The Voice to parliament, if established, would not be the first Indigenous advisory body in Australia’s history.
In 1973, Gough Whitlam established the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee, which was superseded by Malcolm Fraser’s National Aboriginal Conference in 1978. Both were elected bodies that were advisory only, and there were other later attempts.
The longest-running body was the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), which operated for 15 years before being abolished by the Howard government in 2005.
