KEY POINTS
- All states rejected the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, which suffered a comprehensive referendum defeat.
- However, history shows that failed referendums don't do electoral damage to the governments that call them.
- Australian voters tend to opt for the status quo at referendums and federal elections.
Australians comprehensively rejected the Indigenous Voice to Parliament this weekend, and might now start hearing dire predictions about Labor's electoral prospects.
The No vote will seriously dent Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's political standing, the theory goes, potentially providing Opposition leader Peter Dutton a launchpad to seize the Lodge.
After all, the first words in Albanese's 2022 election night victory speech were a commitment to the .
Opposition Indigenous Australians spokesperson and prominent No advocate Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has warned the prime minister that he should be looking over his shoulder.
"I would suggest that it is Albanese's leadership that is on the line first," she told during the campaign.
But does losing a referendum really spell doom for the government that called it?
Australian National University historian Frank Bongiorno says that's not necessarily the case.
"Defeat of a referendum tends not to result in any lasting damage to governments, certainly in the Australian case, and certainly not to resignations of prime ministers," he says.
"There's no history of governments being fatally wounded by the defeat of a referendum."
Here's why.
Which referendums are we looking at?
Australians have now rejected 37 of 45 proposed changes to the constitution.
On 13 occasions before Saturday's result, they said No to every question on a referendum ballot - whether there was only one or multiple.
These 13 occasions can be divided into two groups: four that were held on the same day as a federal election, and nine which weren’t.
Anthony Albanese's first words on election night were a commitment to the Uluru Statement. A No vote would see this commitment fail at the first hurdle. Credit: AP
When failed referendums are held by themselves
Obviously, there wasn't a federal election on 14 October, so the history of standalone referendums may be our best guide.
Looking at the nine failed standalone referendums and what came next suggests good news for Albanese.
The first was in 1911, and the Labour Party - that was the spelling at the time - went on to lose the next federal election. But that's only really happened once since then, and all the way back in 1949.
John Howard called a referendum on an Australian republic, but campaigned against it. He won both the referendum and the next federal election. Source: AAP / Rob Griffith
Australia's republic referendum in 1999 was the outlier. Then-prime minister John Howard called the referendum but campaigned heavily against the idea. Howard's side was victorious, the referendum went down, and he won the 2001 election.
When referendums are held alongside an election
If Australians reject a referendum held on the same day as a federal election, you'd think that would spell trouble for the government.
But that doesn't always play out in reality.
It's happened on four occasions - 1913, 1919, 1974, and 1984 - and on three of those the party in power actually won the election.
Once, the government lost power.
In 1975, the governor-general dismissed the Whitlam government before it had a chance to head back to the polls.
But Labor didn't only win the 1984 election, it remained in power for another decade under Bob Hawke and Paul Keating.
Why aren't election and referendum outcomes tied?
Whether it's voting in a referendum or a federal election, Australian voters are wary of change.
With the Voice failing on 14 October, they have rejected 37 proposed amendments to the constitution and approved just eight. And three of those occurred on the same day in 1977.
There have also been 35 federal elections since 1930, and only nine changes of government.
Losing the 1984 referendum didn't stop Bob Hawke, who went on to win the federal election in 1987. Source: Getty / Patrick Riviere
"It really is [about] a message that the people will send to the government," he says.
"They will say: 'Well, they shouldn't get too cocky. I'm just going to vote No, because that will teach them.' That's the psychology of it."
But while voters have a chance to vent their anger at a referendum, changes of government are a different proposition.
"When you actually get around to an election, in many ways [it's] a choice between two sides, about who is going to govern the country for the next three years. People calculate in quite different ways [to a referendum]," Bongiorno says.
What could happen to Labor now?
While Anthony Albanese might be reassured by history, the political ramifications of a No vote aren't entirely clear.
Bongiorno says Labor has "invested a lot of its self-image, its image in Australia, and perhaps even more its image in the world" in the Uluru Statement. The loss on Saturday means failure at the first attempt.
"You would imagine that defeat would take some sort of shine off the government. But taking shine off the government and actually undermining its electoral standing in any sort of long-standing way are two quite different things," Bongiorno says.
"I don't think it's easy to actually predict the political fallout."
Australian National University historian Frank Bongiorno says a No vote could actually damage the Opposition at the next election. Source: AAP / Michael Errey
And Bongiorno says it's also possible a gruelling, ugly campaign could take some shine off the Opposition, too.
"There is scope for certainly significant damage to the Opposition," he says.
"I think that lies in the nature of the campaign that it has run; it's often found itself with fairly unsavoury allies … I think that there may well be a price to be paid for that."
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