Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I firstly want to put on the record in this debate on the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice) 2023 that I am very passionate about improving the livelihoods of and prospects for Indigenous Australians. I've tried to contribute in my small way as a senator for Queensland and as a minister in the former government. We helped settle the very first loan from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility to an Indigenous business to establish the very first fully-owned iron ore mine by Indigenous Australians in Western Australia. I set up the northern Australia Indigenous advisory panel, which I think is being continued by this government. There are some fantastic Indigenous Australians on that. I thank them for their work, particularly around economic opportunities in northern Australia. There are a lot of positive things going on for some Indigenous Australians across this country, because there are a lot of entrepreneurial Indigenous Australians, especially young Indigenous Australians, who are taking the opportunities that this great country does present to lots of people.

We're not a perfect country—of course, we're not—but we are I think one of the best places in the world. You have won the lottery if you are born here and have the opportunity to pursue your own form of happiness, have a family and provide for that family through the great employment and business opportunities we have in this nation. There's no doubt that, unfortunately, across generations we as a country though have failed to provide equal opportunities to Indigenous Australians, and we still fail today.

I think the best that could be said for this proposal to have a Voice to Parliament is that it's an unnecessary distraction from our shocking failures to deliver for Indigenous Australians. As I will try to outline this evening, I cannot see how a bureaucratic body here in Canberra can unpick the complex problems that Indigenous communities face across Australia. This is, at best, a distraction from the action that needs to be taken—not talk, not the Voice. In its word there's a problem. It's about a voice here. This place is all about talking. A lot of talking goes on in Canberra, and this will be another place that does a lot of talking. But it's action that's needed to solve the issues for Indigenous Australians, and I don't think this body will do that, with all respect. The worst this body could be is a trojan horse for radical activists who seek to bias Indigenous policy in particular and probably broader policy settings in this country in a certain direction that even, I would say, most Aboriginal people do not support but some activists among us have an agenda to pursue.

One reason why I'm sceptical about whether this Voice will actually contribute practically to help Indigenous Australians is that we continue to ignore the Indigenous voices that are in this parliament—in this chamber and in the other place. We had a clear example of that over the past few months when the shocking explosion in crime occurred in Alice Springs. Alice Springs is perhaps one of the most overrepresented towns in this parliament. There are actually two members from Alice Springs in the parliament. My colleague Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price lives there and was a deputy mayor in Alice Springs. Also the new Labor member for Lingiari, in the other place, is from Alice Springs. There are about 30,000 people in Alice Springs and there are two representatives in the parliament—that is, about 15,000 people in Alice Springs per parliamentarian. Not too many other towns in Australia have that level of per capita representation in the Australian parliament.

Both of those representatives—both Senator Price and the member for Lingiari—have been warning for months that the government's decision to end the cashless debit card, and the Northern Territory government's decision to end our coal restrictions, would lead to absolute disaster in Alice Springs. They have been warning that for months. They have been using their voice as elected representatives to say these things. But the government and the parliament as a whole completely ignored them and ran roughshod over their views and pursued, at a million miles an hour, this ideological campaign to get rid of the cashless debt card, and we all saw what ensued as a result. Thank God, some of the alcohol restrictions have come back. The government are desperately trying to find a solution on welfare payments that doesn't amount to them having to embarrassingly back down on the cashless debit card. But we ignored their voices. We ignored the Aboriginal voices that exist here in this parliament. So would we listen to any other voices? We don't know how they will be selected or elected in this Voice body.

But there is a broader issue here than just whether or not the Voice itself will be effective. It is very clear that some of those pushing the Voice have a radical agenda in mind—and only sometimes this iceberg is exposed above the surface. Yesterday it was very clearly exposed at a conference in Cairns—a long way from here. The Lowitja Institute put on a conference in Cairns on health issues yesterday, and Professor Marcia Langton addressed that conference. I have a lot of time for Professor Langton, I appointed her to a board looking at the future for the resources sector, and she has made great contributions there. But I do disagree with her on some things—and she clearly has quite a radical agenda when it comes to the Voice.

The Lowitja Institute tweeted yesterday that Professor Langton had said in her speech: "People who are opposing the Voice vote, are saying that we are destroying the fabric of their sacred Constitution. Yes, that's right. That's exactly what we're doing." Professor Langton went on to say: "First of all, our Constitution is racist. It was designed as a racist constitution. The slogan was 'Australia for the White man.'" Professor Langton is not just a commentator here in this debate; she helped design this legislation that is before us. She helped design that for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Her clear words are that this is exactly about 'destroying the fabric of our Constitution'. So when government members stand up and say "This is modest; there's nothing to see here," why is it that one of their key advisers for designing this Voice says that, actually, the intent of the Voice is to 'destroy the fabric of our Constitution'?

I am a proud Australian. I think we are a great country, and I think we should cherish our Constitution. The fact is that we are one of the longest-serving democracies in the world. Democracy is a very recent thing. We are not the longest-serving democracy but we are up there as one of the longest-serving continuing democracies, with effectively the same Constitution—with very few changes—the same parliament and very stable institutions. I think we should actively oppose anybody seeking to destroy the sacred fabric of our Constitution. It is a part of the foundation which makes our country great, which gives us freedom and which guarantees our prosperity. Yet we have here a codesigner of the Voice saying that our Constitution, our foundations as a democratic country, should be destroyed. That alone should ring massive alarm bells for anybody considering their vote on this referendum.

The government are, clearly, not being forthcoming with the details. They are open about that. They are not willing to put forward any detailed legislation before us about what the Voice would look like. They are saying, "We'll work that out after the vote." So what is going to be in this wooden horse after the vote and we have to open it up? We are not being told. The only way to stop that, the only way to prevent that door of the Trojan horse being opened, is to vote no so that we do not get a voice designed by politicians in Canberra in their own interests, not yours. That is the only rational decision that can be made, given the radical agenda that has been exposed, given the fact that the quiet part has been said out loud, yesterday at this conference and in a few other examples around the country.

I do think that, even if my concerns about a radical agenda are not forthcoming and maybe this is just a somewhat modest and probably ineffective talkfest here in Canberra, the broader problem is that this ultimately does divide our community in an unnecessary way. We would be introducing a provision into our Constitution that divides us along racial lines. As I said at the start, I do recognise the unique circumstances that Indigenous communities find themselves in. I do think we should pursue very strongly policies that help and support those communities. I think that introducing the concept of race into our founding document as a nation is incredibly dangerous, because we are and should be a country based on the principle that it doesn't matter what the colour of your skin is and it doesn't matter what DNA you have in your body. What matters is who you are as an individual human being, and every Australian individual human being should be sacred, should be supported and should be helped. There is no need to divide our country along these lines. People marry different people. People in the same family will have different voting rights in our country. I don't understand why we need to do that.

We had a great referendum in 1967 which did improve our Constitution, which was all about uniting us as a country and treating all Australians as equal. It wasn't about voting rights, which is often wrongly said, but it was about making sure that everybody is counted properly in the census and treated equally. That was a great change which united everybody. It actually treated everybody equally in this country, regardless of skin colour or race. This would do the exact opposite, and it would take us back to a pre-1967 situation when there were some racial elements in Australian policy that were wrong and that we should leave in the rear-view mirror. I don't think we should bring those back into the policy debate.

If this is about uniting our nation, why hasn't the Prime Minister made good-faith efforts to show some compromise on the design to try and build a bigger level of support for the Voice beyond the narrow partisan support he has from his own party and some of his allies in the Greens? He has made no effort to do this.

There have been good-faith attempts from politicians on this side of the chamber who support a voice model but are concerned about, for example, the proposal to have the Voice advise the executive government, potentially giving rise to more constitutional legal challenges, where this will ultimately be decided.

There are others who are very passionate supporters of the Voice, but they're concerned that this model creates a new chapter in the Constitution that's not subservient, at least in a hierarchical sense, to chapters I or II in the Constitution—chapter I being the parliament, chapter II being the executive. There's a question about why this Voice isn't under either of those chapters. It's meant to be. We're told the Voice is meant to be something that can't just run off and do its own thing; it's ultimately subject to the laws of this place. That's what we're told. Why is it in a separate chapter of the Constitution, which potentially, again, gives rise to concerns that an activist High Court could interpret this as its own somewhat separate body under our nation's Constitution?

Those are all very reasonable points, and not ones that would in any way undermine the spirit of the Uluru statement or the sentiments of some supporters of the Voice in the Indigenous community. But there has been no attempt to seek compromise on those views, no attempt to reach a broader level of support.

So we as a nation are facing a situation now where, even if the Voice were to get up, it looks like it would do so on the narrowest of margins. It won't be a uniting event for our nation if 51 or 52 per cent of people in a slim majority of states vote for this model. It won't be. There will be a very large minority opposed to it. It'll be a divisive moment for our country, which is very unfortunate. That is a consequence of how the government has approached and gone about this proposal, in a 'my way or the high way' fashion.

But we are where we are now, and the Australian people have this choice to make. I think we should, given these unanswered questions, given these undelivered details, not say yes to this particular model but, perhaps even more so now, given the Voice is potentially even facing defeat, the government should consider pulling this referendum. They have not done enough groundwork here to build wide public support, and, perhaps to avoid embarrassment, they should put it off and think of another way of how we could recognise Indigenous Australians and actually unite our country together on what should be a central pursuit of this parliament and our nation to improve the lives and prospects of all Indigenous Australians, not just a few that seem to share a radical agenda that wants to tear down the founding institutions of this great nation.