Indigenous Minister Rules Out Debate on Changing Australia’s Constitution

Minister for Indigenous Australian Linda Burney makes a statement at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on Feb. 13, 2023. (Martin Ollman/Getty Images)

Australia’s Indigenous Minister Linda Burney has ruled out an offer to debate her opposition counterpart Jacinta Nampijinpa Price surrounding Labor’s proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

Burney claimed such a debate would be a fruitless attempt by the Liberal-National Coalition to spur uncertainty and division around the upcoming referendum.

“This is about Australians, not politicians. It’s always been about politics for the Liberals and Nationals. That’s why they want a Canberra debate,” she told reporters at The CityTalk conference at Sydney’s Town Hall on July 19.

“We want an honest and open conversation with Australia about a better future. They want typical political conflict and obstruction.”

Shadow Indigenous Minister Price issued her debate challenge a day earlier on 2GB radio, saying Albanese’s Labor government was ignorant towards the pressing issues facing Indigenous Australians.

“There’s been a proposal sitting on Minister Burney’s desk to build accommodation for students and staff at the Yipirinya school, our most marginalised children in that community and she has completely ignored it. Is she waiting for a Voice committee to come along and tell her to get the government to invest in this?” she said.

“As the Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians, I would expect that certainly the Minister for Indigenous Australians might take the opportunity to debate me on this very issue. I’d be very happy to do that.”

Ms. Price also criticised Prime Minister Albanese’s claim that The Voice will ensure taxpayer funds directed at Indigenous issues are more accurately spent.

“You can say whatever you want but there’s no description as to how this will occur. It doesn’t outline whether some services will be done away with. It doesn’t outline whether organisations like the [National Indigenous Australians Agency], which effectively already act as a Voice, will be reduced,” she said.

“If I were the minister ... I would conduct a forensic audit of the over $30 billion that is spent on the advancement of Indigenous Australians every year to determine where it’s being used effectively and where it isn’t.”

In late 2020, a Productivity Commission report recommended large-scale reforms of such programs.

The Commission held consultations with Indigenous communities and organisations across the nation, with a majority of the 180 submissions put forward saying there was no real monitoring of these taxpayer-backed programs.

Warnings from Canada

Meanwhile senior fellow at the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, Tom Flanagan, has warned Australians against adopting The Voice, pointing to outcomes of Canada’s Assembly of First Nations, a body based on a model similar established in 1982 to represent the nation’s largest Indian minorities.

“Like all lobby groups it will become an insatiable source of demand for money, changes in legislation, and pursue all these things with a single-minded intensity,” he wrote in The Australian newspaper.

Mr. Flanagan is also adamant such a body will supercharge public spending on Indigenous affairs.

“If better-funded government programs were the answer to Indigenous poverty, we would have seen results by now,” he said.

Between 1981 and 2016, Ottawa multiplied total federal spending on Indigenous programming by more than four times, yet the gap between First Nations and other Canadian communities in the average Community Well-Being Index, which measures the well-being of individual Canadian communities, barely budged.”

Yet advocates remain confident the body will guarantee more effective use of taxpayer dollars.

Support for The Voice Falling

Prime Minister Albanese insists the underlying cause of decades of wasteful spending on Aboriginal affairs is the lack of input from Indigenous communities.

“If the money is spent better and more efficiently and in a way that gives people that ownership over the way that programs are run by being listened to. The Voice won’t run any programs itself, it won’t be a funding body,” Albanese said.

Despite a clear disparity in spending from both respective campaigns, it currently isn’t looking promising for the well-backed “Yes” vote.

According to the latest Newspoll on July 17, support for The Voice has seen a stark decline.

It found 41 percent of voters plan to vote Yes, a five percent drop from just six weeks ago. The figures also come as cost of living issues take precedence over changing the Constitution.

Although no clear date has been set, the referendum must legally take place at least two months from when the bill was passed and no more than six months after. Australians can thus expect to vote between August and December.