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

ator CASH (—) (): These are not hypothetical questions. What we're trying to do is clarify the intent of the proposed change to our Constitution. When a future High Court comes to comes to interpret this provision, as I stated at the outset, they won't be able to go to the debates of a constitutional convention. They won't have the troves of material—the documents, the development or the provision. All of this happened behind closed doors. However, as we know, they will be able to look at the debates on the Hansard, and, when a future High Court compares how the Voice is working in practice versus what the parliament intended to achieve with this change, they may well look at the proceedings of this committee. So it is completely appropriate to explore this issue here. If we don't do it here in the committee process, we are potentially denying valuable interpretive guidance to a future court.

So I ask: could recognition as First People shape the interpretation of the power to make representations to mean that the Voice is in some way restricted to matters that pertain to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as First Peoples—for example, matters relating to native title, culture, language and heritage?