This isn’t a unifying Voice for Australia, it’s the prime minister’s Voice for division

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I was asked recently what question I think Australians should have front of mind when they head to the ballot box on October 14. My answer is a simple one: Do you want Australians to be divided in our Constitution?

The prime minister is about to fire the starter’s gun on the most divisive referendum in our nation’s history. And make no mistake, it is divisive through and through. It’s dividing experts, its dividing politicians, it’s dividing Australians. It rests on the premise that the Voice could effectively represent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, but it’s even dividing our communities.

Jacinta Nampijinba Price at the WA Liberals for No campaign launch in Perth last week.Credit: Trevor Collens

There will be a lot of noise over the next six weeks about how wonderful and unifying it would be, but strip back all the hype, the celebrity endorsements and corporate sponsorship and consider what we’re voting on.

If successful, it would insert into the Constitution a chapter and a new body for only Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

If successful, it would create a new bureaucracy for the Aboriginal industry, those who make their living by claiming to help Indigenous Australians with little accountability.

If successful, it would mean an extra say for just one group of Australians, based solely on their racial heritage, given the constitutional power to make representations – not simply advise, as the prime minister claims – to parliament and executive government.

The process has been divisive from the start. From the beginning, the goal of those who advocate for the Voice seems to be to divide Australians, to bully those with doubts into agreement and abuse and name-call anyone who doesn’t fall in to line.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart was not the result of a constitutional convention open to all Indigenous Australians. The Uluru Dialogues divided Indigenous people for an exclusive, invite-only talk-fest for the few.

The prime minister may not have bothered to read the final report of the Referendum Council, but anyone who has read it knows that “delegates were invited to each First Nations Regional Dialogue” and from those groups “10 delegates were selected to represent their region together with the convenors and working group leaders”.

Far from being a “modest request” that “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have asked for”, the Uluru Statement is a loaded document signed by just 250 people.

Before opposition leader Peter Dutton had taken a position, he put sensible and reasonable questions to the prime minister about how the Voice would operate. His questions were ignored.

Constitutional conservatives, many of whom support the Voice, were left out of the process to create the referendum question. When they raised concerns about the wording, they were accused of being “white saviours” who were “just trying to stay in the spotlight”.

For disagreeing with them, prominent Yes campaigners who I won’t name called me and other Indigenous No campaigners every name in the book, they’ve accused me of hating Aboriginal people and, just last week, called me a puppet doing a jig.

This isn’t a unifying Voice for Australia, this isn’t a modest, simple or gracious request, and with no effort made to explain how it would work, it’s all risk and no reward. This is the prime minister’s Voice, it’s the Voice of the Indigenous activists and academics, it is the Voice of division.

The Yes campaign likes to say this proposal has been supported by “constitutional conservatives”, but the truth is that this proposal is constitutionally radical. It would enshrine a dangerous and divisive Voice in the Constitution, and that’s not something conservatives can get behind.

In 2014, while affirming his support for genuine constitutional recognition, then prime minister Tony Abbott said: “The worst of all outcomes would be dividing our country in an effort to unite it.”

That is exactly what’s already happened.

More concerned with themselves and getting their names in the history books, the prime minister and prominent Yes campaigners who flank him at every press conference have divided Australia.

The referendum campaign proper will begin this week, and it will be the most divisive six weeks in our nation’s history.

I am fighting for a No vote because I already asked myself that simple question, do I want Australians to be divided in our Constitution?

No. I want to be one together, not two divided.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price is a Country Liberal Party senator for the Northern Territory and the former deputy mayor of Alice Springs.

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