The Albanese government’s plan to change the laws around referendums has been supported by a parliamentary review, but there was strong dissent from Coalition MPs who say they cannot “in good conscience” endorse changes while the government refuses to fund the yes and no campaigns on an Indigenous voice to parliament.
The electoral matters committee on Monday recommended that Labor’s referendum bill be passed, if amendments were made to strengthen Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participation and enrolment, and as long as “clear, factual and impartial information” about the vote was made accessible to all voters.
But the way information about the voice is provided remains a major point of contention for Coalition members, who do not support the bill and want the government to equally fund the yes and no campaigns.
The government’s preference is to conduct a civic education campaign about referendum processes through the Australian Electoral Commission, but not fund the campaigns.
It had also dismissed the process of sending out pamphlets outlining the yes and no cases as an “exercise in landfill” that is outdated in the internet age, before backtracking on that stance last week.
Several submissions to the committee said retaining the yes and no pamphlets would provide an official source of information and “set the tone” of the debate.
But constitutional experts warned that the pamphlets “often contained emotive, incorrect, or misleading information which did not assist voters in decision-making”. Others stressed the need for the provision of some form of authoritative information.
The committee was broadly in favour of the government’s decision not to fund the yes or no campaigns.
But a dissenting report from the five Coalition members said they could not “in good conscience” support the bill. They consider it essential the government equally funds the yes and no campaigns in the interests of informed debate.
“Any kind of trickery or rigging the system and effectively trying to advantage one side of a debate over the other will only increase scepticism amongst the people of this country and will only contribute to the defeat of whatever proposition is put to them,” the Liberal MP James Stevens told parliament on Monday.
“We urge the government to dramatically reconsider the message it will send and the damage it would inflict on attempts to change the constitution by saying we don’t want to have a properly resourced argument for and against that change.”
The independent MP Kate Chaney said she supported the “somewhat vague” recommendation that impartial information should be made available to voters, but had concerns about “racist misinformation” during the campaign.
“It’s essential that we do a better job of ensuring truth in political advertising,” Chaney said. “This is broader than the proposed voice referendum but concerns about racist misinformation in this context are real, and sharpen the focus on truth in advertising because of the potential damage that could be done.”
Chaney recommended an independent panel be set up to factcheck information disseminated during the referendum campaign.
She said there should be transparency about campaign funding and recommended the immediate disclosure of any donation more than $1,000.
“For such an important referendum for the future of the country, truth and transparency are vital, and I urge the government to consider improvements to this end in the implementation of the legislation,” she told parliament.
Other submissions suggested limits on expenditure to avoid a wealthy donor “undermining the level playing field”, while some supported a total ban on foreign donations.
Speaking before the report’s release, the Greens senator Larissa Waters said she was in favour of lowering the voting age for the vote, and supported the real-time disclosure of all donations more than $1,000.
“We are also looking for measures that will increase participation, particularly for First Nations voters, such as on-the-day enrolment, extending the remote mobile polling program, and phone voting like that offered at the 2022 federal election to people in Covid isolation,” Waters said.
• This story was amended on 14 February 2023 to clarify that the Coalition will not endorse changes to the referendum laws while the government opposes public funding of the yes and no campaigns.
