Talk of treaties a waste of money: senator

Money spent pursuing indigenous constitutional recognition has moved the nation away from a consensus, says a senator.

West Australian Liberal senator Dean Smith.

More than $40 million over five years pursuing indigenous constitutional recognition has taken the nation further from a consensus, not closer, a West Australian Liberal senator claims.

As the fifth of 12 indigenous community forums run by the Referendum Council started in Perth yesterday, Dean Smith warned that treaties and an ­elected parliamentary body being discussed at the gatherings must be “off the table” if a referendum were to succeed.

He took issue with a central document being used at the meetings, which outlines some of the considerations in the ­recognition debate. He said $30,000 spent on producing the discussion paper equated to $3300 a page. But The Weekend Australian has been told the bulk of that ­expense was in having it translated into a range of indigenous ­languages for communities whose first tongue in many cases is not English.

The federal government has allocated $30.73m in the past five years to the official awareness-raising Recognise campaign, channelled through Reconciliation Australia.

A further $9.5m over two years has been assigned to the Referendum Council, which is required to report to Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten by June 30, after the discussion process peaks with a constitutional convention in May.

Questioned by Senator Smith in budget estimates, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet first secretary Gail Anderson ­revealed that of this money, $250,000 had gone to Noel Pearson’s Cape York Institute “to undertake research development and design work to refine the indigenous body proposal”.

The appointment of an executive officer for the council had accounted for $234,234, ­including travel costs and salary.

The series of indigenous ­forums was being conducted by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ­Islander Studies at a cost of $5.668m, Ms Anderson said.

But Senator Smith, a constitutional monarchist, said the money had been ill-spent.

“I think treaties are off the table if a constitutional referendum is to be successful in our country,” he said.

“The history of successful constitutional referendums is that they are modest by nature. Discussions around indigenous advisory bodies are highly contentious.

“But we have considerable sums of public money being spent on what I would call closed meetings … talking about ideas that will not pass a constitutional referendum test. I’d argue that we’ve moved further away from a consensus on how to approach indigenous recognition, not ­closer to one.”