Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will meet with leading women in the Torres Strait on the second day of his visit to the region to gauge community feedback on an enshrined Indigenous voice to parliament.
It comes after Mr Albanese on Thursday said that the voice wouldn’t lay the groundwork for financial reparations for First Nations people.
“No, it won’t, it’s not about that at all,” he said on Thursday Island.
“There’s nothing in the proposed wording of proposed constitutional change that would alter that at all.”
The Uluru Statement from the Heart calls for an enshrined voice and for the Makarrata Commission to “supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history”.
Mr Albanese’s speech at the Garma festival in the Northern Territory last month laid out a proposed referendum question to enshrine an Indigenous voice to parliament in the Constitution.
The question proposed would be: “Do you support an alteration to the Constitution that establishes an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice?”
Mr Albanese is in the Torres Strait with Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney and Queensland senator Nita Green, as part of a two-day trip for talks on what an Indigenous voice might look like.
After meeting with the Torres Strait Regional Authority on Thursday, the prime minister will meet with female community leaders on Friday.
State and territory ministers have agreed to back the Labor government’s work towards enshrining the voice in a referendum by the end of this term.
