Indigenous Voice to Parliament

The Indigenous Voice to Parliament (the Voice) is the proposed new advisory group containing separately elected Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, enshrined in the Constitution of Australia, which would "have a responsibility and right to advise the Australian Parliament and Government on national matters of significance to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples".

The request for creating the Indigenous Voice to Parliament was a result of the May 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart, delivered by the First Nations National Constitutional Convention which met at Uluru. This request was refused by the Turnbull government, on the grounds that it "would be seen as third chamber of parliament".^[1] After Scott Morrison became prime minister of Australia in August 2018, his government proposed the Indigenous voice to government in October 2019, which would introduce a body via legislation, without changing the Constitution. The process by which the channel would be established was known as the Indigenous voice co-design process. The Senior Advisory Group was set up under Minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt.

With a change of government on 23 May 2022, new prime minister Anthony Albanese promised in his victory speech that a referendum to decide the Indigenous Voice to Parliament enshrined in the Constitution would be held within his term of office. In July 2022 he outlined further plans regarding the referendum, and proposed that the advisory group be named the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. As of February 2023^[update], the details of what the Indigenous Voice to Parliament will involve have not been confirmed. The new process is being overseen by Labor's Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney. Whilst the Peter Dutton-led Opposition Liberal Party has thus far reserved its position on the referendum pending further details from the Labor Government on the nature of the proposed Voice, their junior Coalition partner Nationals have declared themselves against the proposal, with their Aboriginal Senator for the Northern Territory Jacinta Price arguing that it will enshrine a racially divisive bureaucracy into the Constitution, that cannot be dismantled.

Background

The ancestors of today's Aboriginal Australians are believed to have commenced arriving on the Australian continent around 60,000 years ago. Gradually they settled the whole continent of Sahul (which incorporated modern Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea), forming hundreds of language groups, and living millennia in relative isolation.^[2] There is contested genetic evidence of an additional wave of migration from the Indian subcontinent to northwestern Australia around 4,000 years ago.^[3] Around 10,000 years ago global sea level rose, separating mainland Aboriginal peoples, Aboriginal Tasmanians, Torres Strait Islanders and Papuan peoples (in New Guinea) from each other.^[4] There was significant contact between northern Aboriginal people and Makassar people from the 1600s until 1907.^[5]

The First Fleet of British settlers arrived in 1788, and the British gradually settled the entire continent as well as Tasmania. There were no treaties between the British and Indigenous Australian peoples, the British established control after a series of violent conflicts known as Frontier Wars. Along with various epidemics (eg: flu, smallpox) and starvation, this led to drastic population decline among Indigenous peoples during the 19th century.

The geographical description of "Australia" was invented in the early 19th century, and the Commonwealth of Australia with its Australian Constitution was founded on 1 January 1901, gathering together the six former British colonies following a series of referenda in which Indigenous people could not take part. Indigenous Australians became Australian citizens in 1948, at the same time as all other Australians. Prior to this, Australians were "British Subjects". Indigenous Australians had uneven rights to vote and stand for Australian Parliaments up until the 1960s. Since 1973, there have been four elected national, representative indigenous bodies advising Australian governments. The bodies generally struggled with maladministration, and lack of engagement from indigenous Australians and were consequently disbanded by successive governments.^[6]^{[unreliable source?]}

Indigenous Australians in Parliament

The rights of indigenous Australians to vote and stand for Parliament faced uneven restrictions across state and federal jurisdictions up until the 1960s. By the election of the second Menzies Government in 1949, indigenous people were still excluded from voting in Federal Elections in Queensland and Western Australia because of state legislation. Between 1949 and 1962, Menzies dismantled remaining restrictions on Federal voting rights, commencing with Aboriginal ex-servicemen in 1949, and concluding with the 1962 Commonwealth Electoral Act, which granted all indigenous people the option to enrol and vote in federal elections. Queensland became the last state to remove restrictions on state voting in 1965.^[7]^[8]^[9]

The first Aboriginal parliamentarians began to emerge at a state level from 1969 and, in 1971, Liberal Neville Bonner entered the Senate, as representative for Queensland. He was the first Aboriginal Federal Parliamentarian.^[10] Indigenous representation in Australian State and Federal Parliaments has grown markedly in the 21st century. In 2010, Liberal Ken Wyatt became the first Aboriginal member of the House of Representatives. In 2019, he became the first Aboriginal Cabinet Minister. In 2013, Northern Territory Chief Minister Adam Giles of the Country Liberal Party became the first Aboriginal to lead an Australian State or Territory. The 2022 Australian federal election resulted in a record 11 Aboriginal parliamentarians, representing 4.8% of all parliamentarians, which is higher than the Indigenous Australian population of 3.3%.^[11]

Elected voices to Parliament

The National Aboriginal Consultative Committee was created in 1973 by the Whitlam government with a principal function to advise the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and the Minister on issues of concern to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Its members were elected by Indigenous people.^[12] The Fraser Government commissioned the Hiatt Committee review of the body in 1976, which concluded that it had not functioned as a consultative committee or been effective in providing advice to government or in making its activities known to most Aboriginal people.^[6]^{[unreliable source?]} To address these failing, the body was reconstituted in 1977 as the National Aboriginal Congress (NAC), which was also an elected body.^[13]

The Hawke Government commissioned the Coombs Review into the NAC in 1983, and found that the body was not held in high regard by the Aboriginal community and was failing to influence government. In 1985, a Commonwealth Auditor-General audit, found financial mismanagement and irregularities and breaches of its charter and rules.^[6]^{[unreliable source?]} The body was abolished by the Hawke government in 1985.^[14]

ATSIC was the next elected body that provided an Indigenous voice to government, and also had responsibility for administering Aboriginal programs and service delivery. It was established by the Hawke government on 5 March 1990 through the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Act 1989. Voter turnout for ATSIC was persistently below 25% and its leadership became embroiled in criminal convictions and misappropriation of funds.^[6]^{[unreliable source?]}

ATSIC was abolished by the Howard government with the support of the Beazley Labor opposition on 24 March 2005. Prime Minister Howard and Indigenous Affairs Minister Amanda Vanstone announced in 2004: "We believe very strongly that the experiment in separate representation, elected representation, for indigenous people has been a failure," and proposed to establish a consultation model based on appointment of "distinguished indigenous people to advise the Government on a purely advisory basis".^[15] This body was established as the National Indigenous Council (NIC) in November that year.

A government inquiry into the demise of ATSIC recommended in March 2005 that the government appointed NIC "be a temporary body, to exist only until a proper national, elected representative body is in place".^[16] The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner specifically called for a more representative voice in the Australian Human Rights Commission's Social Justice Reports of 2006 and 2008.^[17]

In early 2008, the NIC was disbanded, and in December that year, the Rudd government asked the Human Rights Commission to develop a new elected Indigenous representative body.^[18] This was announced as the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples in November 2009.^[19] The Congress was established as a body independent of government, aiming to avoid the problems ATSIC had.^[20] According to Warren Mundine, "where its predecessors were marred by conflict and controversy, Congress struggled with relevance. Fewer than 10,000 Indigenous people signed up as members to elect Congress delegates."^[6] The Abbott government cut off the main funding stream for the Congress in 2013. It went into voluntary administration in June 2019,^[21] before ceasing completely in October 2019.^[22]

Calls for a new voice came from the Cape York Institute in 2012 and 2015.^[17] The institute's Noel Pearson formulated the need and rationale for constitutional recognition in his 2014 contribution "A Rightful Place: Race, Recognition and a More Complete Commonwealth" for Quarterly Essay.^[23]

Indigenous Australians in the Constitution

Since 1967, the Australian Constitution grants the Federal Government powers to make laws for indigenous Australians. The Liberal Holt Government called a referendum in 1967 referendum to "omit certain words relating to the people of the Aboriginal race in any State and so that Aboriginals are to be counted in reckoning the Population". Over 90% of Australians voted 'yes' in the referendum, and from that time forward, indigenous people were automatically counted in the census.^[24]^[25]

Following the 1998 Australian Constitutional Convention, the Howard Government sought to have reference to Indigenous Australians included in a new Preamble to the Constitution. The proposed preamble included the words: "We the Australian people commit ourselves to [...] honouring Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, the nation's first people, for their deep kinship with their lands and for their ancient and continuing cultures which enrich the life of our country", however the preamble was rejected in a 1999 referendum.

On 16 October 2007, Prime Minister John Howard promised to hold a referendum on constitutional recognition, and then Labor leader Kevin Rudd gave bipartisan support.

On 8 November 2010 Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced plans for a referendum on the issue.^[26] At this time, the Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australians was formed to determine how best to do this. In January 2012, the panel released their final report, which did not recommend the establishment of a new representative body.^[27]

The Abbott Government committed itself to pursuing recognition of Indigenous people in the Constitution.^[28] In November 2012, the all-party Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples was announced, and first met in 2014. It was chaired by Liberal MP Ken Wyatt. It's "Final Report" of June 2015 noted Noel Person's and others' requests for stronger forms of Indigenous representation, however did not recommend that a new body for this purpose be created.^[29]^[30]

Abbott said he hoped the wording for a referendum could be concluded in 2016, for a referendum vote in 2017.^[31] The referendum was not implemented by the successor Turnbull Government, and debate shifted towards formation of a constitutionally recognised advisory body.

A constitutional voice to Parliament

An Indigenous Voice

On 7 December 2015 a 16-member Referendum Council was appointed by Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and the ALP's Bill Shorten.^[32] In October 2016, the Council released the "Discussion Paper on Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples" which included a call for "An Indigenous voice".^[33] The Council then met with over 1,200 people. This led to the First Nations National Constitutional Convention on 26 May 2017, whose delegates collectively composed the Uluru Statement from the Heart. This statement included the request, "We call for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution."^[34]

On 13 June 2017, the Referendum Council released their "Final Report". This included the recommendation "That a referendum be held to provide in the Australian Constitution for a representative body that gives Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander First Nations a Voice to the Commonwealth Parliament. One of the specific functions of such a body, to be set out in legislation outside the Constitution, should include the function of monitoring the use of the heads of power in section 51(xxvi) and section 122. The body will recognise the status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first peoples of Australia."^[35]

In response to this, the federal government established the Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in March 2018.^[36] It was tasked with reviewing the findings of the Uluru Statement delegates, Referendum Council and the two earlier constitutional recommendation bodies. The committee published it's "Final Report" in November 2018, including four recommendations. The first of which was: "In order to achieve a design for The Voice that best suits the needs and aspirations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, the Committee recommends that the Australian government initiate a process of co-design with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples".^[37]

The Select Committee stated in the report that the delegates at the 2017 Convention "understood that the primary purpose of The Voice was to ensure that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices were heard whenever the Commonwealth Parliament exercised its powers to make laws under section 51(xxvi) and section 122 of the Constitution."^[38] That is, laws made specifically regarding Australian Indigenous people; or for the Northern Territory, which has a high proportion of Indigenous people.

Co-design of the Voice

Ken Wyatt

On 30 October 2019, Ken Wyatt AM, Minister for Indigenous Australians in the Morrison government, announced the commencement of a "co-design process" aimed at providing an Indigenous voice to government. The Senior Advisory Group (SAG) was co-chaired by Professor Tom Calma AO, chancellor of the University of Canberra, and Professor Dr Marcia Langton, associate provost at the University of Melbourne, and was to comprise a total of 20 leaders and experts from across the country.^[39] There was some scepticism about the process from the beginning, with the criticism that it did not honour the Uluru Statement from the Heart's plea to "walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future".^[40] According to Michelle Grattan, "...it is notable that it is calling it a 'voice to government' rather than a 'voice to parliament' ". Prime Minister Scott Morrison rejected the proposal in the Uluru Statement for a voice to parliament to be put into the Australian Constitution; instead, the voice will be enshrined in legislation. The government also said it would run a referendum during its present term about recognising Indigenous people in the Constitution "should a consensus be reached and should it be likely to succeed".^[41]

The models for the voice were planned to be developed in two stages:^[41]

First, two groups, one local and regional and the other a national group, will create models aimed at improving local and regional decision-making, and identifying how best federal government can record Indigenous peoples' views and ideas. The groups consist mainly of Indigenous members.
Consultations will be held with Indigenous leaders, communities and stakeholders to refine the models developed in the first stage.

Wyatt said that he doesn't mind what models are used, and they may vary across the country. His prime targets are suicide prevention and Closing the Gap. A meeting with Prime Minister Scott Morrison, senior ministers and peak Aboriginal community representatives had agreed on "priority reforms", which included greater Aboriginal involvement in decision-making and service delivery at all levels, and a commitment to ensuring that "all mainstream government agencies and institutions undertake systemic and structural transformation to contribute to closing the gap". Wyatt said that he would need to manage expectations on all sides as he seeks to build a consensus on the matter.^[42]

Three groups

The original other members of the Senior Advisory Group (SAG) (besides Langton and Calma) included, among others, Frank Brennan, Josephine Cashman, Mick Gooda, Chris Kenny, Vonda Malone, June Oscar, Noel Pearson, Pat Turner, and Galarrwuy Yunupingu.^[43]^[44] The first meeting of the group was held in Canberra on 13 November 2019.^[45] It was planned that the SAG would propose models for the voice by June 2020.^[42] Cashman was dismissed from the SAG on 28 January 2020 after her involvement with commentator Andrew Bolt in denouncing the Aboriginal identity of author Bruce Pascoe.^[46]^[47]^[48]

The National Co-design Group was announced on 15 January 2020, to be co-chaired by Donna Odegaard AM and Ray Griggs AO, CSC. The other 15 members include Fred Chaney AO, Joseph Elu AO, Jeff Kennett AC, Fiona McLeod AO, SC, and Gracelyn Smallwood AM.^[49]

On 4 March 2020 the third tier, the Local and Regional Co-Design Group, was announced, to be co-chaired by Peter Buckskin and National Indigenous Australians Agency senior official Letitia Hope. Members included Dr Getano Lui (Jnr), Albert McNamara, Aden Ridgeway and Marion Scrymgour.^[50]^[51] The group met for the first time in Sydney on 19 March 2020.^[52]

2021 SAG reports

An interim report by the Senior Advisory Group led by Langton and Calma was delivered to the government in November 2020,^[53] and officially published on 9 January 2021. It included proposals that the government would be obliged to consult the Voice whenever it was going to create new legislation relating to race, native title or racial discrimination, where it would affect Indigenous Australians. However, the Voice would not be able to veto the enactment of such laws, or change government policies. The Voice would comprise either 16 or 18 members, who would either be elected either directly or come from the regional and local voice bodies.^[54] On the same day, Wyatt announced a second stage of co-design meetings lasting four months, involving more consultation with Indigenous people.^[55]

Calma reported in March 2021 that about 25 to 35 regional groups would be created, with a mechanism for individuals to pass ideas up the chain from local to regional.^[56]

In July 2021 the Indigenous Voice Co-design Process panel released its final report.^[57]^[58] It proposed that the Voice would "have a responsibility and right to advise the Australian Parliament and Government on national matters of significance to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples".^[59] It provided detailed proposals on how both a "National Voice" and "Local & Regional Voices" would operate. The report did not cover changing the Constitution (and therefore requiring a referendum), as this was outside its terms of reference.^[60] In November it was announced that the report would be considered in parliament as soon as possible; however, sitting time was very limited before the summer break.^[61]

Anthony Albanese

In the 2022 Australian federal election in May, a Labor government was elected, with Anthony Albanese to serve as prime minister of Australia. In his victory speech, Albanese said that a referendum to decide the Indigenous Voice to Parliament would be held within his term of office. Incoming Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney would be overseeing the process, and she has said that there would need to be a far-reaching public education campaign to explain the voice to the Australian public before a referendum could be held. At that time (May 2022), it was still not clear exactly what a voice to parliament would look like; there were still differing views within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities about the proposal; and questions about whether an advisory body without the power of veto over parliament was ambitious enough.^[62]

At the Garma Festival of Traditional Cultures in July, Albanese spoke in more detail of the government's plans for a voice to parliament. He proposed to add the following three lines to the Constitution:

There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to Parliament and the Executive Government on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to the composition, functions, powers and procedures of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.^[63]^[64]^[65]

The wording of the second line contrasts with the wider advice function scope in Langton's and Calma's report.^[66]

He also proposed that the actioning referendum ask the following question:

Do you support an alteration to the Constitution that establishes an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice?^[63]

It has been pointed out that the relevant Referendum (Machinery Provision) Act^[67] requires a more detailed ballot wording and does not allow Albanese's simple phrasing.^[68]

Referendum preparation

The first meetings of the Referendum Working Group (RWG) and the Referendum Engagement Group (REG) were held in Canberra on 29 September 2022. The RWG, co-chaired by minister Linda Burney and special envoy Patrick Dodson, includes a broad cross-section of representatives from First Nations communities across Australia. They will provide advice to the Government on how best to ensure a successful Referendum and focus on the key questions that need to be considered in the coming months, including:^[69]

The timing to conduct a successful referendum
Refining the proposed constitutional amendment and question
The information on the Voice necessary for a successful referendum

The RWG includes Ken Wyatt, Tom Calma, Marcia Langton, Megan Davis, Jackie Huggins, Noel Pearson, Pat Turner, Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner June Oscar, and a number of other respected leaders and community members. The REG includes those on the RWG as well as other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representatives from across the country, including land councils, local governments and community-controlled organisations. Mick Gooda, Kado Muir, and Hannah McGlade are included in this larger group. They will provide advice about building community understanding, awareness and support for the referendum.^[69]

On 28 December 2022 at the Woodford Folk Festival, Prime Minister Albanese announced that the referendum would be held within a year.^[70]^[71]

From the Heart campaign

"From the Heart" is a campaign of the Cape York Institute designed to increase awareness and understanding of the Uluru Statement from the Heart and a constitutionally-enshrined voice to parliament, and to show that it is a fair and practical reform.^[72] Torres Strait Islander man Thomas Mayor, advocate for the Uluru Statement and the Voice, delivered the 2022 Vincent Lingiari Memorial Lecture on the topic. He drew parallels between Vincent Lingiari's struggle to be heard by governments back then, leading to the Wave Hill walk-off (Gurdindji strike), to what Indigenous peoples of Australia are experiencing today.^[73]

In April 2022, From the Heart suggested two dates for a referendum to decide whether to enshrine a voice to parliament in the Constitution: 27 May 2023 or 27 January 2024.^[74]

A new education campaign led by Roy Ah-See, called "History is Calling", was launched in early May 2022, to encourage Australians to answer the Uluru Dialogue's 2017 invitation, and to support the constitutionally-enshrined voice.^[74] In September 2022, From the Heart released a video ad to promote a yes vote for the Voice in a referendum, as part of the "History is Calling" campaign.^[75]

Opposition to the Voice proposal

Opposition to the proposal has been voiced from within both non-indigenous and indigenous communities, and from within both conservative and progressivist circles.

Voice No Case Committee

The Voice No Case Committee’s “Recognise a Better Way” campaign was launched in January 2023, and argues that the Voice is “the wrong way to recognise Aboriginal people or help Aboriginal Australians in need”. The committee includes four Indigenous members and two former ministers, including former Howard Government Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson and former Keating Government minister turned hard-right activist Gary Johns. The Indigenous members of the committee are Northern Territory Country Liberal party senator Jacinta Price; former president of the ALP-turned Liberal candidate Warren Mundine, founder of the Northern Territory Kings Cross Station Ian Conway, and Bob Liddle, owner of Kemara enterprises. The committee views the idea of the Voice being added to the Constitution as "racially discriminatory" and instead proposes a three-point plan to recognise Aboriginal prior occupation in a preamble to the constitution, establish a parliamentary committee for native title holders, and support Aboriginal community-controlled organisations.^[76]^[77]

Juridicial concerns

Former High Court judge Ian Callinan has written that the Voice will operate "in substance a kind of a separate parliament" and "will give rise to many arguments and division, legal and otherwise", and has criticised the Albanese Government's "Orwellian" intent not to fund both sides of the public debate ahead of the referendum, but instead to fund a "public education program" to support its proposal. Callinan has called for clarification of the intended franchise and financial and judicial oversight methods. He predicts that the body will become party political, and that he foresees "a decade or more of constitutional and administrative law litigation arising out of a voice whether constitutionally entrenched or not [...] I can imagine any number of people and legal personalities in addition to the states who might plausibly argue that they have standing. Standing is a highly contestable matter. "^[78]

The Coalition

While the Opposition Leader Peter Dutton's Liberal Party is yet to declare a position (pending further detail from the Albanese Government on the nature of the proposal) their junior Coalition partner the Nationals have declared themselves against the proposal. Nationals leader David Littleproud announced on 28 November 2022 that "as the men and women who represent regional, rural and Indigenous and remote Australians ... we don't believe this will genuinely close the gap...", saying the party instead believed in "empowering local Indigenous communities... to give those communities the opportunities that those in metropolitan Australia enjoy every day". In supporting her leader's announcement, Aboriginal Senator for the Northern Territory Jacinta Price said that "What we need now is practical measures and we have to stop dividing our nation along the lines of race."^[79] Dutton's queries on the nature of the voice have been characterised as both ensuring Australians have enough information on the proposal, but also trying to split the Yes vote along the lines of different models for a voice, as John Howard did with the 1999 Australian republic referendum.^[80]

Senator Price, along with former Liberal Senate candidate Warren Mundine have been among the leading Aboriginal voices against the Uluru Statement and Albanese Government Voice proposal, arguing that it does not represent indigenous consensus, and that it will only create a new layer of bureaucratic management and interference by elites over the lives of indigenous people and communities, while overturning the principle of equal rights for all races under Australian law. In a 2022 book entitled Beyond Belief… Rethinking the Voice to Parliament, Senator Price wrote: "The globally unprecedented Voice proposal will divide Australia along racial lines... It will constitutionally enshrine the idea that Aboriginal people are perpetual victims - forever in need of special measures." Mundine wrote for the same publication: "The Voice sounds to me like more bureaucracy controlling Indigenous lives and bossing us around."^[81]

Former National Party leader Barnaby Joyce told Sky News Australia that the Voice to Parliament would do "real harm by dividing" the Australian population by race; that it would give unequal representation for "one group of people" due only to race, thus creating a divide in the population.^[82]

Whilst the constitutionally conservative John Howard and Tony Abbott Liberal-National Governments actively supported inserting recognition of indigenous Australians into the Constitution, both leaders have rejected the idea of creating a Constitutionally enshrined "Voice" to Parliament. Whilst in office, their successor Turnbull and Morrison Coalition governments also rejected the Voice proposal. In 2017, Turnbull declared in a joint statement with Attorney General George Brandis and Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion that it "would inevitably become seen as a third chamber of parliament" and that "the Referendum Council provided no guidance as to how this new representative assembly would be elected or how the diversity of Indigenous circumstance and experience could be fairly or democratically represented,” the statement said. Moreover, the government does not believe such a radical change to our constitution's representative institutions has any realistic prospect of being supported by a majority of Australians in a majority of states.^[1] (Turnbull reversed his opposition to the proposal following the election of the Albanese Government).

In November 2022, John Howard told The Australian newspaper that "people saw the 1967 referendum as a demonstration of our good faith. But people see the voice as creating potential divisions."^[83] Tony Abbott wrote for the same publication that he objected to the Voice proposal because it was "race based", would "vastly complicate" the difficulties of getting legislation passed and anything done; was a "vague-yet-portentous concept" that would invite High Court review and delay; and that ultimately, the cause of Reconciliation would be set back if the referendum fails, and that this was likely given the lack of bipartisan support as indicated by "new Coalition senator for the Northern Territory, the proud “Celtic-Warlpiri Australian” woman Jacinta Price, [expressing] deep scepticism about a proposal with so much of the detail thus far omitted, with so much potential for ineffective posturing, and that defines people by racial heritage."^[84]

The National Party of Australia opposes the Voice as party policy.^[85] The decision led to Andrew Gee leaving the party to sit as an independent.^[86]

Minor Parties and other opponents

Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe, formerly representing the Australian Greens party, has described the Voice to Parliament referendum as a "waste of money", and said that it would be better to divert the funds into Indigenous communities, but Greens Leader Adam Bandt has dismissed her concerns and supports the Voice.^[87] Thorpe has also said that a "treaty" with indigenous Australians should come first – not the Voice,^[88] and in January 2023 left the Greens party over differences with the rest of the party. ^[89] She has also expressed concerns that the Voice model will impact on Indigenous sovereignty.^[90] The conveners of the Greens’ First Nations advisory group ‘First Nations Network’ Dr Tjanara Goreng Goreng and Dominic Wy Kanak, also oppose the voice.^[91]

Pauline Hanson's One Nation opposes the Voice as party policy.^[92]

The conservative lobby group Advance Australia opposes the Voice.^[93]

Conservative academics Keith Windschuttle and David Flint oppose the Voice.^[94] Flint dedicated an episode of his TV series "Save the Nation" to the topic in 2022.^[94]

Professor Gary Foley, who co-founded the Aboriginal Tent Embassy opposes the voice.^[95]

Public opinion

National

Research commissioned by From the Heart and conducted by the C|T Group in June 2020 shows that a majority of Australians support a constitutionally-enshrined voice to parliament, and that this support has increased 7 percent in three months, from 49 percent in March to 56 percent in June 2020. There were 2000 participants in the survey, who were asked, "If a referendum were held today, how would you vote on the proposal to change the Constitution to set up a new body comprising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that gives advice to federal parliament on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues?". Only 17 percent said they would vote no, down 3 percent since March 2020.^[96]^[97]

The ABC's Vote Compass survey has included questions about a voice to parliament in both its 2019 and 2022 editions. In 2019, 64% of voters agreed with the establishment of a voice while 22% disagreed. Of these, 37% strongly agreed, 27% somewhat agreed, 13% were neutral, 10% somewhat disagreed, and 12% strongly disagreed. The 2022 edition of Vote Compass found that support had grown to 73% while opposition declined to 16%: 48% strongly agreed, 25% somewhat agreed, 10% were neutral, 7% somewhat disagreed, and 9% strongly disagreed.^[98]

Graphical summary (2017–present)

Public opinion polls on establishing an Indigenous Voice to Parliament
Date	Firm	Sample	Support	Oppose	Undecided
1-6 February 2023	Essential	>1000	65%	35%	—
1-2 February 2023	Newspoll	1512	56%	37%	7%
24 January 2023	Resolve Strategic^[99]	3618	60%	40%	—
21 January 2023	YouGov ^[100]		46%	30%	24%
13 December 2022	Essential^[101]	1075	63%	37%	—
9-12 December 2022	Roy Morgan^[102]	1499	53%	30%	17%
9-11 December 2022	Freshwater Strategy^[103]	1209	50%	26%	24%
September 2022	Resolve Strategic^[104]	3618	64%	36%	—
August 2022	JWS Research^[105]	1000	47%	24%	29%^[a]
August 2022	Essential^[106]	1075	65%	35%	—
July 2022	Australia Institute^[107]	1000	65%	14%	21%
June 2022	Australia Institute^[107]	1000	58%	16%	26%
July 2021	Essential^[108]	1099	66%	19%	15%
July 2020	CT Group^[109]	2000	56%	17%	27%
February 2020	CT Group^[110]	2000	49%	20%	31%
July 2019	Essential^[111]	1097	70%	18%	12%
June 2019	Essential^[112]	1079	66%	21%	13%
February 2018	Essential^[113]	1028	68%	21%	11%
November 2017	Essential^[114]	1025	45%	16%	39%^[b]
June 2017	Essential^[115]	1013	44%	14%	42%^[c]

Notes

^ Includes 23 per cent of neutral responses on top of 6 per cent of undecided responses.
^ Includes 28 per cent of neutral responses on top of 11 per cent of undecided responses.
^ Includes 27 per cent of neutral responses on top of 14 per cent of undecided responses.