Former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has spoken out against embedding the Indigenous Voice to Parliament into the country’s Constitution.
Federal MPs are debating the Constitution Alteration (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice) Bill 2023, which will lock in a referendum for Australians to decide whether to include The Voice in the country’s founding legal document.
The Voice proposal will change the preamble of the Constitution but also set up a near-permanent advisory body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.
This body, likely to comprise 24 members, will be decided through a voting system by Indigenous people throughout the country—in addition to current voting rights—and will have the power to make “representations” to the Parliament, executive, and broader public service.
Different Rights, No Limits to Confusion: Morrison
However, Morrison outlined several concerns around The Voice during a rare speech in Parliament, saying it would permanently give Indigenous people “different rights” over other Australians purely due to race.“That is the opposite of what has previously occurred, especially in relation to the 1967 referendum where our Constitution was changed to give Indigenous Australians the same rights as all other Australians. What is proposed here is not the same thing,” he said on May 24.
Further, he warned that the impact of an extra body on the Parliament and executive bodies had not been fully explored or understood.
“It is ill-defined, creating significant constitutional risk,” Morrison said.
“Ultimately, the High Court will be left to decipher the unknown and decide what this all means, long after Australians have cast their vote with no further say.
“This will inevitably lead to confusion and uncertainty over everything from our national defence to the operations of Centrelink, which all fall within the ambit of The Voice. There are no limits,” he said.
The former prime minister also said it was unnecessary to enshrine The Voice into the Constitution, saying it did not allow the government to remove the body if it outlived its purpose.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission was abolished in 2005 for a number of reasons, including the lack of participation from Indigenous voters because of its limited impact on local communities.
“It is wrong to conflate the issues of The Voice with constitutional recognition and treat them as inseparable,” Morrison added.
He also said sporting codes, unions, or businesses had no business advocating for The Voice.
Labor Support Continues
Meanwhile, Labor MPs continued to advocate for The Voice.Indigenous MP Marion Scrymgour spoke about colonialism claiming the concept of terra nullius—land belonging to no one—was a “toxic pretence” by early explorers and settlers to justify a “massive land grab.”
“The moral bankruptcy of the terra nullius pretext was demonstrated repeatedly throughout Australia over the next 150 years, as Aboriginal resistance was crushed with lethal force,” she said.
“Giving our people a real voice now is the least that this country can do to make good the wrong that has existed at the heart of our founding document.”
While Ananda-Rajah sai,d Indigenous people did not have a voice, accusing media outlets of filtering their views.
“It speaks to a language of deficit that we’ve all become accustomed to with respect to our First Peoples. That’s all we ever hear. And you know why we hear that? Because that’s what the media wants us to hear. Bad news sells.
“I’m tired of it, and frankly, I don’t want to hear any more about First Peoples through the filter of the media; I want to hear directly from them. Having a Voice to Parliament means the whole of this country, the Australian people, will hear directly from them, and we will turn around this language of deficit to one of positivity, abundance, and surplus,” she said.
A vote on The Voice will likely be held in the lower house of Parliament next week before shifting to the Senate.
