Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The hubris of overreach in Labor's Voice referendum has driven the harmonious into the discordant with cacophonous effect. I believe a referendum on recognition would succeed. Instead, Labor has overwhelmed the effectual with the improbable by reason of its pitch to the Australian people to use their democratic vote to constitutionally enshrine an undemocratic body.

The Voice endorses rights based on race. The Voice legislation has not been tabled, so there can be no transparency and honest appraisal of how this will work. The Voice will have power in every sector of executive government and no chance of repeal by this chamber as it sits above us, not beside us. The Voice, with its constitutional right to litigate the consultation process in the High Court, means that they might not be allowed to veto, but they can certainly make a decision void.

For this reason, the Voice could evolve into a parochial addendum of one-sided politics that's at odds with the decision made at a general election. Today there is pressure placed on you in a quasi-guilt form by the Prime Minister, big business and big sport. The inference is that you are somehow repugnant if you dare dissent. If the Labor Party obstinately sticks to the current path in the scrub that has become narrower, steeper and stymied with fallen timber, it may take reconciliation backwards. As Euripides said, 'He who overreaches will, in his overreaching, lose what he possesses, betray what he has now.'