Both sides must back voice: Tickner

Australia’s longest-serving indigenous affairs minister bipartisan support is imperative to estable an indigenous voice to parliament.

Robert Tickner, Australia’s longest serving indigenous affairs minister, at home in Balmain. Picture: James Croucher

Australia’s longest-serving indigenous affairs minister, Robert Tickner, has warned Bill Shorten that a referendum on the indigenous voice to parliament will fail unless it has bipartisan support and a premature national vote will “burn the issue irredeemably”.

Mr Tickner, who carried the portfolio in the Hawke-Keating Labor governments from 1990 to 1996, has pushed back against ­indigenous activists calling for a referendum on the voice to be held in the first term of a Shorten ­government.

The man responsible for introducing the then-controversial ­Native Title Act said the referendum would not succeed unless the Coalition reversed its opposition to the proposal.

“It is just simply not (going to succeed). It wouldn’t matter what I did or any indigenous person did,” Mr Tickner told The Australian.

“You could walk backwards up Northbourne Avenue (in Canberra) to Parliament House stark naked and carry a big stick (but) no ­referendum is going to get through without cross-party ­support.

“It would be irresponsible for a government to launch into a referendum (without bipartisan support) because it would burn the issue irredeemably. It would consign it to oblivion.”

A constitutionally enshrined voice, recommended by the federal government’s Referendum Council in the Uluru Statement from the Heart, would act as an ­advisory body with elected indigenous Australians to give input on government policy.

Mr Tickner said the indigenous voice was a “huge priority” but its success would require a “radical change in the political climate”.

“For me, the really critical issue is to re-establish a significant ­degree of cross-party co-operation in Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander affairs,” he said.

“If a referendum is undertaken in a poisonous climate of deep division between the politicians, you can bet your house on the fact that the referendum is not going to pass. So the critical dimension is building that cross-party support.”

The Weekend Australian reported that prominent indigenous figures such as Marcia Langton and Megan Davis were urging the Opposition Leader to junk a republican plebiscite and fast-track a referendum on the voice.

Labor has promised a voice ­referendum will take precedence over a republic referendum. The party has also vowed to conduct a plebiscite on the question of a republic in the first term of a Shorten government, which could take place before the voice referendum.

Mr Shorten yesterday defended having a debate over the republic while also trying to build public support for a constitutionally enshrined voice. “You should be talking about having an Australian head of state, but I think it’s long overdue to include our First Australians in the nation’s birth certificate,” he said.

Asked if he could delay the republic vote beyond Labor’s first term, he said: “I want to win my first election but I ­admire your confidence in my ­second-election chances.”

Mr Tickner said the government’s claim that the voice would act as a “third chamber to parliament” was “completely at variance with legal and political reality”.