Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Later this year, we will be asked to vote in a referendum to make a significant, binding and permanent change to our Constitution. Everyone voting has the same say. No-one's view is more important than anyone else's. Celebrities and politicians just get one vote, like everybody else. It is important that our discussions are conducted in good faith and with mutual respect.

This referendum is not a decision for companies or unions or sporting codes or any other group. These groups have no standing under our Constitution, but, as Australians, you do. Such groups can represent whatever views they like. They're entitled to do that. It's a free country, and we celebrate that. However, while keenly interested in the NRL's opinion on hip-drop tackles and the six-again rule, I don't think I'll be referring to them for constitutional advice in making my decisions on this matter.

So I offer these few thoughts and observations as one Australian to another—one who has the privilege to make such contributions as a member of this place—recognising that my views may not fully accord with others in this place or elsewhere, but to make clear my views and the reasons for them, especially to my constituents of Cook. The government is seeking to establish a new, permanent constitutional body called the Voice, through which exclusive consultation rights will be granted to Indigenous Australians, not afforded to any other group of Australians. While not sharing the same powers, the new body will be established alongside other significant constitutional bodies—namely, our parliament, our executive government and our courts. Once established, the Voice cannot be removed by the parliament, as proved necessary when the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission became dysfunctional and was rightly and successfully abolished by this parliament. As a constitutional body, the Voice will also have constitutional powers that have not been tested before and can never be constrained. This is a big deal. It constitutes a major change to our Constitution, with far-reaching implications, many of which are not yet known and, importantly, will not be known at the time Australians are asked to vote.

The government's proposal for a constitutional Voice is fundamentally different to the many successful remedial initiatives in the past that have sought to affirm recognition, rightly, of Indigenous Australians and address the many injustices and inequalities faced by Indigenous Australians. In 1967, the Holt Liberal government initiated an important and successful referendum to change our Constitution to honour the principles of Indigenous recognition and national unity. The Holt referendum gave long-overdue recognition to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as citizens of our nation and ensured they were counted in our official census. Up until this time, they had been treated as lesser Australians under the Constitution. This was wrong, and it needed to be corrected. The successful referendum remediated a deficiency in our Constitution that was causing unequal treatment of fellow Australians. It was an important and necessary change that enjoyed widespread community and bipartisan support. The 1967 Holt Liberal Government referendum brought Australians together.

In 1992, the High Court handed down its famous Mabo decision on native title. This corrected the long-held historical application in Australia of the principle of terra nullius, which had denied native title rights to Indigenous Australians. In 1993, the Keating Labor government passed the Native Title Act to create a framework for the management of native title. This act was then amended by the Howard Liberal government in 1998 to address issues arising from the Wik decision of the High Court on these matters. These actions of the High Court and the parliament were remedial. They addressed defects in our understanding and the application of our laws and rectified the denial of rights to Indigenous people. It demonstrated the effectiveness of our existing Constitution at work.

In 2008, the Rudd Labor government initiated the national apology to Indigenous Australians and established the Closing the Gap program. I was pleased to stand in support of the apology in our national parliament as one of my very first acts as the member for Cook in this place. The apology recognised the injustices experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and subsequently committed tens of billions of dollars in programs, on a bipartisan basis, to address Indigenous disadvantage. I was pleased to serve in and, as Prime Minister, lead a government that honoured and built upon this work.

In March of 2020, as Prime Minister, I entered into the first ever Partnership Agreement on Closing the Gap. For the first time, all Australian governments, federal, state and local, entered into a genuine partnership with the Coalition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peak Organisations to work together to deliver essential services to Indigenous Australians on the ground to close the gap, with all of us taking responsibility. This was backed up by our implementation plan, which committed an additional $1 billion for specific new measures in Indigenous health, education, justice and employment. We also took practical action on reconciliation, committing $316.5 million to build the new Ngurra Cultural Precinct in the Parliamentary Triangle here in Canberra, which will include a national resting place to care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ancestral remains. This will rectify a longstanding omission and represent an important addition and contribution to the physical and cultural institutions of our national capital.

We also delivered $378.6 million for the Territories Stolen Generations Redress Scheme for survivors in the Northern Territory and the ACT, including the Jervis Bay territory. We also progressed our plans for a legislated voice to parliament, commissioning Professors Marcia Langton and Tom Calma to prepare a detailed report on the establishment of local, state and national voices.

In January 2021 as Prime Minister I initiated a simple but important change to our national anthem that recognised an important truth about our country. No longer would we sing about being young and free. Rather, as Australians we would now sing that we are one and free. This meant we understood and celebrated Australia as an ancient land that was home to the oldest living culture on our planet. Importantly, it also acknowledged that as Australians we were one and all equal under our Constitution.

All of these remedial actions were designed to address Indigenous disadvantage and amplify the voice of Indigenous Australians within our democracy while observing the important constitutional principle that no one group should ever have any greater rights than any other in our country. The government's proposed changes to our Constitution will change this, permanently creating different rights for one group of Australians over others based solely on race. That is the opposite of what has previously occurred, especially in relation to the 1967 referendum where our Constitution was changed to give Indigenous Australians the same rights as all other Australians. What is proposed here is not the same thing.

The impact of the Voice on the operations of executive government and the parliament are also not known, presenting significant and unknown risks that cannot be easily remedied, if at all. It is ill-defined, creating significant constitutional risk. Ultimately the High Court will be left to decipher the unknown and decide what this all means, long after Australians have cast their vote with no further say. This will inevitably lead to confusion and uncertainty over everything from our national defence to the operations of Centrelink, which all fall within the ambit of the Voice. There are no limits. Once our Constitution is permanently changed, the scope and role of the Voice will appropriately be open to interpretation by the High Court, who will then also be able to overrule both our elected parliament and our elected executive government in the future in relation to the role and conduct of the Voice.

The Leader of the Opposition has noted that the government has refused to define these issues or follow the past practice of convening a constitutional convention to ensure that they are better understood and that any unintentional consequences can be remedied before Australians are asked to vote. The government also refuses to consider any changes to its proposal that would genuinely minimise these risks. This not only reflects a failure of process but imposes the government model on the Australian people rather than listening, responding and uniting all Australians.

Finally, there are two additional important points to note about the government's proposal. Firstly, it is not necessary to enshrine the Voice in the Constitution to deliver constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians that enjoys broad support. It is wrong to conflate the issues of the Voice with constitutional recognition and treat them as inseparable. They are entirely separable.

Furthermore, seeking to achieve constitutional recognition by the government's method creates numerous and needless risks. Constitutional recognition enjoys bipartisan support and can be achieved through minor amendments to our Constitution that do not compromise the efficient conduct of government and the parliament or needlessly divide Australians.

As Prime Minister I was supportive of constitutional recognition and wished to achieve this in a way that would bring Australians together. The Labor Party made it clear from the outset that it was the Voice or nothing, leaving no room for compromise. I chose not to divide the country over the issue, especially as it would have had no material impact on the welfare of Indigenous peoples, which was my principal concern and that of all Australians.

Secondly, there is no impediment to establishing a body such as the Voice under national legislation through our parliament. We do not need to change the Constitution to achieve this and therefore can avoid realising the risks that come with such a significant and permanent change to our Constitution. Such a process would enable any such body to be properly defined and road-tested through the parliament. This was my government's policy.

Our priority was to first see such bodies created at a local and regional level, to help provide direct input from local Indigenous communities into local and regional programs to close the gap and improve the lives of Indigenous people on the ground, where it mattered most. Once established, such local and regional bodies would also make the creation of a nationally legislated voice more possible and would be more truly representative of local Indigenous communities. Ours was not a top-down approach from Canberra.

This referendum is not a vote about whether Australians wish to support and do everything they can to recognise and improve the lives of Indigenous Australians. We all agree on this, and we can all say yes to this, but that is not the question the government is proposing. It is true that governments of all political persuasions have failed Indigenous Australians over multiple generations. However, it is also true that much progress has been made based on a shared and deep commitment that transcends political boundaries. In my time in this parliament, there have been strong, positive bipartisan steps taken to try and solve extremely complex and often intractable problems. Indigenous Australians need the programs we invest in to be more effective, and we all remain committed to this goal.

Permanently changing the Constitution in the way the government proposes will, sadly, not change the desperate circumstances being experienced in so many Indigenous communities across Australia. I understand that that is the hope of the proposal, and hope is a good thing, but hope disappointed will be crushing to the soul, and such disappointment can be reasonably foreseen upon proceeding with the government's proposal. In my experience, we will make better progress on improving the lives of Indigenous Australians by focusing on what we can agree to get done on the ground, rather than gambling with our Constitution.

For these reasons, I consider that the government's proposal to permanently change the Constitution, while positively motivated, is poorly constructed. It presents serious and unnecessary risks both known and unknown to the operations of the executive government and our parliament, upon which all Australians depend. Such deficiencies cannot be overcome or mitigated by the good intentions and sentiment of their creation. It also fundamentally breaks one of our nation's most important principles: that as Australians we are all equal and none of us are any more Australian than any other. As Australians, we are one and free. I believe we need to keep it that way and therefore cannot support the government's proposal at this referendum. That said, I remain committed to the constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians and to all Australians being treated equally under our Constitution, and I look forward to the day when such a proposal is brought forward in a way that unites rather than divides our country. That proposal will have my enthusiastic support.

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