Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

Well then, could you actually take me through it, because, again, you did not have a constitutional convention. If we had had a constitutional convention, these issues would have been explored in detail. On behalf of the Australian people, who are going to be asked by this government to cast a vote—probably one of the most significant votes they will ever cast—to change their founding document, to change the way this country is governed, with all due respect, I would appreciate you answering the questions. So I put it to you again, unless of course, if the answer is 'I don't know', I will accept the answer 'I do not know.' If the answer is 'We have no intention of telling the Australian people that answer until after they've voted, if it gets up, and will then go into the design', then I will accept that as well. Neither of them are an adequate answer, but they are at least answers.

So: if the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice is permanently enshrined in our Constitution, what will be the prerequisite to be nominated as a Voice representative? Surely you have a departmental representative or a lawyer sitting in the adviser's box that is able to provide you with the relevant talking points on this issue. I don't have a problem if you don't actually know yourself, but surely you have someone, a legal adviser here, that can hand you this particular talking point.