Election 2025: Labor insists Indigenous voice 2.0 is not on its agenda

Labor has rejected Coalition claims it wants to revisit the Indigenous voice, as Penny Wong says ‘the voice is gone’.

Anthony Albanese with Senator Penny Wong at the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday. Picture: Jason Edwards/NewsWire

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Labor has rejected Coalition claims it wants to revisit the Indigenous voice after Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Australians would one day look back on the push for an Indigenous advisory body in a similar way to the long campaign for same sex marriage, which was ultimately successful.

“The voice is gone,” Senator Wong told SBS on Wednesday.

Two days earlier on the Betoota Talks podcast, Senator Wong’s comments on the voice suggested it was unfinished business. “I think we’ll look back on it in 10 years’ time and it’ll be a bit like marriage equality,” she said.

“I always used to say, marriage equality, which took us such a bloody fight to get that done, and I thought, all this fuss, it’ll become something like, people go ‘did we even have an argument about that?‘” she told the podcast.

Gay marriage ultimately became legal in Australia in 2017, after Australians voted in favour of it in a national postal survey.

On Wednesday, Peter Dutton seized on Senator Wong’s remarks as evidence of a secret Labor plan.

“The Prime Minister should have heard the voice of the Australian public when they voted No in the referendum. Clearly they haven’t,” he said.

The Opposition Leader claimed that legislating the voice “would be one of the first items of business for a Labor-Greens ­government”.

However at the National Press Club on Wednesday, Anthony ­Albanese rejected this.

“We supported a voice to parliament. I did it out of conviction, not out of convenience,” he said.

“We put it to the Australian people. That was something I said I would do, and we did. We also said we would respect the outcome, and we have.”

On Wednesday, Empowered Communities chairman Ian Trust said governments on both sides of politics understood the benefits of a good system for talking and listening to Indigenous communities. Empowered Communities established itself as a small, voice-like body under the Abbott government, helping to cut waste and duplication and giving senior ­bureaucrats direct advice about economic opportunities for Indigenous people in the 10 regions it represents.

Mr Trust, an elder from Kununurra, was strongly in favour of the Coalition’s cashless debit card for his home region of East Kimberley. He also advocated for a voice in the Constitution, believing this would help communities get changes made and take on more responsibility.

“I know the Coalition was entertaining the voice at one point but it all fell apart,” Mr Trust said.

“It didn’t come close to being accepted at the referendum so nobody is going to seriously consider it for quite a few years. It won’t be in Albanese’s time. It needs bipartisan support for one thing, and it needs more work.”

While the previous Coalition government did not support the Uluru Statement or its call for a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous voice, it commissioned the design of a legislated Indigenous voice to advise government and parliament.

That proposal, which was overseen by Indigenous leaders Marcia Langton and Tom Calma, recommended the establishment of local and regional voices with extra representation for remote areas and an equal number of men and women.

The national voice – legislated rather than constitutionally enshrined – would have been selected from those local and regional bodies. The Morrison government had the final report for 10 months and had completed a round of community consultations on it when it lost the 2022 election.

Indigenous leaders in the Uluru Dialogue continue to work towards a form of constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians. The dialogue has gal­vanised supporters among the 6.2 million Australians who voted Yes at the voice referendum.