Albanese slams voice ‘scare campaign’

The Prime Minister says the Coalition are searching for ‘every nuance’ in the wording of the Indigenous voice to parliament.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese Albanese has slammed the Coalition’s ‘word games’ and ‘scare campaign’ around the voice.

Anthony Albanese has slammed the “noise” and search for “every nuance” in the wording of the Indigenous voice to parliament, which he says is nothing but a “scare campaign”.

It follows the prime minister dismissing questions earlier this week about whether the voice would advise on matters such as a safeguard mechanism as some of the “strangest” queries he had fielded on the body so far.

Mr Albanese on Wednesday delivered a fiery rebuke of the debate this week.

“All of the noise that attempted to be created by opponents declared and undeclared to the voice whether that be in the media, or whether in the parliament... looking for every nuance to try to push out what essentially will be a scare campaign,” he said.

“You can have word games in this place or in the chamber, but it’s just word games.”

Mr Albanese told the media it had a “responsibility to not assist some of the nonsense that’s been out there” when it came to the airing of questions around the voice.

“People can have different views and people are entitled to either vote yes or not. But people have a responsibility to not assist some of the nonsense that’s been out there,” he said.

The PM says the opposition are attempting to divert focus away from the real issues of the voice to parliament.

He said the wording that suggested in 2014 there should be a body to make advice to parliament, put forward by opposition legal affairs spokesman Julian Leeser and law professor Greg Craven, was “pretty close” to the wording in the draft constitutional amendment he released last week.

The prime minister invoked the Mabo decision and Apology to the stolen generations as examples of major changes that did not “end in litigation”.

“Every single time there has been an advance on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs in this country, in my lifetime, there has been an argument which says it will end in litigation in the courts, (such as) Mabo, the apology to Stolen Generations,” he said.

“I’ve sat in that parliament throughout the entire Howard Government years being told that if we had an Apology it would divide the nation. Does anyone think that the Apology divided the nation now?”

“I’d asked people in this parliament in the House of Representatives and Senate. For those people who are thinking about what they should do, what they have an obligation in my view to consider is ‘did the apology create more unity or less’? In my view, it made us a better nation. So will constitutional recognition.”