Alex Antic (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When the votes had stopped being counted, over 64 per cent of South Australians voted no to the national Voice referendum last October. But, despite this, the South Australian state government has pushed ahead with a state based voice comprised of members of smaller bodies, which they legislated prior to the referendum. Elected members of the SA First Nations Voice to Parliament will receive annual stipends from $3,000 to $18,000, sitting fees of $206 per meeting and in some cases a director salary of up to $250,000—that's not bad in a cost-of-living crisis.

This will cost South Australian taxpayers $10.3 million over the next four years while the issues that are faced by Aboriginal South Australians will remain unaddressed. Just more highly paid bureaucrats going to team meetings with PowerPoint presentations and a raft of clever buzzwords. And what will the SA voice members do? I suspect there will be a lot more acknowledgements of country and requests for government funding, but not much else.

As Thomas Sowell once said:

You'll never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.

South Australians know it too. According to Labor, 26 March of last year was supposed to be a historic moment for SA, marking a special parliamentary sitting day in which members of the public were invited to gather on the steps of parliament to show their support. Barely anyone showed up.

Furthermore, it's evident that most Aboriginal South Australians are not engaged in the process and doubt the SA voice will accomplish anything meaningful. In fact the results of the Far North region show that just recently seven positions were up—three males, three females, one any gender. There were 13 candidates, 305 votes and a quota of 38 to get elected to this ridiculous SA voice. Just like with the national Voice, many Aboriginal people view the SA voice as an irrelevant bureaucratic farce that needs to be repealed.