Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am taking note of the report by the joint select committee inquiry into the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice) 2023. I think the context here is very important. The government have wanted to prosecute this referendum idea for the last 12 months. I think it's a good idea, but the committee was given six weeks to review the constitutional amendment. I think it was a bad process, mainly because there was no effort put into trying to develop a set of words by the parliament. Rather, what was given to the committee was a government bill. We were asked to review a government bill in five weeks, which was a policy of the government.

I think there are good arguments for the Voice. I think there are good arguments which stack up with Liberal principles around fairness, community based decision making and the protection of minority groups. I believe this could have been done in a safe way, but, sadly, in the five or six weeks we had there was not the time or frankly the willingness. The government was never interested in using this process to properly examine the words in the bill or to build any sort of middle ground. The reality is we now face a referendum with a very small centre ground.

The final report, as Senator Green noted, was effectively a dissertation which supported the government's bill. I don't believe that there was a strong enough effort to look to improve the words. The idea that the way the Voice has been drafted in this bill is perfect is intellectually unsound. This concept has been drafted in dozens of different ways over the past half decade, so the idea that there is no way that this wording could have been improved is fundamentally untrue. That's what the chair's report is in this committee report. It is a rubber stamp on the government's bill without the analysis and without the effort that I thought would have been forthcoming to try and bring to bear some kind of consensus.

The Liberal Party report is a detailed legal analysis of the risks which exist, and I took the time to put into my own words my view about the risks which are still facing us at this forthcoming referendum. Those really focus on the drafting around the executive representations. I think it is perfectly reasonable that the Voice should be able to talk to the executive. So many of the decisions that are made by the executive government of the Commonwealth and the states are made which affect people's lives in a real and genuine sense. There is a much stronger argument for local and regional voices than there ever has been for the national voice, but I support both. That is chiefly because, when you travel around rural and regional parts of New South Wales, like I have done, you quickly realise that most of the judgements that are made by bureaucrats are made without the knowledge of the people on the ground, and they don't get that information on a consistent basis. That means that the status quo is poor. Does anyone seriously think that the status quo is sustainable or reasonable? So I think this was a great last opportunity. I think this was a last chance, it seems, to put forward a proposition which could have won much broader support than we are currently facing.

In terms of the major issues that I looked at in my quite brief report, I focused on the scope issues and whether or not the parliament was going to be able to control the representations and deal with any future legal issues. That's not about trying to neuter the ability of the body to speak to anyone; that's about making sure that we have parliamentary supremacy. That was always a precondition of this concept. The concept was that the people would be able to make representations to the government and to the parliament on local issues and national issues, but that wouldn't be a veto; that wouldn't create any further risk.

Basically, to cut to the chase, there were seven additional words proposed, and the legal effect of its representations. A number of the legal experts, including Professor Twomey and Professor Williams and all the other professors, made the case that it would be reasonable to tweak the words to incorporate those seven words—It would not diminish the concept and would provide more assurance. But none of this was considered seriously. There were attempts made through the committee to accommodate those changes, but that was rebuffed. I have to say that most efforts to try to build common ground and centre ground here have been rebuffed. It is what it is.

In the interest of being efficient, I just want to on record that my sense was that there was a high level of collegiality in the committee. I think people worked as best they could. But the five-week period, and the sense that this was always just going to be a rubber stamp without undertaking any serious development of options, meant that it wasn't a serious process. What the Liberal Party report does is give the government four options that it could consider if it wanted to build more consensus and address some of the risks that were flagged in the hearings.

I regret the opportunity has been lost to history. I think we'll look back on this report and the process and think: that was the last chance we had to try to build some centre ground, which I think is going to be essential if this is going to be a successful referendum, which I hope it will be.

Question agreed to.