‘Lack of detail’ to blame for failed voice referendum, top silk says

Voice supporter Arthur Moses SC says only providing minimal detail on the proposal was a key reason Australians voted it down, as the Yes camp were unable to answer fair questions.

Eminent barrister Arthur Moses SC has blamed lack of detail as a key reason why the Indigenous voice referendum failed.

Eminent barrister Arthur Moses SC has blamed lack of detail as a key reason why the referendum failed, saying without an exhaustive model the Yes camp was unable to provide satisfactory answers to fair questions posed by the Australian public.

Mr Moses, a keen voice supporter, said the Albanese government made a large “strategic error” in failing to hold negotiations and consultations with a broad spectrum of Australians so that a clear, detailed and potentially “compromise” model could be presented at the ballot box.

“Regrettably, one of the real reasons why the campaign for the Yes vote was hampered was that there was a lack of detail to the contours of the voice, which meant that there was at times by some advocating a Yes vote, an inability to answer what were legitimate questions about the voice, and how it would operate,” Mr Moses said.

“I don’t think it’s ever a good enough proposition when voters ask questions about something to say: ‘Don’t you worry about that, the detail will come later’.”

Mr Moses first raised his concerns in his capacity as Law Council of Australia president in 2019, when the referendum was raised by then-opposition leader Bill Shorten. At the time, Mr Moses said a referendum should go ahead only after a detailed model was negotiated between government, Indigenous groups and legal bodies. He also said the model should be presented publicly only “as close to its final form” as it can be before a referendum is held, although he accepted there may need to be changes through its implementation.

“It is with sadness that those comments I made in 2019 have ­regrettably come to pass in what occurred yesterday,” he said on Sunday.

“The public, regrettably, were not satisfied that they had sufficient detail to be able to form a view that they should vote in favour of an amendment to the Constitution. That is the judgment of the Australian people, and when the Australian people vote, they are always right.”

Mr Moses said the sort of questions that went unanswered in a manner that convinced electors were how the voting structure to elect voice members would work, and what exactly the voice would have a say on.

He said history would likely ­repeat itself unless a long period of consultation was enacted through a constitutional convention before a referendum was held.

“I respect that the Prime Minister was acting in good faith and doing what he thought was the right thing to do in terms of the proposal, but I do think it was a strategic error not to have convened a constitutional convention and to have had a period of consultation which would have potentially led to a model and scheme being proposed that would have dealt with a lot of concerns that arose during the course of the debate,” he said.

“I think the lesson learned through this referendum, and hopefully not to be repeated again, is that before you go to a referendum to amend the Constitution, you should have a constitutional convention.

“You get from that process the best possible outcome, that is potentially a compromise, that will have the best prospects of being able to be voted in favour of by the Australian public when they come to consider it.”