Indigenous voice to parliament: Yet another audit is not the answer, Yes camp says

The previous Coalition government conducted 22 audits into Indigenous affairs over nine years, with the Yes campaign arguing that another audit is not the answer to Aboriginal disadvantage.

Yes campaign director Dean Parkin. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

The Yes campaign has hit back at the latest calls from Peter Dutton and Jacinta Price for an audit of ­Indigenous spending, noting that the Coalition conducted almost two dozen such examinations ­during its time in government.

Speaking to reporters in Perth on Wednesday morning, Yes23 campaign director Dean Parkin said Mr Dutton and the Coalition had offered nothing to deliver real change for Indigenous Australians.

“Peter Dutton was a senior cabinet minister in a government over nine years, and they conducted 22 audits into the Indigenous Affairs space … The result was a widening … in many key areas at the Closing the Gap targets for ­Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people,” he said.

“What Peter Dutton is proposing is more of the same. That is what a No vote will give all Australians in this campaign, it’ll get us nowhere with respect to progress in Indigenous Affairs, and more of the failed outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.”

Opposition Indigenous affairs spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price on Monday night promised an audit of spending on Indigenous programs. Speaking at a packed No event, she said the opposition would do “what we haven’t done yet”. “We’re going to find out where the billions of dollars are being spent,” she said.

The exact amount spent by the federal government on Indigenous Australians has emerged as a key area of debate in recent weeks.

There have been widespread claims that $40bn is spent each year on Indigenous Australians, but some researchers have argued that the vast majority of that covers programs and spending that applies to all Australians, such as Medicare. About $6bn is estimated to be for programs and policies specifically for Indigenous Australians.

Mr Parkin said delivering more effective spending on Indigenous Australians was a key rationale behind the Voice. “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, we’re at the front of the queue saying we want greater accountability, we want greater impact for the investment that taxpayers are making in Indigenous Affairs, we want to make sure that the money is getting to where it needs to get to the most. That is why we’re saying we need Indigenous people at the table in the form of a Voice,” he said.

“That is what will actually tell people like Peter Dutton where we can actually get better outcomes, where the money can be better spent so we’re seeing those outcomes change on the ground. Just leaving it to Peter Dutton to have another bureaucratic review, another bureaucratic process, isn’t real action, it isn’t a solution, it’s just more of the same failed policies that he’s been a part of over the last decade or so.”

With Mr Parkin at Wednesday’s Yes event were Morrison government minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt and former deputy prime minister Kim Beazley.

“You can do as many audits as you like. But the crux of the challenge is that nothing will change on the ground until our people sit at the table and have a say about what it is that they’re receiving, instead of external people flying in and flying out,” Mr Wyatt said.

Mr Beazley said voting down the referendum would be “an act of gross discourtesy”. “This imposes, were it to be carried, no impediment, no ability to amend, block or change laws that are placed before our parliament or things that are going to be considered by the cabinet. This referendum rules all that out,” he said.

“What it does is actually give a chance for folk to be listened to.”