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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has cast doubt on the Commonwealth’s role in future treaty negotiations as he faces pressure to explain his full reconciliation plans.
The prime minister, who challenged Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to attend the high-profile Garma Indigenous festival this weekend, gave equivocal responses when repeatedly asked in a radio interview on Wednesday morning if his government supported a treaty with Indigenous Australians.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the most vulnerable peopl need the Voice to succeed.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
His comments follow a day of parliamentary questioning in which the Coalition probed Labor on whether the Voice was the first step in a broader agenda involving a treaty that could include reparations – the latest tactic in the opposition’s campaign to sway voters in the referendum.
Asked on ABC’s Radio National whether he supported a treaty, Albanese continually stressed the upcoming referendum was about nothing more than the creation of the Voice advisory body and recognising first Australians in the constitution.
Albanese noted state-based treaties were being negotiated in Victoria, Queensland – where the Liberal National Party supported the plan – and the Northern Territory, saying “these processes are occurring”.
“It’s like saying ‘do you support the sun coming up’. It’s occurring,” he said.
Labor has committed to implementing each three steps of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, though it has been reluctant to discuss the post-Voice steps. The statement was a landmark document issued in 2017 that called on the Commonwealth to create a Voice advisory body and a Makarrata Commission to oversee a treaty process and a truth-telling exercise to educate the public about the effect of colonisation on Aboriginal people.
Pushed on what Labor’s support for the treaty element of the Uluru statement meant, Albanese emphasised the document did not refer to the federal government’s role in treaties.
“Well where does it say that? It doesn’t even say that in the Uluru Statement from the Heart. It doesn’t say that, it doesn’t speak about the Commonwealth negotiating treaties. It doesn’t say that,” he said.
Quizzed on whether his statement indicated the Commonwealth had no role in future treaties, a frustrated Albanese said this was not what he meant, leaving uncertain the prime minister’s position on the matter.
Labor’s draft election platform states, “Labor will take steps to implement all three elements of the Uluru Statement from the Heart in this term of government.”
Albanese expressed hope Australians would back a referendum that is core to his government’s first-term agenda.
“What is before the Australian people is a referendum … about Voice which is the first part of the Uluru Statement from the Heart,” Albanese said.
“I just say to Peter Dutton: he needs to get out of his dirt unit on these issues and go to the red dirt of Arnhem land, this weekend to Garma which is the most significant Indigenous cultural event that occurs in this country.”
The Coalition has this week highlighted new cultural heritage laws requiring some landowners to apply for permits or create management plans for work on their land that may impact an Aboriginal cultural heritage site. MPs have cast these rules as a precursor to broader national changes that could infringe on property owners’ rights.
Nationals leader David Littleproud said Albanese had made it clear the government’s agenda was to implement the full Uluru statement.
“[It] has three elements: Voice, truth and treaty,” he said.
“It should be an entire journey that the prime minister can lay in front of the Australian people, so we have confidence in where he wants to take this nation, and what are the elements of that.”
Littleproud accused Albanese of refusing to “take the Australian people into his trust” by refusing to reveal his new plan. “Why should they trust him?”
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.
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