Listen, Peter Dutton just needs more detail on the Voice

This week, Indigenous Voice to Parliament advocate and key member of the referendum working group Thomas Mayo told Crikey that people who want “to confuse voters” on the issue are “not going to stop asking for details”, nor will they stop “asking questions that they already have the answers for”.

Is that fair? After all, The West Australian reported earlier this week that Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is still open to bipartisan support for the Voice… just as soon as more “details” are confirmed.

Let’s look back at Dutton’s struggle with finding out even a single detail about the proposed Voice.

August 2022

Making his first comments on the matter since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese outlined the potential referendum question to be put to Australians regarding an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, Dutton says the onus is on the Labor government to explain the details of the proposed constitutional changes.

December 2022

Dutton says there is mounting pressure on Albanese to “release even the most basic of detail”.

“I think there’s a lot of questions that people reasonably want answered, and if they’re answered satisfactorily, he may well win those people over. But so far, I think there’s a lot of sort of building bewilderment from people, including on the Yes case.”

January 2023

Dutton writes a letter to Albanese claiming that Albanese is treating the Australian people “like mugs” by “refusing to release more detail or answer reasonable questions”. The letter asks for detail on 15 areas of the mechanism, such as how much the body will cost taxpayers and how the government will define “Aboriginality” for the purposes of the body.

February 2023

Dutton meets with Uluru Statement from the Heart architects to discuss the Voice referendum. He still needs more details.

A shocking lack of information

One can’t help but sympathise with Dutton when you look at the sheer volume of places he can find no details. For example, he could find nothing in the 2017 final report of the referendum council on a proposed Voice to Parliament, there apparently being not a hint of detail in its 180 pages of what the Voice could potentially look like.

He certainly couldn’t have asked his colleague, then-Indigenous affairs minister Ken Wyatt, about the work he did with communities and the various models they looked at. And the report Wyatt brought to the cabinet, twice, detailing how the Voice might work? Absolutely no details there either, apparently.

The Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition final report in 2018, or the report Professor Marcia Langton and Professor Tom Calma submitted in July 2021? Both submitted to the Morrison government — of which Dutton was a senior member — apparently no details in either of those. Imagine Dutton’s disappointment at the Indigenous Law Centre‘s work on constitutional enshrinement of a First Nations voice. Or at the draft amendment the prime minister sketched out back in July last year.

The advocates for a Voice who met with Dutton must be kicking themselves — but they have another chance, with another meeting scheduled for February 17.