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Draft changes to ALP platform point to treaty move this term
By Paul Sakkal, Angus Thompson and James Massola
A Labor government would pursue a treaty with Indigenous Australians under draft changes to the party’s election platform, which will escalate the debate about the consequences of a successful Voice referendum.
The Coalition portrayed the referendum as the start of an ambitious treaty agenda, as Opposition Leader Peter Dutton used federal parliament’s question time on Tuesday to grill Labor on whether the Voice was the trigger for a treaty that could include reparations, and suggested Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was giving contradictory signals over his support for the process.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during question time on Tuesday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Both sides of the Voice debate sharpened their attack lines in parliament on Tuesday, as Albanese raised the stakes of the Yes campaign by saying Australia’s most vulnerable people needed it to succeed, while the opposition linked contentious Aboriginal cultural heritage laws in Western Australia to the effects of the Voice.
Strengthened wording in the unpublished draft of Labor’s national platform, which guides Labor’s election agenda, states: “Labor will take steps to implement all three elements of the Uluru Statement from the Heart in this term of government.”
Labor sources said the wording, developed through consultation with senior party figures including ministerial officers, was ambiguous on timing. If ratified at the party conference, the platform could endorse any moves by the Albanese government to start a treaty process before the next election, although it does not compel it to do so.
The Uluru Statement was a landmark document issued in 2017 that called on the Commonwealth to create a Voice advisory body and a Makarrata Commission to oversee a truth-telling and treaty process with Indigenous Australians to educate the public about the effect of colonisation on Aboriginal people.
Albanese challenged the opposition in question time to change the wording of the referendum question if it believed it was wrong. “You are incapable of doing so. The No campaign continues to raise things that are not a part of the question that is before the Australian people,” he said.
However, Dutton said the questions surrounding a treaty go to the prime minister’s credibility and pointed out Albanese had said repeatedly in a radio interview two weeks ago that the Voice “isn’t about a treaty”, despite committing on election night to implement the Uluru Statement in full.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney evaded questions about the purpose of the Voice and Labor’s intentions on a treaty and was asked by Speaker Milton Dick to give a direct answer. Burney made clear the upcoming referendum was solely about a Voice and constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians.
Deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley, who asked Burney about the Makarrata Commission, said after question time that Burney’s performance “made me question if she is up to the task of being a minister and I know it is not just me who is thinking that”.
Shadow ministers such as Nationals leader David Littleproud and Liberal senator Michaelia Cash also pointed to new West Australian Aboriginal cultural heritage laws as a possible precursor to broader national changes that could infringe on property owners’ rights, echoing the debate around native title in the 1990s.
Under the Native Title Act, Aboriginal people can claim only vacant government-owned land and only if they prove a continuous relationship with the land.
The new West Australian laws require landowners with properties larger than 1100 square metres to apply for permits or create management plans for work on their land that may impact an Aboriginal cultural heritage site, and have generated confusion over compliance.
Littleproud told the Coalition party room that under the state laws, owners of residential blocks won’t be able to “dig 50 centimetres deep without obtaining a permit”, while Cash told the Senate that the angst triggered by the laws “will likely be repeated on a national scale”.
Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong accused Cash of fearmongering over the Voice.
“I make the point that [Cash] is amongst those who wish to conflate those issues in her opposition to the Voice, and anyone who’s been to Western Australia or talked to Western Australians will know that that is a political tactic because you oppose the Voice,” Wong said.
Victorian Labor senator Jana Stewart, a Mutthi Mutthi and Wamba Wamba woman, said criticism of the WA laws was just a scare campaign against the Voice. “That is all that this is. That is the only reason you would bring it to this place,” she said.
West Australian Liberal MP Andrew Hastie said the WA cultural laws were killing support for the Voice in the west, as published polls show the state is likely to vote no.
“The question is, will the Voice people be able to do this and more? That question is unanswered, so people’s instinct is to vote no. It’s as simple as that,” he said.
Ahead of his attendance at this weekend’s Garma festival in northeast Arnhem Land, Albanese escalated his language around the necessity for a Yes vote in bridging the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in a speech to the Labor caucus.
“Some of our most vulnerable Australians need this to succeed,” Albanese told a Labor caucus meeting.
With Sarah Brookes
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