Anthony Albanese declares he wants a constitutional referendum this term on the First Nations voice to parliament, warns he won’t tolerate a “right of veto” to the Coalition and likens its passage to the Stolen Generations apology where people had asked “what the fuss was about”.
These comments are alarming – they suggest a Prime Minister who neither understands the policy issue nor the politics involved. Labor has not done its homework on the voice. Albanese says he wants a referendum soon because he worries “the momentum will be lost” when the story so far is the absence of any Labor blueprint.
What is Labor’s proposal? There is none. Albanese is deceiving himself; he talks about momentum for a proposal that Labor has not explained. His assumption there’s nothing to “fuss” about is ignorant, complacent and dangerous. Albanese’s comments imply he thinks the referendum is on a roll and that delay is a problem. This is plain wrong. The proposal for a First Nations voice is contentious and radical.
Most Australians have only the vaguest notion of what it is about. Albanese’s effort to wave away the constitutional gravity by likening this debate to the apology is absurd. Does he understand what he is dealing with?
In contrast to Albanese, his Indigenous Australians Minister, Linda Burney, told this writer in an interview (The Weekend Australian, June 4-5) “the most important thing I think is not to set a hard and fast timetable” but “to build the consensus that’s necessary for a successful referendum”. Burney was not committed to a first-term referendum, saying she was “very much avoiding timelines” – a sensible position.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart was unveiled in 2017 and advocates naturally argue it’s time to advance the referendum. But the referendum cannot be put without telling Australians what the voice means and how it operates.
Major work on the voice was conducted under the Morrison government with the 272-page Final Report on the Indigenous Voice Co-design Process under Marcia Langton and Tom Calma – a diligent, exhaustive and heroic effort to make this concept workable.
Speaking to The Australian on Tuesday, opposition Indigenous Australians spokesman Julian Leeser said: “I believe the response to the Calma-Langton report should be the start point for consideration of the voice.” The report’s real value is the sobering awareness it brings to the challenges ahead for our Constitution, parliament and government.
Albanese welcomed Leeser’s appointment as positive but said there was enough support in the community to put a referendum without having bipartisanship. In his interview with this newspaper, reported on Monday, he offered the hubris-filled remark that he wouldn’t allow any “right of veto” to the Coalition. But he doesn’t get to decide this question. Unless he can persuade conservative Australians then he will lose with the public exercising its own veto on him.
Senior Indigenous figures such as Pat Turner and Calma are trying to warn the PM. For the record, the last successful Labor-sponsored referendum was in 1946 and, since Federation, Labor governments have put 25 referendums for 24 defeats. Albanese seems oblivious to the history.
The Calma-Langton report tried to design a model acceptable to Indigenous peoples and the public. It advocated local and regional voices to reflect Indigenous diversity with a national voice for which there was “strong support” in the consultations. They recommended a small 24-member national voice, including five members from remote regions, structurally linked to the local and the regional voices with the latter determining the members of the national voice. Direct election was rejected given problems confirming indigeneity and the risk of a low voter turnout.
Critically, the voice would advise both the government and parliament. Members would have four-year staggered terms. An independent ethics council would be created to ensure members were “fit and proper”. While an advisory body only, the national voice would have a wide scope advising on both laws and policy.
The Calma-Langton design rejected any notion the voice should be restricted to laws and policies just meant for Indigenous peoples. It would have a virtually free hand by giving advice on “matters of national significance” to First Nations peoples. The core function of the voice was to advise on national issues relating to the “social, spiritual and economic wellbeing” of Indigenous peoples – the wording, again, ensuring a wide discretion.
Revealing the complex task of marking this dividing line, Calma-Langton say the parliament would be obliged to consult the voice on any laws and policies that overwhelming affected Indigenous peoples. In addition, it would be expected to consult on wider policies and laws that significantly affected Indigenous peoples with the report making clear this could include general laws and policies that affected the wider public, from the NDIS to domestic violence to the national anthem. The report is explicit: the purpose of the voice is to influence outcomes of the national parliament. Its advice would be tabled in parliament and, on a major issue, would obviously bring intense pressure on any government. The model, it seems, envisages the voice influencing government at the outset of policy, being able to offer advice before a bill’s introduction and being able to mobilise media pressure on the parliament by giving advice after the bill’s introduction in the final legislative phase.
Obligations to consult with the voice would be expected of parliament and government. But to safeguard parliamentary sovereignty, Calma-Langton recommend that the consultation process be non-justiciable to ensure laws cannot be invalidated by the courts through arguments that proper consultation with the voice was not followed.
The report envisages a future international role for the voice to be defined later. This is pertinent given Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s statement five days after the election, invoking the voice, that the government “will develop a First Nations approach to foreign policy” with a First Nations ambassador. That’s a soft-power innovation – yet Australia, obviously, can have only one foreign policy. Given Wong’s pledge, however, the door will surely open to the voice offering Indigenous views on foreign policy. You can’t declare an Indigenous approach to foreign policy and keep the voice out of it. What happens, for instance, when more US forces are proposed for the Northern Territory?
The Calma-Langton report is not Labor’s document. But it is filled with valuable insights. However, here’s the trap: the risk is the more the voice is assessed, detailed and interrogated, the more uneasy people will get about it. What is Albanese’s plan? Trying to put a referendum while denying people the detail about the voice guarantees defeat. Imagine the No campaign: What is Albo trying to hide? The Coalition under Peter Dutton merely says it awaits Labor’s details on the voice.
The reality, however, is that the core Coalition reservation is about putting a race-based institution into our Constitution sitting adjacent to the house and Senate. This can be defended but, so far, Albanese hasn’t tried. He needs to treat the Australian public with the respect it deserves on one of the most complex and fraught referendum proposals to be put since Federation.
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