Liberal party room jitters overruled as Dutton’s No case holds sway

Three Liberal MPs raised concerns the party’s decision to campaign for a No vote in the historic Voice to parliament referendum would be perceived by some voters as opposing Indigenous advancement and potentially racist.

The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald confirmed with six Liberal MPs – all of whom asked not to be named so they could discuss Wednesday’s snap Liberal party room meeting – that MPs Bridget Archer, Richard Colbeck and Russell Broadbent raised their concerns about the grave risk of opposing the referendum.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton has proposed symbolically recognising Indigenous Australians in the Constitution without enshrining into the nation’s founding document a new Voice advisory body, which Dutton claimed would radically change and disrupt Australia’s system of government and fail to deliver practical benefit.

Asked if he will actively campaign against the Voice to parliament, Dutton said: “I will be ... I don’t think this is in our country’s best interest.”

The party will push for legislated local and regional advisory bodies – effectively the same position the Morrison government took to the 2022 election. While Dutton said he was committed to negotiating with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on the wording of the constitutional amendment, he said he doubted “very much” Albanese would change his position.

Shadow ministers will be bound to support the party’s decision but backbenchers will be allowed to campaign as they wish, as is the norm. The revised stance has set Dutton against outspoken moderates within the party who are still open to supporting an Indigenous advisory body to the parliament and executive.

Outspoken MP Bridget Archer – who is in favour of the Voice – said her faith in the party had been tested, and she questioned whether the party had learnt the lessons of the May federal election and the weekend byelection loss in Aston.

“If we don’t change, we will die,” she told this masthead.

She told ABC TV she would seize the opportunity to campaign for the Voice to parliament. “I will be 100 per cent supporting a Yes campaign going forward. I am disappointed that we have arrived at this position. My preference would have been that we, at best, just get out of the way,” she said.

The majority of Liberals are opposed to the Voice referendum proposal as it stands. Ten MPs spoke in favour of opposing the referendum as it is currently worded, including Melbourne MP Keith Wolahan and Indigenous senator Kerrynne Liddle.

Deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley and leader Peter Dutton announce the party’s stance on the Voice referendum.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Five MPs – Broadbent, Archer, Colbeck, Jenny Ware, and Andrew Bragg – spoke in favour of backing the referendum.

Moderate shadow cabinet ministers Simon Birmingham, Paul Fletcher and Marise Payne did not speak in the party room meeting. They met in a smaller meeting of shadow ministers before the party room meeting, which ran over time and settled the Coalition position that was then put to the full group of MPs.

According to observers in the room, Broadbent said he was still open-minded about the government’s proposal, while Victorian MP Aaron Violi said he was yet to form a position.

Dutton assured MPs that the party’s position would not be perceived as uncaring towards Indigenous people because the opposition was proposing its own form of Indigenous recognition.

One of the party’s strongest supporters of the Voice, Andrew Bragg, said he would consider the effectiveness of the opposition’s package. He said Labor’s handling of the referendum process had been “poor”.

“But that is not a good enough reason to oppose the referendum in my opinion,” he said.

Colbeck, Broadbent and Archer were contacted for comment about their contribution to the party room meeting.

Ware, who spoke in favour of a free vote during the meeting, said the opposition had put forward a credible alternative to the government’s “problematic” proposal but that she had not yet landed on a position.

“As the representative of the Hughes electorate, I intend to consult widely within my electorate before I finalise my position and vote when we return to parliament,” she said in a statement.

Dutton, who framed Albanese as an arrogant prime minister with no ability to compromise, said he was concerned the government’s intention for the Voice to advise ministers and bureaucrats would open the door to High Court challenges.

“It’s absolutely incumbent on the prime minister to either pull the vote or delay,” he said. “[The Voice] going down – that is not in the best interest of our country.”

Opposition Indigenous affairs spokesman Julian Leeser told the National Press Club on Monday that the second clause of the proposed constitutional amendment was the “lead in the saddlebag” and that the referendum would have a greater chance of success without it.

He said this clause, which says the Voice “may make representations to the parliament and the executive government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples”, was too broad and open to activist judges to expand its meaning.

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