James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

To Australia Day or not to Australia Day? That is the question. But not if you're Labor, and not if you're Minister Burney or Prime Minister Albanese. They don't know whether the issue of Australia Day will be an issue that the Voice looks at. So welcome to modern Australia, where we're facing a referendum with details we don't know about and on a date that's being kept secret.

But it gets worse than that. Three months ago, the Prime Minister stood in front of his hand-picked draft working group to announce the words that are going to be put to Australian people in this secret referendum on a date that we don't know about. The Prime Minister called on the Australian people to vote in favour of his Voice, a proposal which he called 'modest'. I can't help but reflect that the man standing directly to the right of the Prime Minister at this press conference was someone called Thomas Mayo. It has been revealed that Thomas Mayo—the Prime Minister's right-hand man, both figuratively and literally—has come out saying that the Voice is his campaign tool to pay reparations, to abolish colonial institutions and to punish politicians.

If he wants to abolish colonial institutions, I wonder what the Prime Minister thinks in terms of his office being a colonial institution? But at a communist conference—a communist conference!—the Prime Minister's right-hand man was there and said that there's nothing more powerful than a First Nations Voice and that it would become a black political voice to be reckoned with. So welcome to modern Australia! If you don't know, vote no; but if you do know, also vote no, and tell your fellow Australians to vote no, because you don't want people who appear at communist conferences and who want to tear down the institutions that built up the freedoms that make Australia the great country that it is today— (Time expired)