Coalition senator James McGrath and former candidate Jacinta Price believe a voice will divide Australians by race

This article is more than 10 months old

This article is more than 10 months old

The Liberal senator James McGrath and the former Liberal candidate Jacinta Price have fronted an Institute of Public Affairs advertisement attacking any proposal for an Indigenous voice to parliament, claiming it will divide Australians by race.

The inflammatory intervention comes just a day after the minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, launched a co-design process with Indigenous people on the voice to parliament.

The negative advertising suggests the rightwing thinktank and aligned Coalition conservatives will continue to campaign against a voice despite the government’s repeated efforts to signal that the First Nations representative body will be legislated rather than enshrined in the constitution.

Tom Calma urges Indigenous support for design of voice to parliament Read more

In the ad, seen by Guardian Australia ahead of its release on Thursday, McGrath claims that the voice to parliament will “damage equality” and “divide Australia … on the basis of race”.

“I don’t want Indigenous Queenslanders being separated from non-Indigenous Queenslanders on the basis of their race and who they can vote for and where they can vote on the basis of a special chamber or a special voice,” the Queensland senator said. “We’re all equal, we’re all the same. This is just nuts.”

The incorrect claim that a voice to parliament would amount to – or be seen as – a third chamber has been advanced by the prime minister, Scott Morrison, his predecessor, Malcolm Turnbull, and the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, although the former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce has apologised unreservedly for using the term to campaign against a voice.

The original proposal by Indigenous Australians in the Uluru statement from the heart was for a constitutionally enshrined body to provide feedback from Indigenous Australians to parliament and would not constitute a third chamber.

Price, an Indigenous Australian who ran for the Liberals in the Northern Territory seat of Lingiari, nevertheless said in the IPA ad that a voice would be “creating a separate entity”.

“We are not a separate entity,” she said. “We should be considered Australian citizens and part of the fabric of this nation.”

Price argued the voice amounted to “telling us that there are those that believe that we are forever going to be disadvantaged”.

Lorraine Finlay, a non-Indigenous legal academic at Murdoch University, suggested in the ad that a voice to parliament is “patronising” and “a form of political segregation” because it implied that Indigenous Australians are “only allowed to play a certain prescribed role in the Australian democracy”.

Despite the claims in the ads, there is no suggestion that any model of an Indigenous voice to parliament would reduce other democratic rights and full participation in Australian democracy.

McGrath argued that the voice will not “fix” issues including suicide, infant mortality and unemployment. Anthony Dillon, an Indigenous mental health academic, said the “tough issues” including education, health and employment are “sidelined or hijacked by the virtue signallers, the ‘blacktivists’, the culture vultures”.

Price suggested the “fad” of constitutional recognition could actually reduce focus on those issues, despite the purpose of the voice as an additional mechanism to improve policies affecting Indigenous communities.

The Morrison government has ruled out enshrining the voice in the constitution but has asked the Indigenous leaders Marcia Langton and Tom Calma to conduct consultations with Indigenous Australians to co-design a legislated body.

Calma on Wednesday urged Indigenous people to get behind the process of co-designing a voice to parliament, and told Guardian Australia it was possible the Morrison government could countenance constitutional recognition after a model is resolved.

Langton told the ABC she remained a supporter of enshrining the voice in the constitution despite Wyatt and Morrison ruling that out, but she also urged Indigenous people to engage with the process in order to settle the model.

Marcia Langton and Tom Calma to lead Indigenous voice advisory group Read more

“A constitutional entrenchment is the only way to guarantee that an Aboriginal voice will be heard by the parliament of Australia,” Langton said.

She categorised the Uluru statement from the heart as “a highly metaphorical statement that required very large amounts of design work to turn it into a reality that governments can understand and can deal with” and she said the co-design process needed to settle on more precise words to explain the representative body.

Like Calma, Langton said it was possible the government could allow a two-step process, first legislation and then enshrinement. “I agree with Tom on that,” she told the ABC.

But the IPA advertisement underscores the difficulty Morrison and Wyatt would face convincing government MPs to sign up to a two-stage process.

Groups such as the Central Land Council have also 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.”