Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

There's so much wrong in there it's really hard to know where to start. We have spent considerable time saying and explaining that there is no duty to consult or duty to consider. For some reason, Senator Cash, you keep wanting to put up straw man arguments that aren't real, such as that government's ability to make decisions or take action would be potentially slowed down or impeded. That's, of course, despite the Solicitor-General making it very clear at paragraph (9) that that is not correct. Again, I repeat his advice that the Voice's function of making representations 'will not fetter or impede the exercise of existing powers' of the executive government. That could only occur, Senator Cash, if the Voice were designed in the ways that you're implying it is, which it's not. To be very clear, not only is it a design principle of the Voice that it will not have a veto power but also it's the government's position that the Voice will not have a veto power. The only role of the Voice that would be constitutionally enshrined would be to make representations. So there is nothing in the constitutional amendment that would give the Voice the power to have a veto or a decision-making role, and for anyone to go outside this chamber and to suggest otherwise would be fundamentally dishonest.