Tom Calma has urged Indigenous Australians to get behind the process of co-designing a voice to parliament, and says it is possible the Morrison government could countenance constitutional recognition after a model is resolved.

Calma, the chancellor of the University of Canberra and a previous race discrimination commissioner, has been appointed with fellow prominent academic Marcia Langton to lead a new round of consultations on the voice – a First Nations representative body proposed in the Uluru statement.

In an interview with Guardian Australia, Calma said: “We know that the prime minister at this stage has ruled out constitutionally enshrining the voice, in part because there is no model. What would the government be putting to a referendum?”

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Calma said while he couldn’t say what Scott Morrison and the government might or might not do in the future, it was possible “they might be minded” to consider enshrining the representative body in the constitution down the track. He argued that “would be the pragmatic way to go”.

He said it was analogous to the native title debate, where there was “hue and cry” about people losing their backyards to land claims from traditional owners, and “those concerns weren’t there”.

“I would like to get the opportunity to establish the bodies and the process and look at all the models and how they might work, and then at a future time look at – and this is the government’s role – to look at constitutional enshrinement or whatever.”

He encouraged Indigenous communities to focus on the here and now. “There are big dangers in trying to conflate issues.”

With an announcement imminent about the next phase of consultations about the voice, the shadow minister for Indigenous affairs, Linda Burney, speculated last week the government might countenance a two-stage process where “perhaps [Scott Morrison] would look at enshrinement down the track”.

Morrison ruled out constitutional enshrinement of the voice shortly after the minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, used Naidoc week to reopen a national conversation about recognising First Nations people in the constitution and establishing a voice to parliament.

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Contention broke out within the government immediately after Wyatt’s signal that the government would look at pursuing both of these issues during the current term, with conservatives resisting the representative body even if the voice sat outside the constitution.

One outspoken government MP, Craig Kelly, declared that setting up separate structures, even if the representative model was legislated rather than enshrined in the constitution, risked creating “a reverse form of what South Africa was a few years ago”.

While Morrison would clearly struggle to convince his own MPs to sign up to a two-stage process, groups such as the Central Land Council have flatly rejected the government’s proposal to legislate the voice rather than enshrine it in the constitution. CLC delegates met near Uluru on Tuesday and passed a resolution opposing symbolic recognition. “We want to be part of designing the voice to parliament,” the resolution said. “We demand that it be protected in the constitution.”

Calma’s co-chair, Langton, is already on the public record supporting constitutional enshrinement of the voice. Langton has previously cited the abolition of Atsic as the reason why the voice needs to be enshrined in the constitution, as per the Uluru statement recommendation. She is yet to comment on her new role.

Calma said it was important for the parliament to rally behind the current process so that Indigenous Australians would have confidence that a representative body would not be abolished or defunded by the government of the day.

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“For a lot of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the National Congress of Australia’s First People was the voice,” Calma said. “It was something we constructed. We elected the membership. We had over 10,000 members and over 180 peak bodies – that is a very, very representative voice.

“That is now in receivership because of a lack of support by government and that was one minister. We have to look at mechanisms to ensure that doesn’t happen. This has got to go beyond the government, the parliament has to get behind this. Bodies that are constructed have to last.

“I want to encourage people to have an open mind and give this process a chance to go. We are so fortunate to have Ken Wyatt, an Indigenous person in the portfolio, who enjoys the support of the prime minister.

“Labor has concerns but they’ve expressed support for a process. These windows don’t open all that often, and we have got to take advantage of that.

“There’s a time frame. They are in government for a defined period, and we should take advantage of that while we can.”