Indigenous voice to parliament: marathon meeting with Anthony Albanese to seal the deal
The group of six knew they had to see the Prime Minister in secret to get a voice deal done.
The group of six knew they had to see the Prime Minister in secret to get a deal done.
In a city office in Adelaide on Thursday last week, the 20 Indigenous leaders in Anthony Albanese’s referendum working group were on the cusp of a historic agreement that could change Australian politics forever.
However, this was not going to be a public debate with a government that had showed so much goodwill on the Indigenous voice.
Rather, it was decided that a delegation of Indigenous leaders from the referendum working group would hold final negotiations with the Prime Minister, Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney, Labor senator Pat Dodson and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus on the words that should be added to the Constitution to guarantee the voice.
They wanted a joint announcement, not a back and forth to give succour to the No campaign.
Uluru Dialogue’s co-chair Megan Davis told The Australian she was not free to reveal the contents of the talks but she was struck by Albanese’s commitment to hear everything that the group wanted to say.
“I have been in the process since 2011 and I haven’t met a more respectful Prime Minister,” Davis said. “He looks you in the eye when you are talking, he looks you in the eye when he’s talking.
“You can tell he’s genuinely listening and hearing what you are saying.”
What becomes of people who are never listened to is something Davis researched in 2015 before she designed 12 meetings around Australia that asked Aboriginal people what form of constitutional recognition they would prefer.
She found that people who are not heard experience something equivalent to abandonment.
This was at the front of her mind when, ultimately, delegates from those meetings asked for a voice.
It was at the front of her mind again on Tuesday as she and other senior Indigenous leaders began their talks with Albanese in Parliament House.
But that marathon meeting – which stretched across Tuesday and Wednesday – occurred weeks after Indigenous leaders stopped seeking the advice of the eight-member expert constitutional group appointed to inform its deliberations. That panel last met on February 2.
According to one member, constitutional expert George Williams, the final words of the voice amendment announced on Thursday were news to him and the expert group was not asked for advice on it.
So had the referendum working group fallen out with the constitutional expert panel? Some say no, and its work was finished. But the panel was not asked for any more advice after February 19 when panel member Greg Craven launched an extraordinary and thinly veiled attack on working group members.
Articulating his concerns about the proposal for the voice to advise executive government as well as parliament, Craven claimed there was an “all or nothing” faction in the Yes campaign that would rather see the Indigenous voice to parliament fail if it did not reflect their vision.
The constitutional lawyer and professor emeritus at the Australian Catholic University referred to unnamed voice proponents and said “one determined bloc demands no detail so it can dictate the model after the referendum, regardless of popular or political preference”.
Williams, a fellow member of the expert panel, does not consider the fact the expert panel gave only three tranches of advice – the last one more than a month ago – to be in any way improper.
He said this was particularly so because it was clear that both the government and the referendum working group had in recent weeks been taking advice from the solicitor-general Stephen Donaghue SC.
“I’m very comfortable with how they have sought advice from us,” Williams said. “And it is proper that they would turn to us for advice when we can be of assistance.
“It’s at the discretion of the working group and the government to do so.”
Williams considers the final words of the proposed amendment announced on Thursday to be “a good solution” to concerns about the power of parliament and the possibility that the executive – the bureaucracy – might be challenged if it fails to account for representations by the voice.
The leaders who finalised the deal were Pat Anderson, the Indigenous leader who wrote the Little Children Are Sacred Report about the abuse of Indigenous children in the Northern Territory; Davis; Indigenous researcher and veteran campaigner for constitutional recognition Marcia Langton; Tony McAvoy SC; former Indigenous Australians minister Ken Wyatt who appeared by video link and flew to Canberra overnight on Thursday; and Thomas Mayo, author and campaigner for the voice.
They were thrashing out the last details of the constitutional amendment that Aboriginal people had asked for almost six years earlier in the Uluru Statement from the Heart, the document in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people lament “the torment of our powerlessness”
The talks – informed in places by advice from Donaghue – went for several hours on Tuesday and then resumed on Wednesday.
While there has been a loud public debate about whether the voice should be able to advise parliament only or parliament and the executive government, The Australian has been told it was never in doubt. The constitutional expert group had never recommended its removal.
One of Australia’s most respected constitutional experts, Gabrielle Appleby, said: “The continued inclusion of a constitutional function for the voice to speak to the government will prove very important for the effectiveness and success of the voice.
“Government is where many important decisions are made, policies are developed and laws are drafted.
“To make a difference for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on the ground, it is absolutely vital that the voice is involved at that level”.
At an emotional press conference on Thursday, one of the most accomplished campaigners for the voice – Langton – acknowledged the contributions of many others.
She praised Cape York Institute founder Noel Pearson, an architect of the Uluru Statement.
In faltering voice, Langton also said Gumatj clan leader Galarrwuy Yunupingu could not be with the group.
At 74, Dr Yunupingu has lived 24 years longer than the average Gumatj man and he is said to be at home in northeast Arnhem land and surrounded by family.
When Albanese announced his proposed amendment for a voice in the Constitution at Yunupingu’s Garma festival last July, the latter said: “Are you serious this time?”
It was not that Albanese had failed to deliver on a promise to the Gumatj people – this was the pair’s first meeting.
But Yunupingu had been dealing with prime ministers since Billy McMahon and his scepticism grew after Bob Hawke promised a treaty that never came.
Albanese, however, looked at Yunupingu and said: “Yes, we are going to do it.”
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