Tony Abbott loud in rejection of Indigenous voice to parliament

Tony Abbott has invoked the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr and Bob Hawke in an attack on an Indigenous voice to parliament.

Former PM Tony Abbott. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Former prime minister Tony Abbott has invoked the spirit of US civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr and late Labor legend Bob Hawke in an attack on an Indigenous voice to parliament.

Speaking at an Institute of Public Affairs event in Perth on Wednesday night, Mr Abbott said a successful referendum on the voice would “entrench victimhood in our constitution forever”.

“The past isn’t perfect, but our responsibility is to make the present and the future as good as we humanly can. This generation of migrants and the descendants of migrants are not oppressors. This generation of Indigenous people are not victims.

“Citing … the wonderful words of Bob Hawke back on Australia Day in 1988, ‘we are a country with no hierarchy of descent. We are a country with no privilege of origin’.

“Citing the immortal words of Martin Luther King from an earlier generation, ‘I want to live in a country where my four children are judged not by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character’.

“My absolute desire is that we can go forward as one equal people and that’s why I’ll be voting no. Because I absolutely reject any suggestion that there is something fundamentally wrong with this great country, Australia.”

He said the coming referendum would also give Australians an opportunity to cast judgment on “some of the crazy things that have been happening in our country”.

“I’ll be voting no to a few things. I’ll be voting no to the voice, sure, but I’ll be voting no to the climate cult, I’ll be voting out … the virus hysteria, I’ll be voting no to the gender fluidity crisis, I’ll be voting no to the ‘Magic Pudding’ economics.

“And I’ll be voting no to this crazy cultural self-loathing that afflicts this country along with so many other countries of the English speaking world, which should know better.”

Mr Abbott’s visit to Perth follows the backflip earlier this year by the Western Australian Cook government on the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act. The act, which had only been in place for less than six weeks, is now being repealed after a strong backlash from WA farmers.

The former prime minister said an Indigenous voice to parliament would be like the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act “on steroids”.

“If you actually read the lengthy documents that stand as part of and behind the one-page Uluru statement, they are permeated by a sense of anger, grievance, entitlement and sovereignty,” he said.

“The essential thesis of the people who put together the Uluru statement and are pushing so hard for this voice, is that what happened in 1788 and subsequently was essentially illegal, unfair, unjust, and as far as is humanly possible needs to be atoned for and reversed.”

He said while Australia’s history had “many blemishes” and that efforts by the Crown to protect Aboriginal people “didn’t always work out”, the country’s history compared favourably with colonised nations like Argentina, Brazil or the Congo.

Mr Abbott received a standing ovation from the 250 attendees in the room.