Last-minute crisis talks to save Indigenous voice to parliament vote

Labor and the Coalition are locked in last-minute talks to secure bipartisan support for the referendum machinery bill, allowing a national vote to proceed.

Anthony Albanese in question time on Tuesday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Labor and the Coalition are locked in last-minute talks to ­secure bipartisan support for the referendum machinery bill, allowing a national vote to proceed, as Anthony Albanese steps in to finalise the government’s preferred wording for the constitutional amendment on an Indigenous voice to parliament.

Voice campaigners will converge on Canberra in the next two days as members of the government’s referendum working group meet the Prime Minister to provide their advice on the best form of words to alter the Constitution.

Dozens of Aboriginal people opposed to the voice – led by conservative Indigenous leader Warren Mundine and Nationals senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price – will also ramp up their campaign on Wednesday and lobby politicians to vote No.

Mr Albanese told his colleagues on Tuesday there’d never been a successful referendum without bipartisanship, as Liberal senator Andrew Bragg called on the government to “urgently” act to achieve cross-party support.

Addressing Labor’s caucus, Mr Albanese set out the size of the challenge by citing three historic facts. “One, we’ve had no successful referendum in 50 years,” Mr Albanese said. “Two, only 20 per cent of referendums put by Labor have been carried. And thirdly, historically there has been no success without bipartisanship.”

Mr Albanese also told his MPs they needed to minimise scare campaigns about the voice to ensure the referendum passed.

The Australian understands a small delegation of Indigenous leaders will meet the Prime Minister in Canberra on Thursday to discuss the constitutional amendment, ahead of federal cabinet and the Labor caucus signing off on the Constitution Alteration Bill next week.

Peter Dutton and his shadow cabinet want to reach a deal with the government on the referendum machinery provisions – which modernise and align the referendum bill with electoral laws – amid frontbench concerns Labor will turn to the Greens and Senate crossbench if the Coalition rules itself out of negotiations.

Despite the Coalition repeatedly saying it would support the referendum machinery bill only if the government backflipped and agreed to establish and fund official campaign entities, Special Minister of State Don Farrell and Coalition counterpart Jane Hume were trying to achieve a compromise position on Tuesday night.

The Coalition is insisting the government insert into the bill that the voice civics education and awareness campaign be “neutral”, so it doesn’t benefit one side.

Some Liberal MPs believe a crossbench push to have fact checkers oversee the official Yes/No pamphlet could undermine its effectiveness, arguing it was better for the Coalition to try to negotiate a different outcome.

Senator Bragg said it could be difficult and complicated to have official campaign entities – the key outstanding demand from his party – when there were already so many voices attached to the Yes and No camps.

He said if the referendum was to be successful, which was what he wanted, “a lot more effort needs to go into building up a broader base of support for the change … Anything we can do to maximise opportunities for us to get to a Yes vote with a bipartisan accommodation I think should be urgently addressed by the government in coming weeks and months.”

Fair Australia, which labels itself a grassroots movement to vote No at the referendum, has brought 22 Indigenous community leaders, half of whom are from Ngukurr in Arnhem Land, to Parliament House to seek meetings with Mr Albanese and the Opposition Leader.

They will tell politicians “the voice will divide Australians by race, rather than uniting us as a nation”.