James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Consideration of constitutional change should be careful, should be balanced and should be thoughtful, and that consideration should be made without undue or nefarious influence. We live in an age rife with misinformation and attempts at foreign interference in the Australian political landscape. With the vast uptake of social media across the world, it is my concern that it has become increasingly difficult for people to find fair and honest coverage that does not already affirm their previous convictions. Modern politics is siloed. Views are echoed in partisan safe spaces, rarely challenged and barely understood. Social media was to be the great leveller, but, instead, the use of social media in campaigning has become the great builder of walls.

For an undertaking as important as the proposed amendments to our Constitution, the independence of the media, freedom from misinformation and the countering of foreign interference are key to a sustainable, democratic outcome. However, sadly, the Labor government does not seem to think that the sanctity of our referenda is so important. When it comes to the Voice referendum, the Labor government has consistently been dodgy with the detail, on top of providing no information to the Australian people about what the Voice to Parliament would look like in practice. With this bill, they effectively want to halt any form of independent public discourse by killing off any form of serious, balanced, democratic debate.

A constitutional referendum is a rare thing. It has been pointed out by senators in this chamber that it comes along once every 24 or 25 years. It is because it comes along so rarely that we should ensure that our consideration of the question is done without recourse to allegations of gerrymandering the result. This is what we face today, because Australians rarely change the Constitution. We've had 44 referendums since Federation, only eight of which have passed. For a third of Australian voters, this will be their first referendum, so we need to do this properly and we need to do this thoughtfully. We've had the time to do this slowly, but, unfortunately, we have a Labor government who are playing politics with constitutional change and playing politics with the unity of this country. That is a shameful thing.

We need to ensure that every Australian has the right and the obligation not only to hear the arguments in favour of constitutional change and, as importantly, the arguments against constitutional change but also to hear the arguments free from misinformation and free from foreign interference. I am concerned as someone who has spent most of his life not only campaigning for the centre-right of politics but also campaigning for freedom, not just in this country but in emerging democracies around this world. It is my concern that we have a government in this country who are abusing the democratic process and are attempting to gerrymander a result. That does concern me, and that is why our position has been clear-cut from the get-go.

The position of the coalition has been so clear. We must restore the pamphlet to outline the 'yes' and 'no' cases. There must be an establishment of 'yes' and 'no' campaign organisations, and those campaign organisations must be appropriately funded. I refer to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters and their gloriously titled Advisory report on the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill 2022, a report on an inquiry which Senator Cadell and I participated in over the Christmas break. Doesn't that tell you something—that over the Christmas break this Labor government referred this bill to an inquiry to be conducted when Australia was on holidays? Of course, being senators, we don't take holidays, unlike the riffraff in the other place, so we happily participated in this inquiry. The coalition senators brought forward a dissenting report not only disagreeing with many of the government's proposals but also, for those who might be listening at home, agreeing with where the government wanted to update the bill to bring it in line with how federal elections are run. It is important that on some issues like that there is a bipartisan approach.

But when it comes to constitutional change and when the government, over the Christmas period, had inquiries on, I think, 21 December and maybe 9 January, it's almost like they were trying to hide something—trying to hide that they were going to change this bill and change how referendums are conducted in this country. That meant that members of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters did not have sufficient time to scrutinise witnesses and the proposed bills. But, more importantly, it limited the ability of Australians to find out what the government was up to.

We're very fortunate that we have wonderful organisations like the Institute of Public Affairs, which I'm a member of—just to clear that conflict of interest. They did an analysis of the submissions that were put in to this inquiry, and they found out that, from the 78 submissions, where a view was expressed for the need to have or not have a pamphlet, 97 per cent of those submissions expressed a clear opinion in favour of a 'yes' and 'no' pamphlet. I raise that because Labor didn't want to have a pamphlet. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming to it. We welcome Labor's backflip—that is to be commended—but I would ask that Labor and Senator Farrell be versatile when it comes to backflips and that they do similar backflips in relation to the designation of official 'yes' and 'no' bodies, as well as the equal funding of 'yes' and 'no' bodies. It is my concern that, regardless of your view on the Voice and whether you are 'yes' or 'no', you should have the view that the process should be thoughtful, carefully considered and without favour to either side.

I'm a student of politics, which is a polite way of saying I'm a nerd. What I've observed, and what I would warn the government about, is what happened in the United Kingdom less than a decade ago. The political establishment, the sporting establishment, the business establishment—the establishment—were all in favour of the UK remaining in the European Union. There was a referendum that was promised by David Cameron. It was an election commitment. What that referendum campaign showed is that when the government take people for granted and when the government effectively attempt to gerrymander the result of a referendum, the mob out there will sometimes have a different opinion. My observation of the remain or Brexit referendum was that the remain side won every single opinion poll up until the votes were counted and Brexit won. I would encourage the government to be so careful, because they are bringing forward a referendum that they have not explained to the Australian people and will not explain to the Australian people.

Peter Dutton—my leader, the leader of the coalition and the Leader of the Liberal Party—has put 15 questions to this Labor government and received no answers. That is such arrogance. It is so sad that people would call for good manners in the demonstration of the political process yet fail to demonstrate such manners themselves. It is so important that there is a consideration here of what is being proposed substantively in the referendum. It is just as important that, as senators who are protectors of the state's rights and who stand up against the excessive behaviour of the executive, we ensure that this house of review holds the government to account and makes appropriate changes and amendments to this bill. That's so that when the referendum is put forward later this year, the Australian people—the people to whom we are accountable and the people who are our bosses—can make the decision with as much information as possible in front of them and with information is not subject to people who do not have Australia's best interests at heart.

Only a few weeks ago, the director-general of ASIO told Australians that we are seeing the greatest level of foreign interference in Australia's history. Surely we should look at some simple, practical steps that can put a structure around this process and help our regulators and help our agencies manage the referendum.

We know that there has been foreign influence in other countries' elections. In Canada, their intelligence agencies uncovered plots to interfere in their 2021 election in order to create a minority government. According to secret documents published by the Globe and Mail, Chinese officials in Canada said that Beijing wanted a minority Canadian government so that parties in parliament would be 'fighting each other'. This is one of a long list of foreign influence campaigns that have been revealed publicly not just in North America but in Europe and elsewhere. We are not immune. We know that we've had our own parties targeted, with reports that the Labor Party, the Liberal Party and the National Party have been victims of state sponsored hacking.

On those grounds alone, we think there's good reason—it is sensible—to have a formal structure around the referendum that allows a pamphlet to go to every household and that allows there to be 'yes' and 'no' campaigns, that says who can help with the management of campaign donations, and that has equal funding for those campaigns so that we do not have in Australian politics the nefarious influence of big money attempting to change the Constitution against the will of the Australian people.