Anthony Albanese says pressing ahead with the referendum will have been worth it even if Australians reject the voice on 14 October because it has brought Indigenous disadvantage front and centre in the national conversation.
The prime minister told Guardian Australia he hoped Australians would vote yes because that would be a “unifying moment”. He predicted if the vote was yes, the country would move on “pretty quickly” from the polarisation and “hateful” elements of the referendum debate because the parliament would set about designing and implementing the advisory committee.
If, however, a majority voted no, that would be “disappointing”, Albanese said in an interview with Guardian Australia’s politics podcast.
But he argued the process had already succeeded in raising consciousness about the gap in outcomes between Indigenous people and the rest of the community, and that focus would continue. “I do think that there will be, from this point on, there will be more of a focus on Indigenous disadvantage,” Albanese said on the podcast.
“I think the awareness and consciousness of Indigenous affairs has been raised to the point whereby you’ll never again have – I don’t believe – a situation where you won’t have Indigenous affairs raised on the floor of the parliament.
“For a long period of time, it wasn’t front and centre of issues.”
Albanese acknowledged that terrible things were being said during the referendum debate. He referenced an “extraordinary” pamphlet he’d seen recently characterising the push for the voice as a “Jewish conspiracy”.
“That is occurring,” he said. “At the same time Australians are talking like never before about the gap that’s there in life expectancy, about the fact that an Indigenous young male has a greater chance of going to jail than university, about health issues and about housing, and about listening.
“That process in itself is something that I believe is positive; the fact that we’re talking about Indigenous disadvantage not on the fringes [of the national conversation] but on the front pages of newspapers.”
While the referendum had unleashed “hateful” material, Albanese said Indigenous people had demonstrated during the long history of the Australian continent that “the resilience is there as well”.
What has happened already?
The Albanese government has put forward the referendum question: "A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. Do you approve this proposed alteration?"
The PM also suggested three sentences be added to the constitution:
- There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
- The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;
- The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.
How would it work?
The voice would be able to make recommendations to the Australian parliament and government on matters relating to the social, spiritual and economic wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
The voice would be able to table formal advice in parliament and a parliamentary committee would consider that advice. But the voice co-design report said all elements would be non-justiciable, meaning there could not be a court challenge and no law could be invalidated based on this consultation.
How would it be structured?
The co-design report recommended the national voice have 24 members, encompassing two from each state, the Northern Territory, ACT and Torres Strait. A further five members would represent remote areas and an additional member would represent Torres Strait Islanders living on the mainland.
Members would serve four-year terms, with half the membership determined every two years.
The prime minister said an Indigenous person had told him recently, “I have suffered so much in my life – what we are going through here is just what we’ve copped [throughout history].”
He said no Indigenous leader had urged him to pull back from the referendum despite the risks it could fail because of a lack of bipartisan support. Nobody had said, “maybe we should wait, maybe we should just hit the pause button”.
“I mean I’ve had that put to me by some commentators – none of them are Indigenous,” the prime minister said.
Albanese said the government abandoning the referendum would have delivered the same result as a no vote. He said the practical consequences of the two courses of action were “the same” – meaning no institutional change.
“If you don’t run on the field, you can’t make change, you can’t succeed,” the prime minister said. “You have to have the courage of your convictions, to be prepared to put forward the argument and give the Australian people the opportunity to vote in the referendum.”
Albanese said the Liberal leader, Peter Dutton, had flagged delaying the process earlier in the year, but then went on to reject the proposal entirely after the Liberal party lost the Aston byelection.
Albanese suggested that option of delay was not a good faith suggestion. “At what point do you actually have a vote, or do you just have a process talking about a vote endlessly?
“What would a delay mean? It would mean saying no to the Tom Calmas and the Pat Andersons and the Noel Pearsons – people who have been a part of this for a lot longer than I have been, who have given [advice] … for more than a decade – you are saying to them, let’s just wait a few years more.”
The prime minister also noted the yes campaign was “run in party by pretty key Liberal party operatives – Tony Nutt, a former national director and state director of the Liberal party … [and] Mark Textor doing the polling”.
He also praised the “enormous courage” of the former shadow attorney general Julian Leeser and Tasmanian Liberal backbencher Bridget Archer – both prominent in the yes campaign.
