Indigenous Australian leaders have condemned the country’s main opposition party for their “Judas betrayal” of the nation, after the Liberal Party declared it would campaign against a proposal for constitutional recognition for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Later this year, Australians will vote in a compulsory referendum on whether they support an alteration to the constitution to establish an Indigenous “voice to parliament”, a committee to advise the parliament on matters that affect the lives of Indigenous people.
The conservative Liberal Party, cast into opposition last year after nine years in government, announced on Wednesday it would campaign for a “no” vote against the voice proposal.
The Liberals’ position, announced by party leader Peter Dutton, has dashed hopes that the Voice referendum might have become a campaign of national unification and reconciliation, instead setting the stage for a bruising partisan battle.
On Thursday Noel Pearson, a Bagaarrmugu-Guggu Yalanji leader, said he had a sleepless night after learning of the opposition’s decision.
“I was troubled by dreams and the spectre of the Dutton Liberal party’s Judas betrayal of our country,” he told the national broadcaster. “It is a sad day for the country.”
Pearson described Dutton as “as an undertaker preparing the grave to bury [the Uluru statement, the document which first proposed the Voice in 2017].”
If passed, the referendum would give constitutional recognition to Australia’s Indigenous people, who, after generations of genocide, dispossession, and displacement, track below national averages on most socio-economic measures and suffer disproportionately high rates of suicide, domestic violence, and imprisonment.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, about 3.2% of Australia’s population of nearly 26m, are currently not mentioned in the country’s constitution.
But Australia has a tepid record of constitutional reform. Of 44 proposals put to the Australian people since federation, only eight have passed. The last successful referendum was in 1977.
The constitution also requires a so-called ‘double majority’ for a referendum to succeed: the support of a majority of voters nationally; as well as being carried in a majority of Australia’s six states.
A lack of bipartisan support for the voice is seen as a devastating impairment for the yes campaign.
Dutton said the “Canberra-based Voice” would not deliver real benefits for Indigenous communities.
“As people in Indigenous communities have said to us, they just don’t want city-based academics who are pretending to represent their views,” he said.
But the decision to oppose the Voice has already had a political cost.
Former minister for Indigenous affairs, Ken Wyatt, quit the Liberal party over its voice opposition. .
“I still believe in the Liberal party values but I don’t believe in what the Liberals have become,” Wyatt told the West Australian newspaper.
Uluru Dialogue spokesperson and Indigenous leader Pat Anderson rejected the Liberal Party proposal of legislated local and regional Voices.
“Legislative bodies have come and gone; only constitutional enshrinement will guarantee First Nations peoples will have an enduring say and ultimately improve First Nations lives,” she said.
A coalition of 13 regional Indigenous leaders said Dutton had “chosen to spread misinformation, confusion and ignore the support of the vast majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people”.
“We called for bipartisan support for the referendum, but political games are being played with our lives and futures, and the future of the entire nation.”
Prime minister Anthony Albanese, who has staked significant political capital on the Voice referendum succeeding, described the opposition stance as “divisive” and “opportunistic”.
“This is about whether we as a country can be optimistic, can be enlarged, can come to terms with the fullness and richness of our history, can express our pride in sharing this continent with the oldest continuous culture on earth, or whether we shrink in on ourselves.”
• This article was amended on 6 April 2023 to clarify that the Liberal Party was in government until 2022 for nine years, not 12, as an earlier version stated.
