ABC Insider panellist’s call for Indigenous voice to parliament to be ‘feared and revered’

The ABC’s top Indigenous correspondent says any new advisory body should be ‘feared’ and ‘revered’ as controversy swirls around what a voice should look like – and who it would benefit.

The ABC’s Indigenous Affairs editor has said Aboriginal Australians deserve “reparations” as part of the reconciliation process and that any Indigenous voice to parliament should be “feared and revered.”

Bridget Brennan was speaking as part of a panel discussion on the ABC current affairs program Insiders when she made the comments, which went unchallenged by host David Speers and fellow panellists, Q&A host Stan Grant and the Guardian Australia’s Lorena Allam.

“This has to be about justice, this has to be about reparations,” Ms Brennan said.

“It has to be about giving some power to Aboriginal communities.

“The parliament will have ultimate supremacy, of course, but what sort of transfer of power does this mean for Indigenous people because that needs to happen,” she said.

ABC Indigenous Affairs Editor Bridget Brennan.

Ms Brennan also said that any voice “does need to have teeth, it does need to be feared and revered,” and suggested that something like indigenous Sami parliament which meets in Canada could be a model for Australia.

The comments suggested that despite Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s comments that the voice is “a simple proposition that is consistent with good manners,” the jockeying over what powers an Indigenous advisory body might have has already begun.

Indigenous Senator Jacinta Price has described the voice to parliament as a ‘gravy train’. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

An analysis of the 2021 report on the 272-page “Indigenous Voice Co-design Process” found that “traditional owners” were only mentioned 48 times while “elders” were mentioned just 20 leading to fears that the process was being hijacked by professional activists.

Writing on Facebook Sunday, Senator Jacinta Price, herself a Warlpiri-Celtic woman, said that “the voice is being (led) by members of the Indigenous elite who’ve spent their lives on the backs of the most marginalised and changed nothing for them.”

“The voice to parliament is a gravy train attempting to ingrain itself into the constitution so despite its failures and lack of accountability can never be dismantled.”