SA Liberals splinter over Voice as Antic hits out at Senate leader

The moderate Senator’s blow to Peter Dutton’s campaign against the Voice has been declared untenable by a junior SA colleague.

Opposition Senate leader Simon Birmingham is facing pressure to resign from the party’s frontbench over his refusal to campaign for a ‘No’ vote on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament proposal.

Firebrand Liberal Alex Antic said Senator Birmingham’s role is now “untenable”, accusing the Opposition foreign affairs spokesman of going against the party.

“We had a party room meeting … the party’s position is to vote no,” Senator Antic told Sky News.

“If that is to be Simon’s position then I really do think this makes his position as Opposition leader in the Senate and a frontbencher fairly untenable.”

Senator Antic said Senator Birmingham “absolutely” had time to reverse his position to actively oppose the Voice.

“I just don’t see from (Birmingham) that there’s any particular ambition to do so, so I am troubled by that,” Senator Antic said.

Senator Alex Antic says Simon Birmingham’s position as Liberal senate leader was now “untenable”.

The outspoken senator, who withheld his vote in parliament for months from late 2021 in protest of vaccine mandates, stopped short of calling on Opposition leader Peter Dutton to sack Senator Birmingham.

A senior Liberal source claimed Senator Antic did not attend the Liberal party room meeting last week, when its position on the Voice was decided. The Advertiser has asked Senator Antic to respond.

Julian Leeser this week resigned from the Liberal frontbench, and as Indigenous affairs spokesman, in order to campaign for a Yes vote.

Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie said: “Those who want to campaign for Yes would be going against … the party position and as shadow cabinet ministers, that would be untenable under the conventions that we exist under”.

“I’ve worked with (Birmingham) for a very long time and he is a man of his word and I am sure that if he had a different view to shadow cabinet, then he would make the appropriate decision,” she said.

Senator Birmingham refused to resign from the frontbench, arguing his position on the Voice was “nuanced”.

In a statement published on Facebook, he said he was “strongly in favour of a free vote” on the Voice but that he had a “less activist opinion”.

“The party room decision does not bind anyone to campaign on this one issue and, as someone who has never been an overly active proponent or opponent of this proposal, it was never likely that I would campaign in a referendum in any circumstances,” he said.

Simon Birmingham said his position on the Voice was nuanced and declared he would not step down from the frontbench.

Senator Birmingham, a leading moderate and the state’s most senior Liberal, said he believed a referendum that fails after being put to the Australian people would “be a bad outcome for reconciliation”.

“However, that desire does not equate to a blank cheque for constitutional change. Both the merits of a Voice and the detail of the constitutional change need to withstand the test of scrutiny,” he said.

Senator Birmingham confirmed he supported constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians since the Howard government era.

“It would be appropriate for our founding document to acknowledge the culture and peoples who have lived on this great continent for tens of thousands of years,” he said.

“That this was not advanced by the then or subsequent governments prior to the Uluru Statement from the Heart was a missed opportunity at a nationally unifying act of recognition and reconciliation.”

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