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

I just have two more questions, and I know that the Greens have a block of questions.

Senator Watt, in terms of the questions and the comments that you have previously made to me about asking people to vote on a referendum question first and then the parliament legislating later, you referred back to 1901. The argument there in relation to the Constitution being about principles is actually disingenuous in this context, because if you go back to 1901—and the particular example you used was the Navy—when our Constitution was being put together, Australians at least had the benefit of looking at hundreds of years of constitutional conventions in other countries—so, for example, the experiences of places like the USA and Canada. In 1901 everybody knew what a navy was. What you have, though, with what we are debating tonight in the Voice, is that this is completely untested, it is completely novel and there is no equivalent body that we know of anywhere else. In fact, there is no equivalent. I make this point: if there were a legislative body, at least we could say there was a legislative body that we could look at. This is going way beyond a legislative body. This is a constitutionally informed body, and there is no evidence. In fact, there is no equivalent constitutionally informed body anywhere else in the world that we are aware of. So, when asking these questions, will representatives be asked to represent multiple different Aboriginal people?