Alex Antic (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak against the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice) 2023. In the explanatory memorandum of the bill, one of the stated reasons for the amendment to establish an Indigenous voice to parliament is 'in recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia'. Labor says the Voice is about recognition. The suggestion is that anyone who disagrees with them simply doesn't respect Indigenous Australians or doesn't want to acknowledge the unique hardships that Aboriginal Australians have endured—something that Australia, it must be said, has already done to a great extent. This is standard practice for those opposite. They rely not on facts, evidence or arguments to prosecute the case, but on vague sentimental rhetoric designed to guilt-trip people into agreeing with them. And if you don't support amending our Constitution, they tell us, then you must oppose recognition, meaning there is something deficient about your character. This is a shallow tactic. Many Australians, including many Aboriginal Australians, oppose the Voice precisely because they care about Aboriginal people and their communities, which I will get to later on.

Simply put, the 'yes' case is little more than a national guilt trip. Indeed, the way the Voice debate has played out is now indicative of how political discourse has deteriorated in this country as arguments become less about truth and the common good of Australians—and constitutional amendment surely affects all of us—and more about virtue-signalling identity politics and empty rhetoric that disguises the intentions beneath.

Speaking of rhetoric, the proposed wording of the constitutional amendment which Australians will vote on is as follows:

In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:

  (i) there shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;

  (ii) the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;

  (iii) 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 composition, functions, powers and procedures.

Let's run through these three points sequentially. First, the constitutionally enshrined body that would be established by the upcoming referendum would be a permanent feature of the Australian government and of society, if the referendum passes. Unless a future government were willing to hold another referendum to remove the Voice—which is going to be very difficult task—the Voice would be here to stay. Let me be clear: what Labor hopes to achieve is to permanently entrench an Indigenous bureaucracy into our Constitution. They could, if they wished, simply create another bureaucracy to accomplish whatever it is it was imagined the Voice would do, which remains a mystery. In fact, the South Australian state parliament has already established a state voice, proving that constitutional amendment is unnecessary for achieving the Voice's stated goals. But the purpose of this constitutional amendment is not to achieve meaningful outcomes for Aboriginal people but to ensure that this Canberra based bureaucracy is permanent. Even if one supports the creation of this body, it's clear that constitutional amendment is unnecessary and dangerous, as I'll explain shortly.

This raises the question of why the Voice's permanence is so important to Labor. Does Labor already have some ideas in mind regarding what they wish to accomplish with the Voice? For example, consider Western Australia's recently passed Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2021 which will come into effect from 1 July. The act's stated purpose is:

… about valuing and protecting Aboriginal cultural heritage and managing activities that may harm that heritage.

That sounds lovely, but what does it really achieve? The answer is all kinds of arbitrary and tedious bureaucratic impositions on farmers regarding what they are and are not allowed to do on their property. The act creates an extensive set of everyday farming activities that WA farmers will now require permits for from the newly established Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Council. One WA farming website described it in this way:

Everyday Farming acts like Scarifying, Seeding, Delving, Deep Ripping, Shed Building, Drainage work, Fencing, and even pulling out a dead tree stump will require a permit to do so. Any ground disturbance to a depth of 50mm is included.

It is reported that it will cost the state government $77 million to implement over the next four years. To allocate the permits, a series of Local Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Service … offices will be established across the state.

This is bureaucratic overreach at its most absurd and frustrating, and all in the name of protecting heritage. The WA government is attacking farmers under the guise of local Aboriginal issues. This is a taste of the kind of thing that will be imposed on farmers from a federal level if Labor's permanent Voice is enshrined in our Constitution. I guess we'll just have to wait and see as we haven't really been told by Labor what the Voice is meant to achieve or what it's even meant to focus on.

There's no reason why this body even needs to be constitutionally enshrined, unless Labor already knows that the Australian people would reject the Voice if they actually understood what it was there to do. There are existing Indigenous bureaucracies, such as the National Indigenous Australians Agency as well as non-governmental bodies such as Reconciliation Australia, whose stated mission is to close the gap. Why, then, does the Voice require constitutionally afforded protection? It makes no sense unless the government has other intentions.

Second, we're told:

… the Voice may make representations to Parliament and the Executive on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples …

To quote Warren Mundine, I don't know of any issues that don't affect Aboriginal people. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are citizens of this country, so every law, every part of the Constitution affects Indigenous people. It's a great point. So what exactly is the criteria for whether a matter is relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people? The proposed amendment might as well read, 'The Voice may make representations to parliament and the executive government of the Commonwealth on absolutely anything.' Every law, policy point and action of government in this nation relates to Indigenous Australians because they are citizens of this country and Australian citizens.

Again, what are we to expect from the Voice? Given that all matters relate to Aboriginal and Indigenous Australians in some way, the scope of its function of making representations is unclear. Will members of the Voice be making representations to the Treasurer on economic policy or managing inflation? Will they be making representations to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy on the importance of renewables and shutting down fossil fuel projects? Will it make representations to the Minister for Education about the need to cease teaching students about Australia's colonial history? Will we simply have no idea? It's almost as if Labor is seeking to create a permanent body that will be able to influence and control the parliament and government on every issue in the name of Aboriginal affairs.

As Peter Dutton has rightly written:

… no issue—the economy, national security, infrastructure, health, education and more—would be beyond its scope.

Now, supporters of the Voice might well respond to that by saying that if the Voice's members were to do so, then it would lose all credibility. I agree, but that doesn't change the fact that it would continue to exist on taxpayer funds because it has been permanently entrenched in our Constitution. This would mean we have a body we cannot get rid of if things were to go bad.

The worst-case scenario is that we would have created a permanent bureaucracy that will pester government and the parliament on every single matter, wasting taxpayer funds, disrupting the parliamentary process, doing nothing more to help Aboriginal people and working towards agendas that we currently know nothing about. And given the woeful history of organisations like ATSIC—the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission—which drifted along from 1990 to 2005, I'm inclined to believe the latter is more likely and that the Voice is a Trojan horse for Labor's other plans. Indeed, the Voice does seem to be little more than ATSIC 2.0, back with a vengeance, seeking to be bricked into our Constitution. You may recall that ATSIC was riddled with misuse of taxpayer funds and other scandals as its former head continued to be embroiled in legal troubles.

When it came to selecting those board members, Indigenous Australians were asked to elect people from regional councils, who then elected ATSIC's national board of commissioners. Few Indigenous people voted in those regional elections, meaning that ATSIC was controlled by a relatively small group of people. One 1993 report on ATSIC stated: 'Of the few Indigenous people who did vote, many voted for their own families.' So the people elected came from the biggest families, and so a small select group of voters elected a small select group of representatives to have control over enormous amounts of money. It sounds rather like the 35 local and regional voices being proposed to represent districts across the country who would then elect the 24 members of the national Voice. One can easily see how the Voice, like ATSIC, will end up being controlled by a small group of people rather than genuinely representing Aboriginal people.

The third point is:

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 composition, functions, powers and procedures.

The Australian people are expected to vote on something that is subject to change and which they aren't being told the details of beforehand. We are being asked to support embedding an Indigenous bureaucracy into our Constitution so it's permanent, yet its composition, functions, powers and procedures—in other words, literally every aspect of it—are subject to change. One can only speculate about what this will look like, given every aspect of it is subject to change. Suffice it to say that Australians simply don't have enough information to cast an informed vote. What they are voting for today will almost certainly look radically different from what they well imagine. If you don't know, vote no. It is as simple as that. And it's clear that nobody, including the Prime Minister, knows where this will end and what this Voice will end up being.

As the Prime Minister has affirmed, the Voice is part of the government's implementation of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which is an activist document that claims that so-called Indigenous sovereignty—whatever that actually means—co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown. Why is Labor throwing its weight behind a concept that there are two Australias: one Indigenous and one non-Indigenous? Does it mean that somehow we are going to end up with two separate nations? When you think about it, it is very strange that there many grassroots organisations covering a huge section of interest groups, from farmers to feminists, and they don't require constitutional amendment or millions of taxpayers' dollars to represent them in parliament. They roll up their sleeves, they organise members themselves and they get on with it. One wonders why this isn't the case with the Voice. I doubt, for example, we will be seeing a Balkan, Italian or Indian voice to parliament any time soon, and one wonders why. The idea that we need a permanent bureaucracy which only people of a certain ethnicity can be members of is dubious enough. However, it is made all the more so given that we don't know how the potential members will be established.

Earlier this year I asked the Attorney-General's Department to explain how legitimate Aboriginal status would be determined for eligibility into the Voice, and nobody, it seemed, could explain that to me and, seemingly, nobody ever can. Nobody seems to know what this is comprised of anymore. My guess is that that trend will continue if and when this proceeds.

The Prime Minister has stated that it would be a very brave government who disagreed with the Voice's recommendations. We know that this race based card is very, very powerful. We have to stop letting people abuse it in the tone of the debate and call them out for hypocrisy. Polling suggests that, as time passes, fewer people are supporting this, with support gradually waning over the last few years. I don't believe I've heard a single outcome being proposed by Labor or the Greens regarding the Voice. The entire 'yes' case has really been nothing more than sentimental rhetoric about recognition, representation, reconciliation and so on.

When it comes to closing the gap, we need to start asking serious questions about the root causes of the issues. I know my colleague Senator Nampijinpa Price has very worthwhile insights into such matters. I would suggest that those opposite take the time to listen to her voice in this debate sooner rather than later.

Whatever Labor's doing here, it won't achieve anything of value or importance for Indigenous people. I think we all know that. Deep down, Australians know that what is needed in our Indigenous communities is not the opinions of more highly paid bureaucrats but genuine, grassroots action carried out at the most personal and local levels. If Labor's referendum is successful, it would likely achieve the creation of a permanent leftist bureaucracy that would presumably be used to push other agendas in many years to come. The Voice, in my view, is a Trojan horse for Labor's big-government agenda. That's why I will be voting no not only to this bill in this place but also to the referendum, should it pass. I encourage my fellow Australians to do the same.

(Quorum formed)