TV host Ally Langdon’s scathing A Current Affair interview with Yes supporter and veteran journalist Ray Martin has earned the pair a spot on the list of reasons the county voted No to the Voice.
Prominent author and former journalist Martin Flanagan collated the list in an open letter to the 39 per cent of Australians who voted Yes in Saturday’s referendum.
The debate between Langdon and Ray Martin on October 5 saw her take him to task over calling “ignorant” No voters “dinosaurs”.
Martin defended calling those voting no “d*ckheads” in a speech he’d given in Marrickville at a Yes campaign event.
Langdon, who repeatedly cut off Martin during the explosive interview, cited the neo-Nazi flag-burning video threat to Indigenous Senator Lidia Thorpe, and suggested the Voice to Parliament debate “needs to calm down and get back to being respectful”.
“Do you regret those comments, Ray?” she asked
“No, I don’t,” Martin said.
“This is a really important referendum. And I did not call No voters those words, I was talking about the slogan. ‘If you don’t know, vote No.’ That is an endorsement of ignorance. If you don’t know, find out, do not vote ignorantly. That is a dinosaur. It is such an important vote, it is so important, and you need to find out.”
Flanagan said this exchange was crucial in many voters’ minds, and led to people voting No.
“Ally said Australians didn’t understand the Voice and, as proof of this proposition, said, ‘I mean, my parents don’t understand it. They’ve looked at it, their group of friends who have looked at it and don’t understand it, that is a massive problem’,” he explained.
He appeared to take a shot at Langdon for using the revelation about her family’s lack of understanding to make a point.
“Back to you in the studio, Ally,” he wrote. “Tell us what do your parents and their friends think.”
Flanagan went on to say the slogan “If you don’t know, vote no” was an extremely effective campaign tool.
The writer described it as is “the second most epoch defining campaign slogan I have seen in my adult lifetime, the other being ‘It’s Time’ in 1972.”
“It’s Time” was a slogan used by the Labor Party under Gough Whitlam during that year’s federal eelection, which played on the need for change after 23 years of Liberal coalition government.
No voters aimed to confuse and besiege
In his blog, Flanagan went on to flesh out nine other points that offered context to why 61 per cent of the country voted No, including the adoption of “Trump-like tactics” from the No team.
He accused them of tactfully confusing and besieging Australians to “make the whole thing dull and heavy” so no one had “energy to explore the Yes case”.
Tony Abbot, or as Flanagan called him, Tony Rabbit, was also to blame, with the journalist saying he “was crucial as it gave a lot of so-called ‘progressive No voters’ an out to squeeze through”.
A lack of organisation within the Yes team and a lack of continuation of momentum that was prevalent at the beginning of campaigning were contributing factors too, according to Flanagan.