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Independent Victorian senator Lidia Thorpe will lead a radical left anti-Voice campaign and will vie with One Nation leader Pauline Hanson and the Coalition to have a hand in writing the No case in the official referendum pamphlet to be sent to Australian households.
As Thorpe declared her intention on Tuesday to campaign against the Voice under the banner of the black sovereignty movement, reversing her pledge from three weeks ago not to join a No campaign, the Opposition stepped up its attack on the proposal in question time.
Independent Victorian senator Lidia Thorpe with a group of anti-Voice Indigenous activists at Parliament House on Tuesday. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
The Coalition repeatedly challenged Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney to explain the Voice’s function and scope, including whether it would be able to make representations to the chief of the Defence Force on military acquisitions or the location or operation of military bases, which Burney dismissed as ridiculous.
“I can tell you what the Voice will not be giving advice on, it won’t be giving advice on parking tickets, it won’t be giving advice on changing Australia Day, it will not be giving advice on all of the ridiculous things that this side has come up with,” she said.
Underscoring the challenge faced by Voice advocates in building broad support for the referendum while countering attacks from both conservative and progressive circles, Thorpe assembled a group of anti-Voice Indigenous activists in Parliament House on Tuesday to make their case against the proposal.
“We are saying no to the referendum and no to the Voice. The Voice is in violation of our ancient protocols. It is not a self-determined body,” Thorpe said.
“The Voice is just a vehicle for unwanted constitutional recognition. We do not want to be part of the colonial Constitution and the attempt to rule over us and our land.”
The group of about 14 people identified themselves as representatives of a black sovereign movement. Several held up their fists in a black power salute as they denounced the proposed constitutional change as “the Voice of no choice”, described Indigenous MPs backing the referendum as “agents of the Crown”, and rejected the Uluru Dialogue consultation process that called for a constitutionally enshrined Voice.
Thorpe’s opposition to the Voice puts her in a strange alliance with Hanson, arguably her greatest foe in the Senate, in their shared bid to see the referendum defeated.
Hanson, who this week sought to justify actions taken in stolen generations while speaking against the Voice in the Senate, has described the proposal as a smokescreen to establish a separate Aboriginal state within Australia, while Thorpe has argued the body will be powerless.
Thorpe confirmed on Tuesday she “absolutely” wanted to be involved in writing the official No pamphlet, which could see her join a process with Hanson and Coalition MPs to develop the wording.
“I’ll be there. I’m looking forward to it. We’re going to just sit in a room with people that we don’t normally get along with,” Thorpe said.
During the press conference, Thorpe would not say whether she would accept donations from Pay The Rent – an organisation that asks Australians for contributions for living on Aboriginal lands – to campaign against the Voice.
“Pay The Rent was set up to address the effects of genocide … so Pay The Rent pays for funerals,” she said.
“I don’t have any details to any bank accounts. I’ve never been a signatory to any bank accounts. You have to follow that up with the Pay The Rent crew.”
Thorpe’s office later clarified Pay The Rent had not provided any donations to Thorpe for the No campaign or the black sovereignty movement.
Thorpe was involved in the early days of Pay The Rent and appears on the organisation’s website promoting it, but stepped back when she became a senator in September 2020. Her sister, Meriki Onus, has been a director of the organisation and her uncle, Robbie Thorpe, has also been involved.
According to leaked documents obtained by this masthead, Pay The Rent raised more than $1.1 million in donations in its first 10 months of operation, from January to October 2020, and distributed $328,000 to assist First Nations people with funerals and sorry business, and other grassroots initiatives.
The organisation did not respond to detailed questions and referred to information on its website.
Under the rules governing the Voice referendum, the Australian Electoral Commission must distribute an official booklet to about 12.5 million households at least 14 days before the vote, outlining in 2000 words each the cases for and against the referendum. The respective cases will be authorised by the majority of politicians who voted Yes or No to the constitutional alteration bill, which passed the parliament this week.
Hanson has already declared her desire to be involved in writing the No case – a process that will be steered by the Coalition, which comprised the majority of MPs who voted against the bill. The Yes pamphlet will be overseen by the government, which has resolved to set up a committee-style process, chaired by Burney, that will consult pro-Voice MPs from the opposition and crossbench.
AEC commissioner Tom Rogers wrote to MPs on Tuesday to advise they had 28 days to provide the Yes and No cases to the agency before the deadline of the 11.59pm on July 17.
Although a longtime staunch critic of the Voice, Thorpe had until this week maintained that she would not campaign against the referendum, telling this masthead last month she was uncomfortable with the “racist rhetoric of a No campaign”.
“I am not part of the No camp. I’ve never been part of the No camp, and I don’t intend to be part of a No camp,” she said in May.
Pressed on Tuesday why she had changed her mind, Thorpe said the government had failed to meet her demands to implement recommendations from the decades-old royal commissions into Aboriginal deaths in custody and the stolen generation.
Among those accompanying Thorpe in Canberra on Tuesday was Warlpiri elder Ned Hargraves, from the remote town of Yuendumu in the Northern Territory. He said the Voice was “not the answer” and the proposal was not well understood in Aboriginal communities.
“People out in the communities really don’t know what is the Voice. What is it?” he said.
Fred Hooper, a Murrawarri elder from Queensland, said the Voice was worthless and claimed “they didn’t consult all of the First Nations in regards to this Voice”.
Hooper was part of a small group, which included Thorpe, that walked out of the Uluru Dialogues in protest. More than 250 Indigenous delegates at the dialogues issued the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which framed the request for a First Nations Voice in the Constitution as an “invitation” for Australians to “walk with us”.
The Uluru Dialogue declined to comment.
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