Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I remember the IR debate very well, Senator Cash, and again you sought all sorts of guarantees in that. That's one of your approaches to legislation, but I would welcome the contributions of any of the senators from the opposition in the debate we would ultimately have about the operations and structure of the Voice and for them to put forward their views about how many members there should be and where they should come from. That's what we do in parliament. We all have different ideas. We come along, we debate and we pass legislation. I'm not quite sure why we should have a different approach for this piece of legislation to the approach we take for everything else. But, again, the design principles very clearly say that members would be chosen from each of the states, territories and the Torres Strait Islands and that the Voice would have specific remote representatives, as well as representation for the mainland Torres Strait Islander population.