At a press conference where he was joined by leading Indigenous Voice advocates, Albanese defended the proposed constitutional change as the correct model, rejecting the conflicting attacks on the Voice from progressive and conservative circles.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the power of the proposed Voice to parliament strikes the right balance and has vowed to campaign for a Yes vote, after the bill to authorise the historic referendum passed the Senate on Monday morning, 52 votes to 19.
“It is just that – an advisory body – but Voice is a powerful word. Because it will give First Nations people a voice and it’s up to us to listen to that voice. The truth is that for most people watching this, it will have no direct impact on their lives but it just might make lives better for the most disadvantaged group in Australia today.”
“Most of us here including the minister [Linda Burney], we have spent our lives in the trenches, as our parents did before ... and there’s like 65,000 years standing here,” she said. CLP senator and leading No campaigner Jacinta Nampijinpa Price denounced the Voice as a “dangerous and costly” proposal and said the government had failed to explain how the body would work.
Indigenous independent senator Lidia Thorpe, a longtime critic of the Voice who had previously foreshadowed she would abstain from the Senate vote, told the chamber the proposal was about “appeasing the white guilt in this country” as she declared she would vote No.
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