Ken Wyatt says Liberal leader Peter Dutton has it wrong on what the Voice stands for

Ken Wyatt has given his first interview since he quit the Liberal Party after Peter Dutton announced he would campaign for the No vote on the Voice.

Former Indigenous affairs minister Ken Wyatt has spoken for the first time since he quit the Liberal Party after Peter Dutton announced he would campaign against the Voice, deriding it as a “Canberra Voice”.

Mr Wyatt said he still had great love for the Liberal Party, which he represented as the member for the Perth seat of Hasluck from 2010 until he was voted out at last May’s election won by Labor under Anthony Albanese.

But he resigned from the party the day after Mr Dutton finally announced the Liberal Party stand on the Voice referendum, joining coalition partner the Nationals to oppose the referendum which will be held later this year.

“That was a hard decision,” he told ABC TV’s 7.30 program on Tuesday.

“I had to weigh up my love of the Liberal Party and its values and what it stands for against a stubborn position of not wanting to give Aboriginal people a seat at the table.”

Ken Wyatt resigned from the Liberal Party the day after Peter Dutton committed to the No campaign against the Voice referendum. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Mr Wyatt, who in the Turnbull and Morrison Coalition governments was the first Indigenous Australian to hold the portfolio, said his former cabinet colleague was wrong to describe the Voice as a “Canberra Voice” driven by academics, elite and bureaucrats.

“Oh, look, that’s far from the truth. If you read the report that Tom (Calma) and Marcia (Langton) did, if you read all the other reports, it is about local community designing their regional Voice and the regional Voice electing people they want to represent them in Canberra,”

“It’s not a Canberra Voice. It is not elites. It is people from the grassroots.”

Ken Wyatt at the first meetings of the Referendum Working Group and the Referendum Engagement Group in Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

After losing his seat, Mr Wyatt, a longtime Voice advocate, joined the working group of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders advising the Albanese government on its referendum strategy.

Mr Wyatt stood with Anthony Albanese and other members of the referendum working group as the Prime Minister revealed the wording of the proposed constitutional change in an emotional press conference in Canberra last month.

Ken Wyatt (second from left) at Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s press conference with the Referendum Working Group announcing the Voice wording. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

He said the argument that Indigenous people already had a voice in the parliament because of the 11 Aboriginal and Torres Strait MPs and senators in the parliament was wrong.

“They cannot be represented by the 11 Indigenous people because constitutionally if you are a member of the House of Representatives you have a seat to represent,” he said.

“ It‘s not just the Indigenous people of Australia.

“And if you’re a senator you have a state responsibility because it is the state’s house that you sit in and make decisions in respect to the importance of this democracy.”

He said parliamentarians were not making the effort to go into Indigenous communities to understand the issues.

“I can bet you the bottom dollar if we went through every member of the federal parliament, asked if they’ve sat down in the dirt with the community that is having adverse impacts in regional and rural and remote and capital cities, you would find that number very limited,” he said

“So they’re not being heard.”

He said if the referendum failed, he would be “deeply saddened that we as a nation decided that we didn’t want to change the status quo for Indigenous Australians.”