Indigenous Voice: a big idea that could reshape Australia

Few would claim that the recent federal election campaign was replete with big ideas. Many, including this masthead, were critical of small-target politics during the campaign, but as the prime minister made clear in the opening remarks of his acceptance speech, Labor did support a big idea about Australia’s First Nations people.

It is now five years since a large and representative body of Indigenous leaders issued the Uluru Statement from the Heart calling for a Voice to parliament entrenched in the Constitution and a Makarrata Commission to oversee treaty-making and truth-telling.

While treaty and truth-telling are on Labor’s agenda, it has made the Voice to parliament its highest priority. Anthony Albanese has committed to holding a referendum in his first term. That is no small task. Since 1901, there have been 19 referendums, proposing 44 changes to the Constitution, of which only eight have managed to get the green light.

That poor strike rate has made governments hesitant to back referendums. The vote in 1999 on Australia becoming a republic, which did not pass in any state, has been the only one in more than 30 years.

But it should also be remembered that the referendum in 1967 that enabled the Commonwealth to enact laws for Indigenous Australians and to remove the prohibition against counting them in population counts in the Commonwealth or a state passed with the backing of more than 90 per cent of Australians, the highest level of support for any referendum since Federation.

However, there is little doubt that without the support of most sides of politics, a referendum on a Voice to parliament will have little chance of passing. In a split from his predecessor, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has left the door open to supporting a referendum, but he is waiting to see the detail and wants “the symbolic … to be accompanied by practical responses”. To some degree, Dutton’s thinking would be guided by his regret, which he has publicly stated, about leaving parliament during former prime minister Kevin Rudd’s apology in 2008 for past government policies that forced the removal of Indigenous children from their families.

But over the weekend, the Coalition’s sole Aboriginal MP, Northern Territory senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, has again urged her colleagues to prioritise education and tackling family violence in First Nations communities over pursuing constitutional change. This view was echoed recently by new Nationals leader David Littleproud. One of the major sticking points is that Labor has yet to put much detail on the table outlining how an Indigenous Voice would work.