the No campaign can’t see a painful contradiction

If the confused and slippery claims of the right’s No campaign have taught us anything in recent months, it’s that conservatives of this ilk have a hard time speaking plainly about power.

Nowhere has this so clearly manifested than in the collection of views grounding one of their principal objections to the Voice, which broadly turns on what we might call the spectre of democracy’s demise.

Writing in The Australian Financial Review three months ago, for instance, Louise Clegg, wife of Angus “fantastic” Taylor, declared the Voice a “radical” proposition, and one that in all seriousness “looks like a fourth arm of government”.