Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move the following motion:

That the House:

(1) notes the Prime Minister is dividing the nation with his divisive voice proposal by deliberately refusing to provide detail to the Australian people;

(2) further notes the Prime Minister promised on 34 occasions to implement the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full, which includes the Makarrata Commission's national treaty-making process, but has since continually denied there will be a treaty;

(3) notes the Minister for Indigenous Australians said work on a treaty was to start within weeks but the Prime Minister is now walking that back and in two train wreck media interviews, the Prime Minister is telling different audiences different things on the treaty;

(4) further notes that despite the Prime Minister being shifty on whether a treaty is being worked on, he has already allocated $5.8 million for the Makarrata Commission national treaty-making process but refuses to explain how $900,000 of this money has already been spent;

(5) notes that the Government's Minister for Indigenous Australians has treated this House with contempt by repeatedly and consistently failing to answer direct questions in Question Time; and

(6) condemns the Prime Minister for his complete inability to be upfront and honest with the Australian people and calls on the Prime Minister to explain today in plain language what:

(a) The Voice will be, how it will be structured and how it will operate;

(b) the Makarrata Commission will be, how it will be structured and how it will operate;

(c) the money for the Makarrata Commission is being spent on; and

(d) the treaty making process will be, how long it will take, and what the financial implications for the Commonwealth and for taxpayers will be.

Leave not granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Leader of the Opposition from moving the following motion—

That the House:

(1) notes the Prime Minister is dividing the nation with his divisive voice proposal by deliberately refusing to provide detail to the Australian people;

(2) further notes the Prime Minister promised on 34 occasions to implement the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full, which includes the Makarrata Commission's national treaty-making process, but has since continually denied there will be a treaty;

(3) notes the Minister for Indigenous Australians said work on a treaty was to start within weeks but the Prime Minister is now walking that back and in two train wreck media interviews, the Prime Minister is telling different audiences different things on the treaty;

(4) further notes that despite the Prime Minister being shifty on whether a treaty is being worked on, he has already allocated $5.8 million for the Makarrata Commission national treaty-making process but refuses to explain how $900,000 of this money has already been spent;

(5) notes that the Government's Minister for Indigenous Australians has treated this House with contempt by repeatedly and consistently failing to answer direct questions in Question Time; and

(6) condemns the Prime Minister for his complete inability to be upfront and honest with the Australian people and calls on the Prime Minister to explain today in plain language what:

(a) The Voice will be, how it will be structured and how it will operate;

(b) the Makarrata Commission will be, how it will be structured and how it will operate;

(c) the money for the Makarrata Commission is being spent on; and

(d) the treaty making process will be, how long it will take, and what the financial implications for the Commonwealth and for taxpayers will be.

The reality is that this Prime Minister stood up at Garma and said to the Australian people, with great passion and with much emotion, that he proposed words that hadn't been consulted on, that hadn't been properly researched and that were, ultimately, against advice by the Government Solicitor, who had advised against the breadth of words that now are being proposed by way of referendum to the Australian people.

Every Australian wants a better outcome for Indigenous Australians. Every Australian wants to see a better outcome in Alice Springs. Every Australian wants to see better outcomes for children on school attendance, health outcomes and life expectancy. We want to see better housing options. But the Voice is not going to deliver that practical support on the ground, because it is a Canberra voice and a voice for the elite of this country.

Mr Speaker, ask yourself this. Why, on the current information available to us, do we have a situation where 29 per cent of Labor voters in this country are not supporting the Voice? If the Prime Minister had any coherent explanation for the Australian public as to how the Voice will work, what outcomes it will deliver, its breadth, what the interpretation will be in the High Court and how it will change our system of government then perhaps there would be some chance of convincing those 29 per cent of Labor voters. But the Prime Minister is deliberately and willingly withholding that information from Labor voters and from the Australian public.

That is why this situation goes from bad to worse—because the Australian Prime Minister is seeking to divide his nation. That's what's happening here. The best-case scenario on this incompetent Prime Minister's approach to the Voice is that you might get a 51-49 'yes' outcome, bearing in mind that you need a double majority. That splits our country straight down the middle. No Prime Minister in good conscience would decide on such a process unless he was seeking political advantage or unless he was out of his depth.

Australian families at the moment are paying more for their electricity bills, more at the grocery checkout, more for their insurance and more for their mortgages because of this incompetent government. The incompetence is not just demonstrated in terms of the Prime Minister's management around the Voice but in every aspect of government delivery at the moment. That's what the Australian public is experiencing. Mr Speaker, when you walk the streets, when you talk to people across the country, that is why they are saying they are not better off today than when Labor was elected.

The Australian public know that this Prime Minister is taking us down a cul-de-sac. This Prime Minister is dividing the country unnecessarily, because there is a bipartisan position in this country at the moment that would see a question on recognition in the Constitution for our first occupants of this country. It would receive 80 per cent support across the nation. It can be put to the people in October this year. It would not divide but unite the country. Yet our Prime Minister knowingly rejects that proposition.

Why? Why would he reject a proposition to unite our country? Why would he cast that aside and instead go down the path of pitching one Australian against another? Why would it be that one in three Labor voters has called this Prime Minister out as a fake and a phony? We know this Prime Minister. We know more and more about him every day. His great idol Kevin Rudd: we see more of Kevin Rudd in this Prime Minister as every day goes by. We knew of Kevin Rudd that he turned out to be somebody very different to what the public believed him to be. This Prime Minister will say one thing to one audience and tell the next audience what they want to hear. The problem is that people match up what he's saying.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Minister for Social Services is warned.

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When you turn up to a Midnight Oil concert and you're wearing a T-shirt that says that you're in favour of 'yes' and you're in favour of treaty and you're in favour of truth-telling, do know what that says, Mr Speaker? It doesn't say, as the Prime Minister wants us to believe, that he turned up not adequately attired for a Midnight Oil concert and that somehow, in a snap moment of choice, he found himself clothed in a Midnight Oil T-shirt. It's sort of like a Deirdre Chambers moment. It does have a ring of that to it: 'How did this T-shirt find itself on my body?' That's what he's arguing, and it shows you how insincere this man is.

Prime Minister, you have the opportunity to unite the Australian people. You have the opportunity to cut through the waste that is taking place in the money that's administered to help Indigenous Australians.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Macarthur will cease interjecting.

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You have the opportunity to work with us to make sure that we listen to Indigenous Australians and get the outcomes that they deserve. But you are not going to do it through a treaty process that you have embarrassingly walked away from, and when you've talked in a duplicitous way to the Australian public on this topic. There's a makarrata commission that's being funded but is operating in secrecy, which you will not speak anything about. The Prime Minister has the opportunity to step up and unite the Australian public. He is not doing that. When a Prime Minister makes a deliberate decision to harm our national interest, I'll tell you who is watching—the entire Australian public, because they are disappointed in this Prime Minister. He has the chance to do good and he's choosing not to do so.

When he goes up to Garma, he can be sincere this time. At the last Garma conference, he provided detail of the words but has provided no detail every day since that point. That's the problem here. The problem is not with the Australian public, as those opposite want us to believe. The Australian public are not hard-hearted. People aren't saying they're voting no because they don't want to support Indigenous Australians. They will vote no because they know this Prime Minister is wilfully withholding detail from them.

That is unconscionable, and it's something the Prime Minister should apologise for. It's something that he should be upfront about with the Australian public so they can be properly informed when they cast their vote. But every day—bearing in mind we're less than three months from this referendum vote—the Prime Minister makes a decision not to look Australians in the eye and answer the questions that they appropriately are putting to him. And when an Australian Prime Minister breaks that trust with the Australian people, who voted for him only 15 months ago, they work out that this bloke is a phony and a fraud and is running an incompetent government.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

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

I second the motion moved by the Leader of the Opposition. I second the motion because this Prime Minister and government have taken our nation to a pivotal moment in its history. While that's their prerogative, the onus of their responsibility is to lead our country and build trust, with honesty and transparency, about their proposition to the Australian people. It's an important decision about their Constitution. They should be brought along on that journey every step of the way. The Uluru Statement from the Heart is one about voice, truth and treaty. That journey should be explained in entirety, not in part.

This is an important moment for our nation's history, for our nation to make a determination. The proper procedures and processes should be taken from the outset. Because the Prime Minister has failed to trust the Australian people, to bring the Australian people on this journey with him, we have seen the erosion of support for this first element, the Voice, from over 60 per cent in December last year to now less than 50 per cent today. That's a direct result of the government failing to create an environment for the Australian people to have faith and trust in their government in the proposition they put before them. They failed to create an environment where they went through due process, of a constitutional convention. Australians were denied that due process.

Instead, they deferred to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, where only one cohort of Australians got to make a determination about our constitutional future. That's not leadership. That's not about bringing the Australian people on a journey. That is creating division. That erodes the opportunity for every Australian to have a say in their document, a document that is important to them, that governs them and will define our nation into the future. They have misled the Australian people in saying that the Voice is a new concept. It's not. We are repeating the mistakes of the past. We had a representative body before. It was called ATSIC.

It's for that premise that the National Party, some nine months ago, made a principled position that we cannot repeat the mistakes of the past. We're not doing something new. We represent the people who are the most disadvantaged. We bear the scars from the mistakes of the past and the ones that we will repeat. We need an intervention in 2023. That intervention needs to be in bureaucracy. It needs to be about reshaping the bureaucracy and empowering local elders in local communities—not regionally, but in the local community—empowering those local elders, because we're repeating the mistakes of the past and they will not shift the dial.

We have the data. We have the understanding, of where the gap needs to be closed. This is about making sure Canberra goes to them, not have them come to Canberra. Don't allow bureaucracy to repeat the mistakes of generalising the feedback into national programs. You need local programs to close the gap. You need to be able to understand what they are in bespoke models, in bespoke communities. This is a government-top operation saying to the people out there, 'We know best,' instead of empowering those local elders.

This isn't about tangible outcomes. Because if this was about what we all want, which is Constitutional recognition, we made it very clear that if we didn't conflate the two, if we wanted to unify our nation in a meaningful way, to take opportunity, to take that hand on both sides—a moment of political leadership where this nation could actually achieve what the Prime Minister set out to in Constitutional recognition—that would be a unifying moment. But it has been lost, not just in how this Voice has been devised but in the processes that flow beyond it. It's about the processes of treaty, and the consequences and the reach of that, so that Australians understand. If the Prime Minister wants Australians to come on this journey with him, he should be prepared not only to put the legislation for the Voice to parliament to demonstrate he runs the business in this parliament, and be open and transparent to the Australian people about what it is, but also to be open and transparent to the Australian people about what a treaty is, how far-reaching it is and what it means for every Australian. This could be a unifying moment but, unfortunately, this Prime Minister has missed it.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the lead-up to this parliamentary sitting week we were told that it was going to be about the cost of living. But they've given up on the cost of living and they have decided to stick with dividing. They have decided to stick with division—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order, members on my left.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is someone who we thought could not be more divisive than the former prime minister, whom he replaced as the leader of the Liberal Party, but of course the Leader of the Opposition is managing it. He is the same person who, as he mentioned, when the former prime minister Kevin Rudd stood at this despatch box and gave the apology to stolen generations—it was a proud moment to be in this parliament. The then leader of the Liberal Party, Brendan Nelson, had the courage of his conviction to do the right thing and stand at this despatch box as well to make sure that it was a matter of national unity. Around the country, schoolchildren gathered in front of television screens to celebrate that moment to advance reconciliation, that moment to lift up our nation. And the Leader of the Opposition not only opposed it but also threatened to resign from the frontbench over it and walked out on that event. So terrible was it that in that moment of national unity there were only a few people who were so determined to sow division that they just couldn't cop the concept of saying sorry for the wrong thing being done, for children being stolen from mothers, fathers, grandparents, families and communities. They could not stomach it.

We have heard from the Leader of the Opposition a range of comments, most of which were not about what is before the Australian people. He spoke about my speech to Garma last year, and I'm proud of it. I'll be proud of the speech that I give at Garma this weekend. There was a time when the leaders of both parties went to Garma, and those opposite now have a situation whereby not a single frontbench member from the coalition is attending this event. Today, on his weekly tough interrogation from Ray Hadley on 2GB, he went on to say that he wasn't going to attend because it was all about a 'left fest'. Well, the Yothu Yindi Foundation hosts that event, and the Leader of the Opposition was happy to go to the funeral of Yunupingu and to state the important work that that great Australian contributed to this nation.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Deakin will leave the chamber under 94(a).

The member for Deakin then left the chamber.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Also in that interview today, he said, 'I want to see constitutional recognition.' Ray Hadley said, 'If this gets beaten it won't be revisited in my lifetime.' The response of the Leader of the Opposition was to say that the referendum will change the whole system of government, that it will cost billions of dollars—that it will change the whole system. We heard that again today.

Well, I say this to those opposite. You can't say that it will change the entire system of government and then say you will legislate for the Voice. That is what you are saying. You can't say it will promote racial division and then say you will legislate for the Voice. You can't say it will make a positive difference but then say you will legislate for the Voice. Clearly they don't see it as radical or divisive, or any of the other noise of confusion that they are seeking to inject into the referendum. Otherwise, why would they legislate for it?

Let's be very clear. Both sides say they support constitutional recognition. Both sides say they support legislating for the Voice. The third provision that is being put forward makes it very clear:

the Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its the composition, functions, powers and procedures.

And they ask, 'Where's that legislation?' They actually had nine years. To be very clear, when the Leader of the National Party actually spoke about process, they opposed it before they even knew what the question was. Then the Liberal leader, after they lost the Aston by-election, in a once-in-a-century event, didn't even bother to tell his shadow minister for Indigenous affairs or shadow Attorney-General that he was abandoning the process even before the parliamentary committee had met.

And they speak about dividing. They're managing to divide themselves. They had someone who was one of the architects of the wording, the member for Berowra, now sitting up the back. Andrew Gee is sitting up the back as well. Julian Leeser is someone who has more honour in his little finger than the frontbench combined. The truth is that the process that occurred began in the lead-up to the 2007 election, under John Howard, who promised to advance constitutional recognition. Then in 2012 Tony Abbott established a process to take forward what the form of constitutional recognition would be. That process led to the constitutional convention of First Nations people held at Uluru in 2017, where Indigenous Australians said they wanted something that wasn't just symbolic; they wanted something that would make a difference.

The way you make a difference is by engaging people directly, by listening to those people who are impacted by decisions. That is why a Voice to Canberra is so different from what has happened over the previous 122 years—which is that, with the best of intentions, it has been a voice from Canberra. And I pay tribute to the former Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Ken Wyatt. He says that with the best of intentions we need to listen to First Nations people and we need a Voice to Parliament and to government. That is how you get better outcomes. We know that is the case. If we look at the programs that are working the best—Indigenous rangers, community health programs and justice reinvestment programs—they all have something in common. They have all come from Indigenous people. They are all programs of which Indigenous Australians have been the architects.

But those opposite, particularly this Leader of the Opposition, seek political advantage rather than trying to come together. 'Makarrata' means a coming together after struggle. It's as simple as that. It's a process bringing people forward in the nature of reconciliation. The fact is that he is not prepared to front up at the Garma Festival this weekend in order to explain his position. He would be received politely if he attended. He would be. One of the things about the Yothu Yindi Foundation and that event is that it's about respect. It's about bringing people together—Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. This is an opportunity to do just that.

That's why Australians will vote 'yes' for the referendum when it's held in the last quarter of this year. They will vote 'yes', and they will advance reconciliation. (Time expired)

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion be agreed to.