Subjects: Indigenous Voice to Parliament; the Liberal Party’s position.
E&OE
SABRA LANE:
Peter Dutton, no Referendum has succeeded in the past without bipartisan support. Have you wrecked the chances of this one succeeding?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Sabra, there are plenty of examples too where both parties have supported a Referendum, but it’s been voted down because people don’t understand what it is they’re voting for, or they do understand what they’re voting for and they don’t believe it’s in our country’s best interests. The proposal by the Prime Minister for a Canberra voice is going to change our system of government dramatically and it deserves an explanation by the Prime Minister. We’ve had a confused account of what it is about, what it’s not about, particularly during Question Time, and I think the Prime Minister owes it to the Australian people to explain how this is going to impact on day-to-day government decision making, and also whether it’s actually going to deliver a practical outcome for Indigenous Australians.
SABRA LANE:
Are you happy to be blamed for this? You boycotted the National Apology to the Stolen Generations and 15 years later you admitted that was a mistake. What happens if you’ve made another mistake and you end up on the wrong side of history again with the Referendum?
PETER DUTTON:
Sabra, we are in favour of constitutional recognition, we’ve made that very clear and we’re happy to sit down with the Prime Minister to work that through today. We’re very much in favour of practical outcomes providing support for those young girls and boys and women who are suffering domestic violence rates at completely and utterly appalling rates. We’re happy to provide support practically for those outcomes and that is absolutely the right side of history. I’d say to the Prime Minister though, Australians will want more detail and if there’s a hesitation about the model, it’s because the government’s refusing to provide the detail.
We believe in a local and regional advisory body so that you can get the maternity services on the ground, the law and order support, the education, the health, the housing outcomes.
The Voice has turned into – as Megan Davis has pointed out – an opportunity for there to be input into RBA decisions, into every aspect of government work, and I don’t believe that that is going to deliver the practical outcomes to Indigenous Australians that we all crave.
SABRA LANE:
Two points here; the Prime Minister said yesterday he sat down with you seven times in these various meetings and you haven’t offered up one word of suggested change and also the local and regional voices policy that you’re suggesting was Coalition policy at the last federal election. You lost. There’s no mandate for it.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, a couple of points. I mean firstly, the Prime Minister misrepresents those meetings and frankly, I thought it was appalling yesterday that he made mention of the fact that Julian Leeser wasn’t at the meetings. Julian wasn’t invited to the meetings. The Prime Minister, as a courtesy, on a number of occasions, essentially asked me to come around to his office to let me know minutes before he was about to make a press announcement, or that he was about to do a stand up with different people, and just as a courtesy to let me know what the government was about to announce. So, I wouldn’t frame it as a genuine engagement.
Right from the start the Prime Minister has been very clear, even against the advice of the Solicitor-General and the Attorney-General, that he’s taken the view that he’ll adopt the advice 100 per cent provided by the Referendum Working Group and I just don’t think that’s going to be a practical outcome. I think he’s on a path to dividing the country. The Liberal Party’s put forward a proposal which will unite the country and it will deliver practical outcomes to Australians and it won’t disrupt our system of government and I think that’s a very important contrast.
SABRA LANE:
In explaining the decision, you’ve described it as you did earlier in the interview as a ‘Canberra voice’. Pat Anderson, who headed up the Uluru Dialogue, says your decision ‘airbrushes out a 12 year-long grassroots process, 10 reports and months of work by three referendum working groups on the wording’.
So, isn’t that misleading to characterise it as a ‘Canberra voice’?
PETER DUTTON:
Absolutely not, and it’s the way in which many Indigenous leaders in communities that we’ve visited in Laverton in WA, in Leonora in WA, we’ve been to Alice Springs, to Darwin, we’ve been to East Arnhem Land, we’ve been to Palm Island. Many Indigenous leaders we’ve spoken to describe it as exactly that, that it will be a group of academics and it won’t represent their views on the ground and if it’s enshrined in the Constitution, we can’t out-legislate the Constitution and we need to get it right in the first instance, which is why it’s remarkable the Prime Minister refuses to answer even the most basic of questions.
SABRA LANE:
Tasmanian Liberal Premier Jeremy Rockliff says he will ‘vigorously’ campaign for a yes vote. The Liberal leaders in Queensland and Tasmania have an open mind. Newspoll yesterday showed a majority of people in a majority of states backed this, although the support’s softened. Could you be out of step with the community on this?
PETER DUTTON:
I’ve made a deliberate decision to approach this with an open mind, Sabra. I’ve listened carefully to the debate. I’ve engaged constructively and genuinely with people right across the country for months now, and it’s solidified in my mind that firstly, the Prime Minister is not going to provide the detail because he sees political advantage in not doing it – which I think is outrageous – but that’s a decision he’s made. I think that makes it harder for people to understand if they have a hesitation, the voting shows, and frankly, the numbers are pretty soft at the moment, both ways, but I think people have a hesitation and the Prime Minister is not willing to answer that.
Now, the Queensland Premier yesterday pointed out exactly this point, that the Prime Minister needs to provide more detail and she’s going to advocate that to him, and I hope that he heeds at least her advice, if he’s not going to heed mine, because there is a huge hesitancy and if you put something into our Constitution, it needs to be done on a basis that it’s not going to give rise to years and years of litigation, and the legal advice at the moment is at best ambiguous, but likely that it will result in many years of litigation, which again, is not going to be in our country’s best interests.
SABRA LANE:
Peter Dutton, that’s all we’ve got time for. Thanks for your company on AM this morning.
PETER DUTTON:
My pleasure. Thanks Sabra.
[ends]