‘Absolute faith’: Linda Burney confident Yes campaign will convince undecided voters

Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney says she remains completely confident the Yes campaign will convince undecided voters to back the Voice to parliament, as the Opposition anointed a bloc of Liberal Queensland and Western Australian MPs to play a key role in shaping the No case.

The two states are expected to be the key battleground for the Yes and No campaigns in the lead-up to the referendum, due between October and December, with strategists in both camps privately identifying WA and Queensland as having the softest support for the Voice.

Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney says there is no doubt in her mind that the Yes vote will win.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Speaking after the referendum bill cleared its first hurdle on Wednesday, passing the House of Representatives unamended 121 votes to 25, Burney rejected any suggestion the Yes campaign was struggling for momentum despite a downward trend in support for the Voice across numerous polls in recent months.

“I have absolute faith in the [Yes} campaigns,” Burney said. “I hear the doomsday people but I know the work that’s being done. I know many of the individuals that are involved and coming on board.

“Remember, we’ve got several months to the referendum and there is no doubt in my mind that we are going to have a successful outcome.”

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the bill’s passage was a “big step” on the road to the referendum, and rejected the idea that without further detail many Australians would enter the ballot box uncertain about how the Voice would operate.

“I think that everybody needs to not lose sight of what this is actually about. The referendum is about two things. It’s about recognising, it’s about listening, and that’s what Australians are going to have in their minds when they go into the ballot box,” Dreyfus said.

Support for the Voice has fallen from 58 to 53 per cent over the past month when voters are asked to choose either yes or no in a question akin to the referendum, according to a recent exclusive RPM survey.

The Voice referendum bill, which sets out the wording of the constitutional amendment that Australians will be asked to vote on, must pass both houses of parliament before a national vote can be held. The bill will now proceed to the Senate for a vote in the next sitting fortnight, paving the way for the referendum to be held on the government’s preferred date of October 14.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton and many Liberals joined government MPs in voting for the bill, in line with the party’s position to allow the referendum to proceed, despite opposing the Voice itself.

However, a bloc of 10 Liberal backbenchers, referred to as “authorised dissenters”, voted against the bill, as did all National MPs, allowing them to contribute to the No case in the official referendum pamphlet that is posted by the Australian Electoral Commission to every household during the fortnight before voting day.

Under the referendum rules, the Yes and No cases outlined in the pamphlet are authorised by the MPs who vote for the respective sides.

The Greens and teal MPs also voted for the bill, as did independents Andrew Gee and Dai Le, while all Nationals MPs voted against it. Bob Katter abstained.

The Liberal dissenters included six Queenslanders – Andrew Wallace, Henry Pike, Garth Hamilton, Terry Young, Luke Howarth, and Scott Buchholz – and two WA MPs, Rick Wilson and Ian Goodenough. NSW MP Alex Hawke and SA MP Tony Pasin also voted against it.

The referendum bill passed the House of Representatives 121 votes to 25 on Wednesday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Wallace, the member for Fisher, an electorate covering the southern end of Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, said he believed his electorate was firmly opposed to the Voice and that the state more broadly would reject it.

“My personal view is that it will fail in Queensland,” Wallace said.

“I sent out an email to 30,000 people in my electorate, and the response I got was 72 per cent No. I think that that’s pretty telling.“

Echoing the view of Nationals leader David Littleproud, Wallace said it was imperative that the No arguments in the pamphlet struck a respectful tone.

“We absolutely need to be very careful about tone. This is not a winner takes all sort of a situation. Come Sunday [after the referendum], we need to be still Australians, and we still need to be getting on with each other,” he said.

Nationals MP Sam Birrell, whose Victorian electorate of Nicholls has a large Indigenous constituency with strong support for the Voice, said the debate had been “very difficult” for him, but he ultimately agreed with the party’s position to oppose the constitutional change.

“This is not about following the party line; it is a decision I have come to after listening to the arguments and weighing up my own principles,” Birrell said in a statement explaining his position.

However, he indicated he would not campaign for No in his community, saying: “I have one vote in the referendum just like everyone else.”

Before the final vote in the chamber, Liberal backbencher Julian Leeser, the party’s leading Voice advocate, unsuccessfully attempted to amend the Voice proposal in line with his belief that it would remove legal risk and make conservative and Liberal voters more likely to support the Yes case.

The amendment would have removed the constitutional right of the Voice to advise executive government and deleted an introductory sentence explicitly recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first people of Australia.

Dreyfus said the amendments were “neither necessary nor desirable”.

“It’s vital that the Voice be able to make representations to the executive government. It’s also vital that the amendment, on its face, make clear that this is about the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first peoples of Australia,” he said.

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