Ken Wyatt says he would vote yes to Labor’s Indigenous Voice referendum if the wording is right

Ken Wyatt said he would support Labor enshrining the Indigenous voice in the constitution if the ‘right set of words’ are used.

Ken Wyatt, the first Indigenous Australian in a federal cabinet, makes his first public comments after the election result that ended his 12-year political career. Picture: Colin Murty

Ken Wyatt, who broke hearts in 2019 when he confirmed the Morrison government would not hold a referendum on an Indigenous voice, has revealed he would vote yes to enshrining the voice in the constitution if Labor fulfils its promise to put that question to Australians.

“I would support the right set of words,” Mr Wyatt said on Sunday, a day after losing his seat of Hasluck in Perth’s northeast.

Labor came to power on Saturday promising to honour the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart in full by taking Australians to a referendum on the voice, a requirement if the constitution is to be changed to protect it forever.

“The Uluru Statement is absolutely important. Its underlying theme is about listening and having Aboriginal people heard at the community level and in the various regions and (Indigenous) nations by all tiers of government,” he said.

Mr Wyatt proudly wore an Uluru Statement from the Heart teeshirt on Australia Day 2019, a few months before he was elevated to a cabinet that was known to have serious reservations about the prospect of changing the constitution to include an Indigenous voice.

He appointed Indigenous professors Marcia Langton and Tom Calma to oversee the detailed design of an Indigenous voice to advise government and parliament. His intention was to legislate it. This was a huge disappointment to those supporters of the Uluru Statement who believed a legislated voice was an unacceptable compromise. Any future parliament could abolish it, critics said. Inside the Liberal party, some believed even a legislated voice was unnecessary and even undemocratic.

Mr Wyatt spoke candidly about the difficulties he encountered as the first Indigenous minister responsible for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander policy. He oversaw reforms that were lashed as both not enough and too much. Some pressures came from Indigenous Australians and some came from his own colleagues, he said.

“The pressures came three ways. One was from my own people across this nation: the expectation of the miracles that I would work for them,” he said.

“The other was from my own electorate and the expectations of local matters. And then from my own party of what I aspired to do but what were also constraints in terms of taking a very measured approach.

“And all of those do weigh on your shoulders.”

Mr Wyatt warned there was a lot of work ahead to prepare Australians for a referendum on the voice.

“I don’t want to see Australia go to a referendum and fail,” he said.

“If the (referendum) question was a framing of the voice that wasn’t going to be challenged legally nor used to be challenged in a legal case as we have seen with section 44 then I would support a voice being recognised in the constitution and it might be a set of words as simple as ‘the commonwealth shall establish and maintain an Indigenous national body’.”