Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young has declared she will be supporting the yes campaign for an Indigenous voice to parliament and her expectation is her colleagues will do likewise.
Hanson-Young told reporters on Wednesday her colleague, the Greens’ First Nations spokesperson, Lidia Thorpe, had been very clear she would not back the no campaign after a newspaper report earlier this week suggested otherwise.
“As Lidia Thorpe has said, she’s not backing the no campaign, and I am looking very much forward to supporting the yes campaign,” Hanson-Young said. “I want to be really clear about this: I support the yes campaign and I’ll be doing everything I can to support it.
“I’m going to be supporting the yes campaign, my colleagues are going to be supporting the yes campaign and we need to make sure this delivers for First Nations people.”
Hanson-Young said the Greens’ position was to support the full implementation of the Uluru statement from the heart, “and we want the parliament to respond to that request from First Nations people to act, to give voice, to give treaty, to give truth”.
She said the parliament had an obligation to do “everything we can to make sure First Nations people are listened to and responded to in the way they have asked [for] out of that statement of the heart”.
“That’s a really important message to the rest of the Australian community.”
On Tuesday, a report in the Australian newspaper suggested Thorpe had spoken with Indigenous businessman Warren Mundine about their joint opposition to a referendum on the voice. The Albanese government is committed to holding a plebiscite in this term of parliament.
Thorpe said the news report was “false and misleading” and stated “we did not discuss support for a no campaign on voice and I will not be campaigning no”. But she said the three elements of the Uluru statement were equally important and “we can do all three at the same time”.
The Greens’ formal position articulated by both Thorpe and Hanson-Young is to ensure all elements of the Uluru statement including truth, treaty and voice are delivered, as well as action to implement the recommendations of the Aboriginal deaths in custody royal commission and the Stolen Generations’ Bringing Them Home report.
Thorpe has previously been critical of the government’s proposed model for the voice, saying her focus was on a treaty and truth-telling. She has called the referendum “a waste of money” and “a wasted exercise”.
Thorpe said on Tuesday she wanted to ensure that truth and treaty were “taken as seriously as voice”.
“This is what I am focused on,” she said. “I have no time for negative campaigning that will only hurt those it affects the most – First Nations people. I don’t want to see my people hurt more.”
The minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, will use a speech on Wednesday night to argue landing the voice to parliament proposal is a “once in a generation opportunity to create lasting change”.
Burney will say the referendum working group and referendum engagement group, made up of more than 60 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, will meet again in late October in Canberra to consider changes to the Referendum Machinery Act 1984 and the wording of the question that will be put to the Australian people.
The minister will issue a warning about the dangers of misinformation during the voice debate. “Let me warn you, our opponents will make more false claims about the voice to parliament as we get closer to the referendum,” Burney will say.
