Come the referendum and the Voice will be dead or alive. But the shouting will continue. Post-referendum Australia will have been socially and politically poisoned by this debate, as illustrated by the vitriol and general nastiness of the divisions the proposal has created. No, not the notion of constitutional recognition alone, but the payload this Voice carries of a volatile mechanism set to sideline parliamentary superiority in law-making, and the transformational treaty agenda.

Expectations are being misleadingly orchestrated; damaging consequences are being ignored.