Anne Pattel-Grey, the head of the School of Indigenous Studies at the University of Divinity, has told Q+A that the referendum on the Voice to Parliament is not political but rather a question that goes to the integrity of all Australians.
Professor Pattel-Grey was responding to a question from Q+A host Stan Grant about what the referendum may bring.
"What Australia needs to be conscious of is that this is not a political agenda, this is a moral and ethical agenda and this will determine the integrity of Australia, because individually every person has a role to play," Professor Pattel-Gray said.
"Whether they vote yes or whether they vote no is going to be to the individual's question of integrity."
Professor Pattel-Grey then called on Australians to look within as she painted a bleak picture for Indigenous Australians if the yes vote did not win.
"The Statement from the Heart is a statement from the heart," she said.
"Our people laid their soul bare to you and made themselves vulnerable in extending the hand to this nation and asking you to recognise us and to give us a voice.
"This country has criminalised our children, they are highly incarcerated, we are even locking up 10-year-olds.
"What a shame to this country.
"And yet what you decide is going to determine our future.
"We shared with you our pain, but we also shared our hope, and if we don't have that hope recognised, you are then damning us to hell, and you are going to kill a nation of people."
The comments drew a strong response from federal president of the Young Liberals Dimitry Chugg-Palmer.
Mr Chugg-Palmer said he would consider voting for the Voice, despite the official position of the Liberal Party being to oppose the federal government's model for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
"I really want to support the Voice," Mr Chugg-Palmer said, before adding that he wanted to see more details made public.
"I think it is so important that we do have a respectful debate on this topic and we do work through the very important details that we need to see.
"We still haven't seen legislation for what exactly the Voice is going to be.
"Raising those questions and raising those doubts is not a way of trying to frustrate or stop it, it is about being honest and so that we know what it is we are voting for when we walk into the ballot box.
"I want to see us reconcile with First Australians.
"I think it is the right thing to give them a say on decisions that affect them, that is a fundamentally Liberal principle.
"That's why there are plenty of Liberals out there that will be supporting the referendum."
Trump charges may embolden ex-president
With former US president Donald Trump facing felony charges in New York and a 2024 election on the horizon that US President Joe Biden intends to run in, the stakes are high in US politics.
And there are fears that Mr Trump will use the charges to push his own narrative in the media and garner more support for a second term as president.
British broadcaster Andrew Neil, who has met Mr Trump, said anyone's fears of that happening were likely to be realised.
"I've met Donald Trump and it's much worse than you think," Neil said of the former US president.
"Donald Trump is a lucky man, given his enemies, because his enemies sometimes play into his hands, and he has been charged on this with falsifying business records.
"The District Attorney who is taking on Mr Trump campaigned on the issue ... so this is him trying to deliver.
"He has to prove something very difficult which is that this misdemeanour led to a felony which was the corruption of the campaign laws.
"That is going to be really difficult to do because as far as I can see none of the campaign laws were broken."
He said the case was something Mr Trump would actually welcome.
"For Mr Trump, publicity is like oxygen for the rest of us," Neil said.
"He can't exist without it and he is in his element now, he is on the front of every newspaper and every broadcast."
Asked if this was the wrong thing to charge Mr Trump over, Neil said in his view it was.
"There are things Mr Trump needs to answer for in the courts," he said.
"His attempt to strong-arm the Georgia authorities just to find another 12,000 votes that would have tipped Georgia over into his camp and therefore may have changed the result of the 2020 election, that seems to me far more important than putting a wrong entry into the business ledger."
Asked by Grant if Trump would win in 2024, Neil said he could not be sure.
"Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, the only one with a chance of beating Trump, he is now looking like yesterday's man," he said.
"But then comes the general election, so he even if Mr Trump still wins the Republican nomination, it is not clear that he wins the general election.
"Mr Biden has beaten him before and Mr Trump's candidates in the mid-term elections last year in November 2022 all did very badly.
"And the non-Trump Republicans did rather well, so I don't think it is a foregone conclusion."
