may well arrive at that death match, and soon.

Albanese choosing strategic patience, for now, is a risk of course.

It might be the wrong call. But the thing I've learned about Albanese is he doesn't mind hanging back, letting things run, watching the direction of travel, even if that habit means that he presents periodically as a beat or two behind. What he gains from his observation point is often worth the messier moments this ingrained habit can confer. The messier moments can also force calibrations that sharpen the objectives and the means of achieving them.

But Albanese well understands the stakes, both for the country and for his own prime ministership.

The road ahead is hard, and failure is almost too terrible to contemplate.