The Albanese government has accused the no campaign of a “flat out lie” and “promoting fear” after it was revealed Fair Australia’s official phone call scripts suggested telling voters the change could “mean separate laws, separate economies and separate leaders”.
The official volunteer website for Fair Australia, run by the Advance conservative lobby group, suggests supporters conducting phone-banking blitzes raise concerns with voters about the voice’s effect on Australia Day, reparations, treaties and the passage of laws through parliament – all claims that have been rejected by Labor.
The script, first reported by the Nine newspapers, suggests volunteers identify themselves as representing Fair Australia, rather than explicitly stating their membership of the no campaign.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, told a meeting of the Labor caucus on Tuesday that the “cynicism of the no campaign has been exposed in today’s papers as being about promoting fear”. In parliament later, he accused opponents of seeking to “promote fear rather than hope”.
The education minister, Jason Clare, accused the no campaign of a “flat out lie” and “BS” in raising concerns about reparations.
“The voice is an advisory committee. The voice is about listening. The voice is about making sure we make better decisions and get better results,” he told a press conference.
“What’s revealed in the papers today, shows that it’s now a deliberate strategy of the no campaign to flat out lie. If the no campaign are so confident that what they’re saying is right, why do they have to lie to the Australian people?”
Fair Australia and Advance were contacted for comment. In a response to Nine, a spokesperson defended the tactics as standard practice, and said volunteers were asked to identify themselves as representing Fair Australia.
“We make no apologies for our volunteers being as persuasive as they possibly can be,” he said.
The spokesperson accused yes campaign supporters of trying to “deceptively infiltrate our campaign and provide potentially illegal recordings to left-leaning news outlets”, and claimed they would refer the matter to federal police.
The AFP was contacted for comment.
Resources provided to volunteers on the Volunteer For No website, seen by Guardian Australia, encourage supporters to tell voters in phone calls that people involved in designing the voice had campaigned to abolish Australia Day, or called for compensation and reparations for Indigenous people.
“All of these things raised a few questions in my mind, and made me wonder if there was more to it all than meets the eye,” the script suggests.
The Labor government has repeatedly ruled out abolishing Australia Day.
On a list of “the top 10 reasons for voting No”, which the website provided “to assist you if the voter would like more detail about voting no”, are other claims which have been discredited by the government and legal experts.
One claim is that the voice “puts racial separation in your constitution by giving a Voice to one group, based on race, that no other group has or will have”.
A similar claim from the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, that the voice would “re-racialise” the constitution, was rejected by the Nationals leader, David Littleproud, in May. Leading constitutional academics including Prof Anne Twomey have noted the constitution already allows for the commonwealth to make laws about “the people of any race for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws”.
The phone script also claims without evidence that the voice “undermines our one-vote democratic system”.
Advance and Fair Australia were asked for evidence of these claims.
The Volunteer For No website carries an authorisation message from Matthew Sheahan, the director of Advance.
The website states Fair Australia would conduct phone blitzes each Wednesday and Saturday, as well as daily in the five days leading up to the vote on 14 October.
The voice architect and Uluru Dialogue co-chair, Megan Davis, wrote on Twitter/X that “it is outrageous that No is asking their volunteers to be dishonest to Aussies and to advocate fear and straight out lies”.
The Uluru Dialogue spokesperson, Roy Ah-See, accused the no campaign of “one of the most un-Australian acts in political history”.
“We call on all Australians to recognise the NO campaign tactics for what they are: designed to deceive and mislead,” Ah-See said in a statement.
Matt Kean, a NSW Liberal MP claimed “the No Campaign has nothing to offer but fear & anger.”
“They offer no solutions, no pathway forward,” he wrote on Twitter, linking to the Sydney Morning Herald article.
Narang Bir-rong Aboriginal Corporation chief executive officer Heidi Bradshaw, a Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta woman, dismissed the link between the voice and reparations.
“We’re not coming for anyone’s money,” she said.
Liberals Michaelia Cash, Linda Reynolds and Dean Smith are among those who have sent letters with the claim that “some voice supporters” want to push for reparations.
A Liberal party spokesperson said they stood by the statement and pointed to a 2018 article in the Monthly by Uluru architect Prof Megan Davis in which she outlines the sequential process for voice, treaty, truth – as the separate elements of the Uluru statement from the heart. They also pointed to tweets from the Referendum Working Group’s Thomas Mayo talking about a treaty, again as a separate element to the voice.
Bradshaw said she and her staff were “horrified” to see letters with the claim from the Lindsay MP, Melissa McIntosh, which talked about the cost of living crisis before segueing to reparations.
McIntosh wrote to residents, accusing the government of being “preoccupied with a divisive referendum” instead of focusing on the economy.
Bradshaw said she had previously spoken to McIntosh about her organisation’s support for the voice, “that it should go through and is for the betterment of Aboriginal people”. The Liberal party and McIntosh were approach for comment.
Asked about the Nine Newspapers story at a press conference, shortly after Clare’s comments, Bridget McKenzie, a Nationals senator and voice opponent called for a “respectful conversation” but noted that details about how the voice would operate had still not been confirmed.
“I don’t think we should be playing to the worst in people when you come to decide a referendum question, but that cuts both ways,” McKenzie said.
Asked about the no campaign’s script telling volunteers to raise fears about reparations, she said Clare “doesn’t know what the voice will do and how it will behave and insert itself into our democracy.”
“They can’t tell us how it’s going to be elected either, so for [Clare] to be so confident that it won’t be seeking reparations at some time in the future is foolish because he doesn’t know,” McKenzie said.
