The opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, says First Nations people just want to be consulted on matters that affect them

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Anthony Albanese has warned Labor will not support a proposal to recognise Indigenous Australians in the constitution and establish a voice to parliament if it is too modest to win the support of First Nations people.

Speaking after attending the Garma festival in Arnhem Land, the Labor leader told the ABC on Sunday he hoped the Morrison government would listen to the desire of Indigenous people articulated in the Uluru statement, which was to enshrine the voice – a representative body – in the constitution.

He said the voice would be “mentioned in the constitution so that there’s security, but of course it would be legislated by the parliament with the nature of it”.

“Of course you wouldn’t put down all of the structures around the voice in the constitution,” Albanese said. “The constitution is a relatively short document.

“The high court itself is mentioned in the constitution, and the detail of it is legislated. So we need to have a debate about what the nature of that voice is.

Anthony Albanese says Indigenous voice 'must come first' to achieve reconciliation Read more

“But let’s be clear about what First Nations people are asking for. Their ask is modest. It is simply that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be consulted on matters that affect them.”

Although Labor has signalled it wanted to achieve bipartisanship with the government on a proposal for constitutional change, Albanese said there was no point in proceeding if the Coalition could not respond to the proposal advanced by Indigenous leaders.

“That would be a pointless exercise, to try and once again impose a solution that wasn’t the product of consultation,” he said, noting the Uluru Statement from the Heart was the product of intensive consultation with Indigenous people.

“First nations people around the country … came together and came up with a consensus document,” he said. “It’s a beautiful document. It’s a strong document. It’s concise and clear. It’s modest in its ask, and I think it is incredibly generous.”

In an interview with Guardian Australia’s politics podcast, acclaimed filmmaker Rachel Perkins has urged Australians to support a voice proposal that allows Indigenous people to partner with government “to solve this crisis we have in communities”.

Richie Ah Mat, the co-chair of the Cape York Partnership, argues the representative body needs to be enshrined in the constitution: “If it’s just legislated … they can say it’s too hard with the blacks, let’s get rid of it with the stroke of a pen.”

Ken Wyatt wants referendum on Indigenous constitutional recognition within three years Read more

The minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, put constitutional recognition and a version of the voice to parliament back on the national agenda with a speech during Naidoc week. Wyatt, the first Indigenous person to hold the portfolio, promised to work towards holding a referendum on Indigenous recognition within three years.

In reviving the debate, he signalled that he wanted to persist with creating some model of the voice from the Uluru statement, but he indicated that a representative body might be legislated, rather than enshrined, in the constitution, which was the position outlined in the Uluru process.

Government conservatives have signalled they will resist enshrining it. At the Garma festival, Wyatt said the Coalition believed change could be achieved in three years “but how we do it is both important and critical”.

The former chief justice Murray Gleeson has argued “a constitutionally entrenched but legislatively controlled” capacity for Indigenous people to have input into the making of laws about Indigenous people or Indigenous affairs “hardly seems revolutionary”.

In July he said that given the constitution makes people the potential objects of special laws by reason of their Indigenous status, “the referendum council considered that an appropriate form of recognition of such people would be to provide them with a voice to parliament”.

At the Garma festival, the prominent Indigenous leader Noel Pearson referred to the Gleeson speech as “the last word on the legal integrity on the voice and its seamless compatibility with the constitutional history of the Australian commonwealth”.

Pearson predicted that people intending to mount a rearguard action against change “could never take on Mr Gleeson’s words”.



