In a huge win for general decency, both state Liberal premiers have backed the Indigenous Voice to Parliament. Their decision comes after weeks of Peter Dutton throwing spanners in the works as we head towards a referendum.
In a meeting of the National Cabinet on Friday, all state and territory leaders indicated they would join PM Anthony Albanese in formally supporting The Voice.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet and Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff broke ranks with their national counterpart to be on the right side of history.
And yes, in case you were wondering, out of the eight states and territories in Australia the libs only hold power in two of them. Lol.
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While we shouldn’t over-celebrate the Liberal Party doing the bare minimum, we can agree that this is a step in the right direction and puts an enormous amount of pressure on Dutton.
Ever since the Albanese government declared it would be holding a referendum on The Voice, the opposition leader has taken every opportunity to derail its progress.
Even after a meeting with Albanese in January, Dutton went rogue and gave media outlets a statement indicating he’d not been given enough information.
“Your approach will ensure a dangerous and divisive debate grounded in hearsay and misinformation,” Dutton said per Sky News.
“I believe you are making a catastrophic mistake in not providing accessible, clear and complete information regarding your government’s version of The Voice.”
Albanese then hit back, slamming Dutton’s words as “cheap culture war stunts”.
So even though I talked with Peter Dutton on Friday at the @McGrathFdn event, he gives a letter to multiple media outlets as “exclusive” on constitutional recognition and the Uluṟu Statement- a letter I still haven’t seen.
People are over cheap culture war stunts.— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) January 7, 2023
Earlier this week, Senator Patrick Dodson who is chair of the joint standing committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs also slammed Dutton’s rhetoric.
“There are some out there who are pressing for more detail. They will never get enough,” the Yawuru elder said per the Sydney Morning Herald.
“Our political process is in the parliament, and that’s where the detail is always settled and proposed. So don’t get distracted by the call for more detail.”
If you’re keen to learn more about the timeline for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, you can check out our full explainer here.
If you’d like to check out the actual question Aussies will respond to when we head to the polls for the referendum, peep our article on that here.
