David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

The legislation before the House, the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice) 2023, proposes a new section in the Australian Constitution that the Nationals fundamentally disagree with. We support the right of all 26 million Australians to have their say, to have their vote in this referendum, but it should be the right question. It will be the people of Australia who decide the outcome of this referendum. That is why we supported the passage of the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill 2022 through this parliament. The bill before the House is about changing the Constitution, our nation's founding document.

The Nationals have major concerns about the committee process we just witnessed when it comes to examining the proposed bill. As my Nationals colleague Pat Conaghan, the member for Cowper, a member of the Joint Select Committee on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice Referendum, outlined in his dissenting report:

The time afforded for consideration of the provisions of the Bill has been inadequate and does not acknowledge the magnitude of changing our constitution. The Committee has held a total of five public hearings over 15 consecutive days, in which an unreasonably tight deadline was dictated to explore the evidence and provide a report.

It was disappointing and a thoroughly flawed process.

Ultimately, the Voice will not help practically improve the welfare of Indigenous communities, especially women and children, in regional, rural and remote Australia. It will create another taxpayer funded level of bureaucracy in Canberra. Our nation needs a better bureaucracy, not a bigger one. Prominent legal experts hold serious concerns over this legal risks of this change to our nation's birth certificate and the prospect of normal government decisions being caught up in the courts for years. There's still no detail on how the Voice would operate and the powers it would potentially wield. It will also divide Australians by conferring extra political rights on a separate and special class of people in our Constitution.

The Nationals consulted in genuine and sincere faith with our electorates, constituents, members and grassroots organisations, as well as representatives of the 'yes' and 'no' campaigns, about the proposed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament. The Nationals also went through a comprehensive internal process which was led and guided by Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, an incredible, passionate and strong Indigenous leader with lived experience in the issues impacting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. As the party dedicated entirely to regional, rural and remote Australia, the Nationals have examined this through a unique lens. We bring a different perspective with lived experiences when it comes to addressing the challenges and the impacts of Indigenous Australians. It's an essential point to make.

The Nationals believe that adding another layer of bureaucracy in Canberra will not genuinely close the gap for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. Australia has had an Indigenous representative bureaucracy before. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission was notorious for its inefficiency, dysfunction and wastefulness. To this day, across rural, regional and remote Australia, we still live with and are dealing with the consequences of this failed approach. More bureaucracy in Canberra is not the solution for tackling systemic and entrenched disadvantage. Simply put, we don't need bigger bureaucracy, we need a better bureaucracy. The reality is that vulnerable communities have real issues which require practical and frontline evidence-based responses which empower local elders and leaders, rather than adding more red tape for the way government operates in our nation's capital.

In contrast, the Nationals want to address the serious issues, impacting Indigenous Australians by delivering frontline evidence-based and place-based solutions which will help lift Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people out of poverty by stimulating economic participation, improving access to education, enhancing the provision of health services and eliminating domestic and family violence. We believe that bureaucracy should leave Canberra and visit communities and meet with local elders and leaders around regional, rural and remote town halls and camp fires instead of bureaucracy coming to Canberra. Each community has vastly different needs.

Around Australia there are some positive models and initiatives which have made a real difference. The Indigenous Procurement Policy, the IPP, is one of them. The IPP stimulates Indigenous entrepreneurship and business development, providing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples with more opportunities to participate in the economy. Since 2015, the Indigenous procurement program has made a tremendous difference, generating over $5.3 billion in contracting opportunities for Indigenous businesses. By the time the coalition left office, this involved over 35,700 contracts awarded to more than 2,100 Indigenous businesses. This procurement program has been a genuine game changer for creating Indigenous jobs and generating economic growth. But there were other success stories.

The cashless debit card was specifically designed and aimed at protecting vulnerable women and children in disadvantaged communities by preventing welfare payments being used for cash to purchase alcohol and drugs and engage in gambling. Before Labor scrapped it, evaluations of the cashless debit card showed that this program was working. Now that it has been removed from some of our most at risk communities, the reports of the chaos, dysfunction and violence which this decision has unleashed have been heartbreaking.

While we were in government, the federal coalition also invested $1 billion into Closing the Gap measures, including early childhood, health, education and support for families. Although huge challenges remain, there has been some progress on some important targets, such as improving access for early childhood education, children being born with a healthy birth weight and reductions in the rates of youth detention. This should give us some hope moving forward.

The proposed Voice to Parliament conflates two entirely separate issues. Support for recognising Indigenous people in the Australian Constitution, a move that I'm confident would have the overwhelming support of the Australian people, is a totally different matter to supporting a constitutionally enshrined Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament. Combining the two is not conducive to securing real, genuine, sincere and long-term reconciliation, which should be about fostering unity.

Referenda are supposed to be about detail. The Constitution gets interpreted by the High Court, so the Nationals believe it's essential that we take a sensible, considered, serious and orthodox approach to what is being proposed by examining the available information. On this front, the central questions and concerns remain unanswered. Given the deliberate lack of detail, establishing the Voice risks embroiling the High Court of Australia in inflamed political debate. This has enormous risk to the way that our democratic system functions.

Here in Australia, our core democratic values are worth fighting for. They're worth preserving and protecting. The Nationals believe that the Voice undermines our robust, genuine liberal democratic values, values which we will always support and which have helped make our country the best in the world. Crucially, a core component that underpins our free, liberal, democratic society in Australia is the fundamental principle that every citizen is considered equal under the law. A constitutionally enshrined advisory body to parliament based solely on a person's race does not align with this. This is about making sure we come back to one principle, one tenet: we're all equal. There are 227 voices here in the Australian parliament representing all 26 million Australians, no matter their colour, no matter their creed, no matter their religion. We take that seriously. I'm proud of the fact that this nation has elected 11 Indigenous Australians not just to represent Indigenous Australians but to represent all Australians. It's for these reasons the Nationals will, therefore, be opposing this bill.

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