Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

We'll be supporting the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice) 2023 bill because the opposition believes and has resolved that the Australian people should get their say on the question of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. For that reason, it will pass through this chamber swiftly with the support of the chamber. However, I'm vehemently opposed to this proposal being put forward by the government. Let's be frank, the Voice, if you were to distil it into categories, is four things: it's risky, it's unknown, it's divisive and it's permanent—it can never be removed.

I might just touch briefly on each of those components. It's risky. We know from the most recent discussions and hearings in relation to the Voice that legal opinion is split. I suppose that's not a huge surprise, to have legal opinions split on any question, quite frankly. As a former lawyer, that's the nature of the beast in the law. But, even for those eminent people who are huge advocates of the Voice, they themselves had to concede that, in the end, the arbiter of the Voice—what it means, the fact that a new chapter will be inserted into our Constitution, the way it interacts with the parliament and executive government—will ultimately be the High Court. It won't be determined in here. It won't be determined through the democratic will of the people. It will be determined by judges in the High Court. That's inherently risky.

In essence, what we've got is a proposal from the Prime Minister that says to the Australian people, 'Vote for this on Saturday and then we'll start working on the detail on Monday, after you've already voted for it and it's already in our Constitution.' If you were going to buy a new car or a second-hand car, you'd go to the dealer and they'd say, 'Buy it now and pay for it now, and then we'll let you test drive it on Monday.' That's essentially what the Prime Minister is suggesting. This is the first time that a proposal of this magnitude is being put forward without there being a full constitutional process where people will come together and argue the merits of these and other things, just like the Howard government did in relation to the republic debate in the 90s. It was a very big process. Here we've got a Prime Minister and a government determined to provide as little detail as possible. That adds to the risk. If I were to be a defender of the government and the Prime Minister, I'd defend them by saying, 'Inevitably, every single proposal to alter the Constitution, of its very nature, is risky.' There is some inherent risk involved. But here you've got the government pouring fuel on the fire, adding to the risk by saying: 'Well, we'll work out the details later. Give us the blank cheque now. Buy the car now, and then you can test-drive it on Monday.' Well, that is hugely risky. It's unknown.

Clearly, for those of us like me, who feel that we are fortunate to have some of the best democratic and constitutional arrangements in the world, our Constitution shouldn't be trifled with. The Prime Minister often refers to the Constitution as the nation's birth certificate. It's really the nation's rule book. It's a rule book more than a birth certificate, and it's a rule book that cannot be changed back easily once it is changed, if it were to be changed. I think the fact that, on this body, the basic questions either cannot or won't be answered by the government adds to that sense that this is unknown. What is the likely impact to democracy in Australia, our political system and the way in which government operates in those circumstances?

It's divisive. It's funny how people with similar experiences can draw such different conclusions on questions like this. I've listened to a few speeches in the chamber. I have a Lebanese background: my father came from Lebanon. So I grew up in a family, like millions and millions of Australian families, where we were a bit different, I grew up in Ringwood, in my electorate of Deakin. There weren't huge numbers of people from Lebanon there. So I grew up in a family that was not of the predominant ethnic background in the area. The thing that my father always emphasised to me—and, to be frank, it was emphasised to every one of my generation—was that we don't ever judge anyone by their heritage or ethnicity. Equally—and this was always of great comfort to me—it didn't matter if your family went back to the First Fleet or whether your family went back 60,000 years or whether your family arrived a couple of years ago and were at last night's citizenship ceremony; the minute you were an Australian citizen, you were, in every single way, equal. There was no grading. There were no different rights or different rules for one or the other. Once you were on the team, you were part of the team, irrespective of your background.

So, to be frank, it horrifies me that people with a similar background to mine—many on the other side of the chamber—form a completely different conclusion: that in fact now we're going to reinsert a concept where we judge people, or there are different rights conferred on people, depending on the blood flowing through their veins or on their heritage or ethnicity. I'm staggered. We all know the famous and laudable language of judging people by the content of their character, not the colour of their skin. Yet perversely, in 2023, we now have a proposal to completely move away from what I think has been a cornerstone of this country: that we have equality of citizenship and equality in every single way. That means, as I said, that it doesn't matter whether you were at the citizenship ceremony last night or whether you can trace your family back to the First Fleet; you get one vote. We all get one vote. We all get to have a say. We all get the opportunity to run for parliament if we want. We all get to express ourselves in a democratic way, equally, without any view to ethnicity. I think that's extremely important in a multicultural society. There are a million Indian Australians. There are around a million Chinese Australians. Why should they be treated any differently to somebody who traces their family, as I said, many, many generations back or, indeed, thousands of years?

It's been noted on this side of the House many times that there are 11 Indigenous members of this parliament, and they are not elected to just represent Indigenous Australians in their electorates, states or territories; they're elected to represent everybody. As the member for Deakin, I'm elected to represent everybody in my electorate irrespective of their ethnicity. In fact, other than a curiosity, maybe, in conversation, asking someone their ethnicity, as their member of parliament, before you go to help them is not something you would do; it's not something I think anyone here would do. We're elected to represent everybody irrespective of their heritage. We're elected to represent everybody irrespective of their political views, and the better members of parliament in this place will represent those people who are vehemently opposed to them politically as much as they will represent those who are strong supporters.

The idea that we're going to import some of the worst aspects of US culture here, where we're going to create or emphasise a race based society, is, I think, sad. I'd like to think most of us are pretty blind—and I truly believe most Australians are—in that most of us do not look at ethnicity or heritage when we interact with people, when we are working with somebody, when we are representing people as a member of parliament. Yet here we've got an extraordinary proposal from the government—absolutely extraordinary—that, for two people living in the same town, living on the same street, living next door to each other, in the same socio-economic circumstances, with the same challenges with access to health or the same challenges with crime or access to jobs, potentially one of those two will be conferred different democratic rights on no other reason than the blood flowing through their veins—their heritage, their ethnicity. To be frank, if, when I was first elected 10 years ago, somebody said we would be seriously debating the idea that we were going to separate ourselves on race and have different groups of citizenship in this country, I wouldn't have believed it. But, alas, here we are.

The other thing that is worth mentioning in relation to these issues is the permanency of them. The government want a blank cheque. They want to, in a sense, appeal to the big-heartedness of Australians, to say, 'If you do this thing, vote for this Voice, which we're not going to tell you much about, we'll work out those details later, but it will provide all these practical benefits to Indigenous Australians.' I'm sure that even members of the government wouldn't be too bold in promising that that would occur; I think that would be a huge stretch, and would be making a promise that would be very difficult to keep. But that's really the intention of their campaign. In fact, I saw the first ad from the 'yes' campaign, which didn't really mention the Voice at all; it just mentioned recognition. It studiously avoided talking about the Voice. I suspect they did that because, for most Australians, there is now a rising level of resentment that they're not being trusted with the detail. I think Australians are quite rightly saying: 'Well, look, I'm happy to examine this with an open mind, but give me the detail.' Answer some of the questions. What is this thing going to look like? How many thousands of public servants are going to be employed? Will this body be entitled to proffer a view on defence policy, on our treaty arrangements or on economic policy? The plain reading of what is being proposed by the government is that this is a body that would have an unfettered ability to provide its opinion on anything.

Again, the 'yes' campaign ads talk about 'matters that affect Indigenous Australians'. Well, I hate to break it to the government, but I'm a non-Indigenous Australian, and every single part of government policy impacts me in some way, shape or form, and I can imagine it's exactly the same for an Indigenous Australian. An Indigenous community would be as interested in defence policy as anyone else. So you can't say—and the government is certainly not saying—that the Voice will be confined in its scope.

The government are saying two things simultaneously. On the one hand, they are saying this is a momentous change that is going to bring in a massive benefit to Indigenous communities suffering disadvantage, and at the same time the Prime Minister runs around and says: 'This is a very modest change. Nothing to see here—very modest—nothing to be worried about.' They cannot see the inherent inconsistency of those two positions. Either it's a momentous change or it's a modest change; it cannot be both simultaneously.

I will be opposing the Voice. I think it would be a retrograde step for our country to have classes of citizenship. Why would you want to alter the best democracy in the world?

See this speech in context