Indigenous senator Lidia Thorpe has strongly opposed the upcoming voice referendum, telling parliament the proposed body would be window dressing.
As the upper house continued debate on the Indigenous voice, the independent senator said the voice would not adequately address issues affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, instead urging the government to implement a treaty.
“The voice, they have promised, will give First Nations a say … but the truth is it is just constitutional recognition with a powerless advisory body as window dressing,” she told parliament on Thursday.
“The referendum has already given space to and elevated some of the most vile racism this country has ever seen, and that’s saying something.”
Debate on the final form of the Indigenous voice referendum and what the constitutional change should look like is set to run late into Thursday night, with parliament to vote early next week.
The public poll is slated to be held between October and December.
Senator Thorpe, who quit the Greens over the party’s stance on the voice, said she could not support the referendum that did not recognise Indigenous sovereignty.
“A step away from recognising sovereignty is not a step in the right direction,” she said.
“I cannot support a referendum that is merely intended to make colonisers in this country feel better about themselves.
“I cannot support a referendum that is already dividing and hurting our communities.
“Instead, I will continue to fight for real change to turn things around in this country.”
Senator Thorpe said the voice was a way for the government to “absolve colonial Australia of responsibility” toward Indigenous people
While recent opinion polls showed support for the ‘yes’ campaign dropping, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he was confident the referendum would succeed.
“There’s been a lot of misinformation put out there, and once the debate goes out of Canberra, I think you’ll see different outcomes,” he told ABC Radio Sydney.
“I’m confident that Australians when they get the opportunity to vote ‘yes’ for recognition of First Nations people, will do so in the last quarter of this year.”
Mr Albanese said the voice referendum would be an opportunity to unite the nation.
Independent senator David Pocock earlier said fearmongering about the voice had made the debate difficult for large groups of people.
“We have to acknowledge how tough this debate is for many people and would really like to call out some of the misinformation that we have seen thrown around – the fearmongering,” he told parliament.
“We have an opportunity to start to address the many issues that we talked about here and the many more issues that we wouldn’t even know about.”
By Andrew Brown in Canberra
