‘Emotional blackmail’: Nationals to oppose Voice to parliament in blow to referendum

The Nationals will formally oppose an Indigenous Voice to parliament, in a significant blow to the referendum campaign that opens the door to the Liberal Party to follow suit.

Announcing the decision with Country Liberal Party senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price on Monday, Nationals leader David Littleproud said the party wanted to empower Aboriginal people at a local level, “not create another layer of bureaucracy here in Canberra”.

Nationals leader David Littleproud and Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price on Monday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“This is not a Voice for regional, rural and remote Australians. This is one for those who live in Redfern – they’ll be OK,” Littleproud said.

The Nationals’ decision significantly increases the chances that at least some members of the Liberal party room will also campaign publicly for a “no” vote in the referendum, and the risk of it failing.

Price, a Warlpiri-Celtic woman from Alice Springs who has been a vocal critic of the Voice, said there was no evidence it would support marginalised people, it risked dividing the nation along race lines, and it was not racist to oppose the Voice.

“What we need now is practical measures, not an idea that lacks complete and utter detail and based on emotional blackmail,” she said. “Why should I as an Indigenous Australian be governed under a separate entity than the rest of Australia because of my race?”

Price said people she had spoken to in Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory were worried about alcohol or substance abuse, their financial affairs and their kids getting to school.

“These are the issues people are concerned with now, they are not sitting around waiting for a proposal to come up with details about how it will improve their lives ... we are here to serve Australian citizens of all backgrounds,” she said.

A number of Liberal Party MPs including Tony Pasin, Phillip Thompson and Claire Chandler have spoken out against the Voice, claiming there is a lack of detail attached to the proposal, despite a huge volume of work having already been done on the proposal for the previous government.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton last week said the party room had not yet arrived at a formal position and key elements of how the proposal would work were still unclear.

“There are many Indigenous leaders, particularly in regional areas that I’ve spoken to over the course of the last month or so who don’t even know what the Voice means, and they are very worried that it is essentially an elitist model,” he said.

Littleproud said the position of the Liberal Party was a matter for them.

“The National Party is its own party. Let me make that clear, we are two separate parties,” he said.

Labor senator Pat Dodson, the federal government’s special envoy for implementing the Voice, insisted the Nationals’ decision was not a setback for the Voice campaign but conceded it was possible the Liberals could follow the Nationals and oppose the referendum, a move that would significantly damage its chances of succeeding.

“It’s a bit premature really and a bit inept to think that you would adopt a position well out before you saw anything of what the people, First Nations people, were asking for [from] the government,” he said.

“I would hope that the Nationals would reconsider the cheapness of this approach because it does them no good really.”

Uluru dialogue spokesman Geoffrey Scott said the Nationals’ decision before a referendum date had been set or detail released, showed “it’s clear that the Nationals have put internal politics ahead of the interests of First Nations Peoples”.

“Given their record of failure in government to close the gap, we will not be lectured by the Nationals on the best ways to improve outcomes for First Nations people.”

But Price said the proposal was about “empowering the elites to demand a transfer of power and nothing more than that”.

“This Voice model is not recognition, let’s not get the two confused here ... this is an entire bureaucratic [entity] we don’t have details on,” she said.

Price also sharply criticised Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney, saying: “Minister Burney might be able to take a private jet out into a remote community, dripping with Gucci, and tell people in the dirt what’s good for them – but they are in the dark, and they have been in the dark.”

A spokesman for Burney said she did not own any Gucci, but declined to comment further.

Littleproud said Indigenous Australians in central Australia would not get a voice from the government’s proposal, “they’ll have another layer of bureaucracy that won’t shift the dial of the legacy we get to leave”.

The 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart, which was endorsed by hundreds of Indigenous leaders, calls for the creation of a Voice to parliament, which would provide advice on laws and policies that affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told Indigenous leaders in September the government was “all in” and there was “not a day to waste” as they prepared the strategy for a “yes” vote in the referendum, which is slated to be held in the next financial year.

He has proposed that three sentences be added to the constitution if it succeeds: one that enshrines the Voice, one that sets out its responsibility to make representations to the parliament and one that empowers parliament to make laws on how the Voice would function and be created.

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