Deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley and leader Peter Dutton announce the party’s stance on the Voice referendum.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
Five MPs – Broadbent,Archer,Colbeck,Jenny Ware,and Andrew Bragg – spoke in favour of backing the referendum.
Moderate shadow cabinet ministers Simon Birmingham,Paul Fletcher and Marise Payne did not speak in the party room meeting. They met in a smaller meeting of shadow ministers before the party room meeting,which ran over time and settled the Coalition position that was then put to the full group of MPs.
According to observers in the room,Broadbent said he was still open-minded about the government’s proposal,while Victorian MP Aaron Violi said he was yet to form a position.
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Dutton assured MPs that the party’s position would not be perceived as uncaring towards Indigenous people because the opposition was proposing its own form of Indigenous recognition.
One of the party’s strongest supporters of the Voice,Andrew Bragg,said he would consider the effectiveness of the opposition’s package. He said Labor’s handling of the referendum process had been “poor”.
“But that is not a good enough reason to oppose the referendum in my opinion,” he said.
Colbeck,Broadbent and Archer were contacted for comment about their contribution to the party room meeting.
Ware,who spoke in favour of a free vote during the meeting,said the opposition had put forward a credible alternative to the government’s “problematic” proposal but that she had not yet landed on a position.
“As the representative of the Hughes electorate,I intend to consult widely within my electorate before I finalise my position and vote when we return to parliament,” she said in a statement.
Dutton,who framed Albanese as an arrogant prime minister with no ability to compromise,said he was concerned the government’s intention for the Voice to advise ministers and bureaucrats would open the door to High Court challenges.
“It’s absolutely incumbent on the prime minister to either pull the vote or delay,” he said. “[The Voice] going down – that is not in the best interest of our country.”
Opposition Indigenous affairs spokesman Julian Leeser told the National Press Club on Monday that the second clause of the proposed constitutional amendment was the “lead in the saddlebag” and that the referendum would have a greater chance of success without it.
He saidthis clause,which says the Voice “may make representations to the parliament and the executive government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples”,was too broad and open to activist judges to expand its meaning.
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