PM digs in on Voice as Dutton calls for referendum rethink

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has dismissed an appeal from Peter Dutton to call off or rethink the upcoming referendum, insisting constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians must be achieved by enshrining a Voice to parliament in the nation’s founding document.

At the end of a week dominated by a bitter debate over the Voice, mental health advocacy group the Black Dog Institute warned there were early signs the tenor of the national discussion was already taking a toll on Indigenous Australians.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during question time in the House of Representatives at Parliament House in Canberra.Credit: Rhett Wyman

“There isn’t any official research on it, but what we are witnessing at a ground level is that there is definitely an increase in tension in our communities, which we can relate to the current conversations that are going on around the Voice and the referendum,” said Dr Clinton Schultz, director of First Nations partnership and strategy at the Black Dog Institute.

“When we’ve got people who are being positioned as sitting in either a Yes camp or No camp, that’s putting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in direct competition with each other when we’re already largely an oppressed and attacked group in Australian society.”

As the Yes and No camps prepare to ramp up their campaigns, Dutton used the final sitting day before the winter break to propose an alternative pathway for the referendum, slated for October, saying it should deal exclusively with the constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians, while offering to work with Labor to legislate the Voice.

Delivering a speech in the House of Representatives, the opposition leader said a referendum on constitutional recognition would unite the parliament and the country, while arguing the public was not ready to vote for the Voice because the government had failed to explain how it would work.

“That is the hand of friendship that we extend to the government today. We proposed a legislated Voice. Let’s do that. Let’s sit down and work together on the drafting of that and make sure Australians understand how it works,” Dutton said, dedicating a 10-minute speaking slot after question time to the Voice.

He said he strongly believed reconciliation would be harmed should the Voice fail – a view shared by Labor and Voice advocates – and urged Albanese to call off the referendum if he believed it would not succeed.

“If the prime minister is going forward with constitutional change that he believes is going to fail, that will set back reconciliation, then it is incumbent on this prime minister to stop that course of action,” Dutton said.

Dutton did not explain what form the constitutional recognition he was proposing should take, and his offer of bipartisanship comes after the referendum bill passed the parliament this week, locking in the Voice proposal as the one that will be put to the Australian people later this year.

In an unusual turn of events, Albanese returned to the chamber to denounce Dutton’s remarks as misinformation and “totally devoid of empathy”, as Labor MPs filled the government benches they had vacated only minutes earlier when question time ended.

“In 2017, Indigenous Australians met and agreed on the Uluru Statement from the Heart. The leader of the opposition has just given a statement without a heart,” Albanese said, referring to the 2017 convention where Indigenous delegates issued the call for a constitutionally enshrined Voice and rejected symbolic recognition.

Albanese accused Dutton of mounting a scare campaign, adding: “The idea of recognition through a Voice did not come from here in Canberra. It came from Indigenous Australians themselves.

“Churches, sporting organisations, civil society, businesses, Indigenous people themselves are out there saying yes. I’m optimistic that Australians will also say yes.”

Earlier, Albanese met with a delegation of four Northern Territory land councils to receive the Barunga Declaration – a document supporting the Voice that channelled the historic Barunga Statement handed by esteemed rights activist, the late Yunupingu, to Bob Hawke more than three decades ago.

It capped off a week in which the Coalition mounted an offensive over four consecutive question times, piling pressure on Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney to explain the Voice’s scope and to rule in, or out, issues it would consider.

On Thursday, opposition MPs pressed Burney on whether the Voice would have the power to advise the Reserve Bank on interest rates or the government on taxation policy, and whether Labor would change or abolish Australia Day if the Voice recommended it.

Earlier on Thursday, Liberal backbencher Bridget Archer, one of the few pro-Voice MPs in the Coalition, made clear her discomfort with her party’s question time strategy.

“I entirely agree with the sentiments of Minister Burney yesterday when she said I’m not interested in culture wars. I’m not interested in the negativity. What I’m interested in is walking forward positively with purpose … to change the lives of First Nations people,” Archer said.

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