Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to say that if you're born in Tamworth in a hospital bed next to someone else, another child who has been born, then you would expect that both of you would have the same rights. You both go back to the same town and live in houses next door to one another. But this proposed constitutional change, the so-called voice, says that one person is endowed by the Constitution with a greater proportion of rights than the person born in the bed beside them. This is something I think should be inalienable. It's an anathema that we should be defining people in our Constitution on the premise of race, religion or creed.

Hon. Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Even now, we're being interrupted. It is an issue that also pertains to what we actually say to the people who live in one house next door to another one. We can say to them, 'You have access to this democratic right, which that person doesn't have.' How do we explain that? I live in an electorate with the sixth-largest Indigenous population in Australia. We also note that it's a swindle—the idea that they will incorporate the voice although they don't actually tell us what the voice is. The voice inevitably, when it goes to the Constitution, will be interpreted by the High Court, and this will lead to a plethora of cases where so many people will have standing and the capacity to challenge things. It will be a case that divides Australia up. It is something that is a swindle, because, unless the Labor Party is truthful, they are not being— (Time expired)