On Monday, the opposition leader declined to recommit to the notion of a second referendum and warned that Australians won’t want a referendum “for some time.”
After the voice poll, Peter Dutton has announced that Australians are “over” referendums and has radically retracted his pledge to include symbolic recognition of Indigenous Australians in the constitution.
This was in response to the widespread criticism that he had received for his initial proposal of a second vote.
Kerrynne Liddle and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, senators for the Coalition and respectively the shadow minister for Indigenous Australians and the main no campaigner, will be responsible for holding a review of policy.
Labor is facing calls for an accelerated rollout of the remaining elements of the Uluru statement from the heart, including truth telling and treaty making, as well as an emphasis on practical solutions to close the gap in Indigenous outcomes. In the meantime, the opposition is attempting to maximize the political damage by pointing the finger of blame at the prime minister, Anthony Albanese.
The federal cabinet will meet to discuss the Albanese government’s next moves to address Indigenous disadvantage, with key government officials favoring an interim listening mechanism to deliver recommendations directly to the prime minister. The meeting will take place on Wednesday.
Dutton stated that “We said that the question put to the Australian people should have been on recognition and dropped the voice because people supported recognition but not the voice.” The voice was dropped because people supported recognition. That action was not taken by the Prime Minister.
Dutton told reporters in Canberra that the Prime Minister had started down a path that would divide the country. “He blew through $400 million of the public’s money. He was cautioned not to proceed down this route of division, and he is the one who carries the responsibility for where our country is at today.
When asked about his position on holding a second referendum to include recognition of Indigenous Australians in the constitution, Dutton responded by saying, “look, all of our policy… is going to be reviewed in the process Kerrynne and Jacinta will lead now.”
“I think that’s important, but I think it’s clear that the Australian public has probably had enough of the referendum process for some time,” the author says. “I think that’s important.”
Dutton is quoted as saying that “millions of Australians are hurting at the moment because the prime minister has been completely obsessed with the voice over the course of the last 16 or 17 months.”
Richard Marles, who serves as the country’s deputy prime minister, stated that “the referendum was not a vote against reconciliation, and the referendum was not a vote against closing the gap.”
“We can take from the referendum an increased resolve to act on closing the gap and to act on reconciliation,” Marles told reporters in Canberra. “If you look at the way in which both the yes and no cases were argued, we can take from the referendum an increased resolve to act on closing the gap and to act on reconciliation.”
“And that is really what we need to take forward at this time, and we need to do so with a sense of unity across the country.”
In spite of the fact that more than sixty percent of Australians voted against the voice, those who opposed it did so for a variety of reasons. For example, one opponent, shadow minister for Indigenous Australians Price, argued that there were no ongoing negative impacts from colonization, and another opponent, independent senator Lidia Thorpe, argued that a no vote would advance black sovereignty.
These discrepancies continued on Monday in a train-wreck interview given by top “no” advocate Warren Mundine. Mundine, who has created worry among conservatives by pushing for treaties with Australia’s First Nations, continued to contradict himself throughout the interview.
When asked about his stance on treaties, Mundine told Radio National that Indigenous Australians were already recognized “through land rights and through native title.” This was in response to the question of what his attitude was on treaties.
In spite of the fact that the acknowledgement of the sovereignty of First Nations is an essential component of treaties, he insisted that a treaty “has to be with the traditional owner nations and it has nothing to do with sovereignty.”
It appeared as though Mundine was conflating treaties with other agreements reached between groups of Indigenous people and “private enterprise, whether it’s governments or state and territories, in building roads, building rail, or building houses, or getting projects and mining and energy and agriculture or whatever else.”
According to Mundine, voters “did want to see Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders in constitution as the first people of Australia [but] they rejected the voice”.
According to Mundine, he would “love” symbolic constitutional recognition, and according to polling, it seems that the majority of Australians agree with him.
“But the problem we’ve got, and we all know this, is that that is the leadership of the Aboriginal community… they don’t want it and that, so that’s going to be a problem,” we said. “We all know this.”
When asked about the possibility of constitutional recognition taking place, Mundine responded, “Well, to be honest, I don’t know. What we need to do is something that the administration and Albanese failed to accomplish, and that is get everyone on board for things to happen. This is what we need to do.
Senator Jacqui Lambie, an influential member of the crossbench, criticized the Indigenous leaders behind the Uluru declaration for going silent for a week in order to “grieve” the outcome of the vote.
According to what Lambie said to media, “you need to come out and fight now.” “You need to come out and say to the leader of this country ‘what are you going to do for Indigenous communities out there?'”
“But having a week’s break – not on guys, you need to stand your ground now, you need to come out and say ‘you’ve put us on a bloody life support for two years while you’ve been trying to sell this voice, and in the meantime you’ve done nothing in the Indigenous communities out there,” she said. “But having a week’s break is not on guys.”
The Green Party has demanded that the government create a national truth and justice commission in its recent platform. “Talkfest” is how Lambie referred to the act of telling the truth.
