A split over the Indigenous voice to parliament has emerged in Victoria’s newly elected First Peoples’ Assembly, with an internal push to revisit the body’s formal endorsement of the voice.
In March, Victoria’s assembly voted to support enshrining an Indigenous advisory body in the constitution, vowing to raise awareness and share information in the lead-up to the referendum.
But assembly member Tracey Evans, a Gunditjmara and Bundjalung woman, says the body should revisit its endorsement when it meets next month.
“We need to have another conversation with the current members that have been elected in on what their position is,” she said.
“Just because assembly 1.0 agreed on things doesn’t mean to say that assembly 2.0 needs to hold the same position. It might be different.”
Evans said she would vote no if the referendum were held today.
The First Peoples Assembly confirmed its newly elected co-chairs – Rueben Berg and Ngarra Murray – both supported the voice.
The body, which is democratically elected by Indigenous Victorians to negotiate a treaty, began its second term last month after elections in May and June.
Half of the 22 general members elected are first-time members, including Gary Murray, an elder descended from several First Nations groups in Victoria.
Murray, the father of the assembly’s co-chair Ngarra Murray, also believes the assembly’s decision on supporting the voice should be revisited. “We’ve got a lot of new members who haven’t discussed it and given consent to it,” he said.
In his first speech as an assembly member in Victorian parliament, he described the voice as a “furphy” and called for a new national body that would operate under a “sovereign constitution”.
Guardian Australia understands that when the assembly’s first term voted on the voice in March, 86% of members supported it.
An assembly source, who requested anonymity, said critics of the voice were still a minority within the assembly. But the split among members highlights the factional complexities the assembly is grappling with.
Ngarra Murray, an ally of the independent federal senator Lidia Thorpe who quit the Greens over its voice stance, said the body was still urging people to vote yes in the referendum.
“The vast majority of Aboriginal people support the voice to parliament and that’s the same in our assembly,” she said.
“Any assembly member can raise issues for discussion, but for it to become an official position it needs at least majority support in the assembly chamber.”
She said any forward step that gave Indigenous people more of a say on decisions that affected their community was worth taking.
The assembly’s outgoing co-chairs Aunty Geraldine Atkinson and Marcus Stewart used their final speeches in July to urge members to push for a voice yes vote.
Jill Gallagher, Victoria’s former treaty advancement commissioner, said she believed the majority of Indigenous Victorians supported the assembly’s position to endorse the voice.
“If the assembly wants to change its mind it should go back to a vote in the Victorian Aboriginal community or even a poll,” she said.
The assembly is expected to be a key point of contact for the commonwealth’s proposed voice to parliament and could elect the members who will sit on the advisory body. The assembly will negotiate a state-wide treaty with the Andrews government, with talks to commence in the coming months.
The Victorian treaty could lead to changes to the state’s institutional structures, including the criminal justice system. Traditional owner groups will also be able to enter into separate treaties with the state government for issues relevant to specific regions of the state.
It comes as the Guardian’s Essential poll this week found most Australians were planning to vote no in the referendum on the voice. The poll showed opponents outnumbered supporters in all states except Victoria. For the referendum to succeed it requires a majority of voters to vote yes as well as at least four of the country’s six states.
