This analysis by Robert Menzies Institute CEO, Georgina Downer, was originally posted on SkyNews on October 14th.

Social cohesion in Australia is breaking down.

According to the Scanlon Foundation’s Mapping Social Cohesion report released during the Voice debate last year, Australia’s social cohesion score was the lowest on record.

The figures for this year are likely to be much worse.

As a resident of Melbourne, you sadly become accustomed to our city being shut down by activists.

Whether it’s the Voice, the CFMEU, Gaza, Extinction Rebellion, you name it, normal life grinds to a halt in the protest capital of Australia.

Forget about catching the tram home or driving your car, and good luck making it through the rabble to get into the Flinders Street station.

While the protests are dominated by left-wing fringe dwellers who will enthusiastically jump on the next radical bandwagon that presents itself, they increasingly expose the deep and seemingly irreversible fissures that have erupted in our society in recent years.

One of the many sad legacies left by the Voice referendum is how swiftly the centrally important issue of persistent Indigenous disadvantage became marginalised, if not forgotten by most Australians.

This is despite the fact that according to the Scanlon report, 86 per cent of Australians believe the relationship between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the rest of the Australian community is important.

What is not forgotten, however, is the division.

The Scanlon report found that those who supported the Voice felt less of a sense of belonging to Australia and national pride.

Australia has a long history of votes like the Voice that test our social cohesion, the most notable of which were the conscription plebiscites during WW1.

But at the same time, those plebiscites and referenda in general, speak to the strength of our democratic culture.

After all, the plebiscites were exactly that, the government did not need a yes vote to have the constitutional power to introduce conscription, but it felt that having a democratic mandate was vital for conscription to be accepted.

One of the reasons the Voice was so divisive was that it struck against those Australian democratic values by raising the prospect of different categories of citizenship, with differing levels of say in shaping national policy.

The Voice involved rewriting Australia’s constitution which has underpinned our democracy and national identity since Federation.

The instinct to close the gap is to ensure that Indigenous Australians are full citizens in our property-owning democracy.

Enhancing equality of opportunity and growing democratic participation are important pursuits.

However, it was the identity politics of attacking the problem which poisoned the Voice and has poisoned the national debate more broadly.

We already have an overlapping identity which is being Australian.

And while that doesn’t mean we have to abandon our various cultural heritages, we should make being Australian something to be proud of such that people are inclined to prioritise that unifying identity over those which divide us.

We should also respect and uphold our constitution and our democratic values.

And we should not forget that a number of dictatorships around the world actively encourage division in Australia in the hope that we abandon our democracy.

This is a view that Robert Menzies, himself a proud Scots-Australian, took to heart.

Eighty years ago this month he established the Liberal Party of Australia, which rejected an older style of politics that divided the nation according to sectional interests. Instead, he articulated broad liberal values.

The “fair go” and equality of opportunity were the quintessential Australian middle class values.

Individuals would be rewarded for their efforts leading to a better life for them and their children.

Falling rates of home ownership, the rising cost of living, divisions over conflicts in the Middle East, all these issues sap our sense of pride in our nation, our sense of belonging to Australia and each other.

The legacy of the Voice referendum was division, not unity.

Many hearts were broken, especially those of the well-meaning people who spent decades working towards the referendum.

The protests on the streets continue, and the fissures in Australia are moving in a frighteningly permanent direction.

We need leadership to rebuild our social cohesion.

Our leaders must not shy away from articulating our common values, the things that bind us together and not what divides us.

Egalitarianism is a core value for Australians.

We should all benefit from equality of opportunity and equality before the law.

The Voice offended those values, however well-intentioned its framers were.

We also need our leaders to give young Australians hope that ours is the land of the fair go.

We need to redouble efforts to restore pride in our nation.

Australia is by no means perfect, but there is a reason why it remains a destination of choice for hundreds of thousands of migrants.

Freedom, opportunity, and democracy are fundamental to who we are.

We need to do much more to preserve these and overcome the entrenched division that is threatening Australia.