Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 14 October this country will go to a referendum, and it will be the most important referendum this country will have faced. This will be an opportunity where fair-minded Australians will have differences of opinion. But the importance of this day can never be overstated. This is a day where Australians get an opportunity to either change the Constitution or leave it as it is. I want to encourage all Australians to turn out and vote.

This proposed change that is being put up by the Prime Minister is a risky change. There is no other organisation like the Voice that is being proposed here in this referendum anywhere in the world. If we change the Constitution, it will need another referendum to change it back. It is permanent. You cannot out-legislate the Constitution. In circumstances where this government, this Prime Minister, is providing us with such scant detail about what the Voice will do, how it will operate and who will sit on it, the Prime Minister is, in effect, saying: 'Trust me. Vote for it on Saturday and I'll tell you about the details on Monday.' The Prime Minister and this Labor government cannot seriously expect the Australian people to believe that they do not know, that they do not have a bill drafted and ready to go. Yet the Prime Minister and this government are providing us with no detail. Why do you think that is? Why is this government providing the Australian people no detail about the most significant change to our Constitution since 1901? This should send shivers up the spines of 25 million Australians.

Prime Minister, you can't treat the Australians like mugs. To the Australian people: I'm calling upon you to look at what is being proposed. This is not just about the vibe. The Prime Minister is being the Dennis Denuto of Australian politics; it's not just about the vibe when we are talking about the most significant change and yet there is no detail. This should cause us a great deal of concern.

There is no doubt that this referendum is dividing Australians. We were told that this would bring us together, but, once again, what is being proposed is two separate questions—or they should be two separate questions but they've been conflated into one. Those on the 'yes' campaign love to talk about constitutional recognition. I would suggest that if the Prime Minister was fair dinkum about this, he would have split the question into two parts, with two separate questions. One question would ask: do you support constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians? I reckon more than 90 per cent of Australians would support that. The second question would ask: do you support the Voice to parliament and to the executive? I reckon that the vast majority of Australians would not support that. But what he's done is conflate these two entirely separate issues into one in the hope, and reliant on the goodwill of Australians, that their desire for the first will carry over into the second. If he was fair dinkum, if he was legitimate and if he was honest with the Australian people, he would have split those two questions up, but he didn't do that.

This is not just about constitutional recognition now; this is about a voice to parliament and to the executive. On that point, the Voice to the executive did not come out of the Uluru Statement from the Heart; that came out of the working committee. In fact, we know that the Attorney-General himself made representations to the working committee to remove that from the proposed question. But, for reasons unknown, it was kept in. The Voice, if it goes through, will have the ability to make representations not just to the parliament but to the executive, to the departments and to ministers.

The Prime Minister himself has said that it will take a very brave government to not accept the recommendations of the Voice. On the one hand the Prime Minister talks about how this is a generous offering from Indigenous Australians, but on the other hand he talks about how it would take a brave government to not accept the recommendations of the Voice. You can't have it both ways. It can't be just simply a body which provides non-binding representations, and you then say, 'It would take a brave government not to accept them.' These are very, very serious questions. There is no denying that Indigenous Australians are amongst our most disadvantaged, but what the proposal fails to do, without equivocation, is address how it will change the lives of Indigenous people on the ground. That's partly because there are no details; it's all about the vibe.

There are many Australians who want to do the right thing—I get that—but there are very serious consequences that flow from this referendum. It will be the first change to the Constitution since 1977. The reality is that we don't know how the courts will view or interpret how the Voice will operate. We all know that there will be years of litigation and lawfare over what this change to the Constitution means and how it will operate—anyone who says otherwise is being disingenuous. As a lawyer of 23 years, I can guarantee that there will be many cases where the courts are called upon to interpret this change—if it gets that way, if it becomes law, if it is enshrined in the Constitution.

There will be many instances where there will be challenges to decisions made by the executive or made by the parliament as to whether they accept the representations made by the Voice or not. This could fundamentally change the way this parliament operates. The federal parliament, the Commonwealth parliament, is the pre-eminent representative body of 25 million Australians, and there is no doubt in my mind that it could be held to ransom by the Voice. The delays that could result from those court cases could, in effect, grind this parliament to a halt. It could become very dysfunctional. There is no doubt that it will open the door for activists and, as I said, legal warfare—lawfare. It will become a costly and bureaucratic process. Impacting upon the lives of Indigenous Australians will not be helped by more bureaucracy. In the Commonwealth of Australia we spend around $33 billion a year on Indigenous Australians. It is not for the want of doing the right thing by either government. There is clearly a lot of waste. That's where we need to address this. We need to listen to people on the ground, not listen to bureaucrats in Canberra.