When Australia’s peak Indigenous organisations got together to deliver the Redfern Statement last week to demand that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people not be left out of the election campaign, this is not what they had in mind.
To recap for the blissfully unaware, the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said on Q&A on Monday night that he was open to the idea of a treaty.
Actually, what he said was:
Do I think that we need to move beyond just constitutional recognition to talking about what a post-constitutional recognition settlement with Indigenous people looks like? Yes I do.
That’s a view shared by many Indigenous Australians, including father of reconciliation and Labor senator Pat Dodson. Other Indigenous Australians have argued recognition should be abandoned entirely in favour of a treaty.
Shorten now stands accused of abandoning bipartisanship on constitutional recognition in an effort to “play to the left”.
Got it? Good. Take a bracing swill of tea and let’s get going.
The big picture
The prime minister and veteran of Australia’s most recent referendum, Malcolm Turnbull, has said Shorten could “undermine” support for recognising Indigenous Australians in the preamble to the constitution by raising the issue of a treaty.
Speaking to reporters in Perth on Tuesday, Turnbull said Shorten:
... should have more discipline and more focus on ensuring we maintain support for constitutional recognition rather than introducing other concepts which will, in my view, undermine the prospects of getting the very high level of public support you need for constitutional recognition of our first Australians
We want to see our first Australians recognised in the constitution in a form that speaks for and inspires our first Australians and that they can see as recognising their unique role as the first Australians and at the same time can secure the support of the majority of Australians and the majority of states because that is required to affect constitutional change.
My colleague, Gabrielle Chan, reported that Turnbull also said Australia could be “fairly described” as an invasion but that was just a “historical argument about a word”.
Shorten, campaigning in Swan with Noongar candidate and former Amnesty International Indigenous rights campaigner, Tammy Solonec, echoed the words of Pat Dodson: we can have both.
This nation has been grappling with the equal treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders since 1788, we have not got it right.
The fact that your skin colour is a more likely predictor in Australia of whether or not you will get a custodial sentence is unacceptable. For too long there’s been the wars between should you have symbolic recognition or practical reconciliation. I think both are important.
The Australian reported that Shorten had “broken with bipartisanship” on constitutional recognition.
Editor-at-large, Paul Kelly, writes that “a treaty raises the lethal issue of Aboriginal sovereignty”, and warns:
These are ominous days for the future of reconciliation.
Another fallout from Shorten’s Q&A appearance was the declaration, by Coalition campaign spokesman Mathias Cormann, who said that keeping journalists out of Australia’s offshore detention centres was necessary to prevent “sharing intelligence with people smugglers” and was an essential part of the “operational discipline” of Australia’s border security policy.
Paul Karp reports:
Cormann repeatedly refused to say what information journalists might report that would undermine the government’s border protection policy, only saying it was part of “operational discipline” that had stopped asylum seeker boats.
When asked why barring journalists was necessary, Cormann said that operational discipline included “not providing a running commentary on all aspects of our border protection policy framework”.
“That is the approach that has been successful, that is the approach that we are committed to.”
Meanwhile, the Australian Council of Social Services will release an assessment of budget and election commitments on Wednesday urging the Coalition not to target the poorest Australians in their budget cuts.
Political editor Lenore Taylor has outlined their submissions here.
On the campaign trail
Both Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten will start Wednesday in Perth, where the marginal seats of Cowan, Hasluck, Swan, and the new seat of Burt are in play.
According to Australian Associated Press, Turnbull appeared more confident in Perth on Tuesday night, saying twice (twice! In two hours!) that the Coalition would win on 2 July. Both statements were made to rooms packed with diehard Liberal voters, so there is that.
The campaign you should be watching
The fight for the Melbourne seat of Higgins, held by Liberal MP and the assistant treasurer, Kelly O’Dwyer, is heating up, with GetUp! joining the Greens to campaign for Greens candidate Jason Ball. It comes after polling by Lonergan Research, commissioned by the Greens, found O’Dwyer’s primary vote had dropped 10 points from 54.37% to 44.1%. Ball’s vote, in contrast, climbed from 16.8% to 24.1%.
My colleague, Gareth Hutchens, writes:
On a two-party preferred basis, the Liberal primary vote is at 53% and the Greens are now sitting on 47% – a gap within the poll’s margin of error.
The Greens say it gives them a genuine chance to win the seat after preferences are distributed, because they’re getting preferences from Labor, the Australian Equality party, the Animal Justice party and Derryn Hinch’s Justice party.
It could be the best chance for the Greens to pick up another lower house seat in Melbourne, after that Labor-Liberal preference deal made the fight much harder in Labor-held Batman and Wills.
And another thing(s)
While we’re talking preferences, the Greens have been criticised for a decision to preference a candidate for Fred Nile’s Christian Democrat party over the Indigenous gay Liberal candidate, Geoffrey Winters, in the seat of Sydney, held by Labor’s Tanya Plibersek.
Winters said the decision was:
... surprising and disappointing ... because it demonstrates that a party that has so historically held themselves above the argy bargy of party politics, has slipped into being a humdrum political machine that has lost its way.
Greens candidate Sylvie Ellsmore explained the thinking behind the decision to my colleague Paul Karp:
Ellsmore said the Christian Democrats are “a toxic conservative party” but the branch had put them ahead of the Liberals because “they’re hardly campaigning in the seat and we didn’t want to give them more oxygen”.
“In Sydney the contest is between the Greens, Labor and the Liberals and we wanted to be really clear. If there was any chance the Christian Democrats could get up we’d never do it.
“It’s much easier to say put the Liberals last, that’s a clear message.”
As you might expect, it has provoked some criticism.
Politics in a snapshot: Greens: We'll give preferences to Fred Nile's candidate over a gay, indigenous Liberal because of Labor
— Stephen Murray (@smurray38) June 14, 2016
And finally, the One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, sporting a rather fetching peacock brooch, has given her best Donald Trump impression in a video on Facebook calling for all new Muslim immigrants to be banned from Australia in the wake of the Orlando massacre.
Hanson says that the Australian government “doesn’t want to acknowledge” the role of terrorism in the attack (which is plain not true – Turnbull mentioned terrorism as a cause before he mentioned homophobia), and appeared to suggest that Australia could be next.
I’ll let her take it from here:
We have laws here that we don’t bring in pitbull terriers because they are a danger to our society. We don’t bring in certain toys, because they’re a danger to our society and to our children. We have laws to protect Australians.
So if we know this is the case with these terrorists out there radicalised by the belief of Islam and what it teaches, then why does our government ignore that fact?
We have to take a strong stance to ensure that people that come here are compatible with our culture, our way of life, our beliefs and our laws.
So what I’m saying is, pressure the government to say no more Muslims in Australia. No more Muslim refugees in Australia. Take a strong stance. Protect our security, our safety on our streets and our people.
Worth pointing out here that the Orlando gunman was born in the US.
Guardian live
A bit of shameless self-promotion here, but if you’re a regular Politics Live reader this should be firmly in your wheelhouse.
Guardian Australia’s political editor, Lenore Taylor, and deputy political editor, Katharine Murphy, who you may recognise from the dinkus above this blog, are hosting a live panel discussion in Sydney tonight on the overarching theme of fairness in the election campaign.
They’ll be joined by Tanya Plibersek, Liberal MP Trent Zimmerman (who inherited Joe Hockey’s seat of North Sydney) and Australian Council of Social Service chief executive Cassandra Goldie.
Full details here.
If you’re based in Melbourne, there’ll be another event, featuring George Megalogenis, Christian Porter and Jenny Macklin, as well as Lenore and Katharine, next Tuesday.
Follow the day’s developments live
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