Beyond theatrics are signs of substantive Indigenous voice to parliament issues

Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney and former footballer Michael Long hold a press conference in Canberra Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

A fiery week in federal parliament has been a low point in the voice referendum campaign where politics has bred division in a way that, left unchecked, can erode the fabric of our cohesive society. Claims of racism can be made too easily in a debate that is supposed to be about understanding. For the Yes campaign there has been a loss of discipline that reflects the difficult position in which it finds itself in the polls. But beyond the theatrics there also has been the emergence of substance from both sides.

West Australian senator Patrick Dodson made a contribution from a convalescence that has kept him from the campaign to date, to say that Australia’s future identity would be measured in terms of whether the nation voted yes or no. A former Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation chairman and a commissioner in the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, Senator Dodson spoke a truth that many in the Yes campaign believe but have been unwilling to articulate. That is, as a nation, we are going to have to deal with some of the broader legacy issues that go to the question of disadvantage, dispossession and displacement of Aboriginal people, as well as the contemporary issues. This is an expectation on which the voice was founded but the Yes campaign has been reluctant to detail. It goes to the heart of the broader set of voice documents that Anthony Albanese maintains he has not read. It underpins the call for truth and treaty.

From the other side, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, an Indigenous senator also, has stepped up and painted a different future in which separatism is rejected and a broom is swept through the existing Indigenous bureaucracy. Her message is the opposite of Senator Dodson’s. In an address to the National Press Club she said claims the call for a voice had “come from First Nations people plays into backwards, neo-colonial racial stereotyping, suggesting all Aboriginal people think the same, feel the same and want for the same things”. Editor-at-large Paul Kelly says Price is not just saying no to the voice. She is saying yes to a different vision – that Indigenous people must be joined together in the wider nation, that they not be seen as separate, that the long-run goal must be the phasing out of separate Indigenous institutions and special policies.

Beyond the bluster and name-calling in federal parliament, these are the opposing views, coming from Indigenous leaders, that the nation is being asked to contemplate. The conversation is deeper than what has been on display in federal parliament. Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney says her treatment was “unbelievably racist and bullying. The way they have treated me is appalling”. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister said of Peter Dutton: “ When it comes to dishonesty and division, when it comes to fear and campaigns and falsehoods, this bloke wrote the book.” Jim Chalmers said the Opposition Leader had embraced misinformation and mistruths, and labelled him the “chief propagandist” and guilty of indulging in “nasty and negative and angry and dishonest and divisive politics”. When parliament was over, Mr Albanese said he wanted the Yes campaign message to be positive, “embracing a message of reconciliation and unity and, yes, love”.

With no more question times in federal parliament before polling day on October 14, the referendum debate must quickly return to focus on the details of what is on offer and what is at stake. It has always been incumbent on the Yes campaign to make the case for why constitutional change is necessary. Voters who may have just started to pay attention have every right to feel unhappy with what they have heard and seen so far.