Voice referendum no campaigner and Liberal senator Kerrynne Liddle has responded to controversial comments from no campaigner Gary Johns, who last month claimed some people in Indigenous communities lived in a “stupor” and recommended they “learn English”.
“I don’t agree with some of those comments,” she says. “That’s not the way I’ve conducted discussion on voice.”
Speaking on Guardian Australia’s Full Story podcast, the senator declined to comment on whether Johns should step down from the no campaign.
Johns, who is the president of the anti-voice group Recognise a Better Way – founded by no campaigner Warren Mundine – made the comments in a speech at the CPAC conservative conference.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has previously criticised the no campaign’s decision to give Gary Johns a prominent position in its campaign, claiming he has shown “a failure to show any respect for Indigenous Australians”.
Liddle, who was elected to the Senate for South Australia in 2022, also called for greater respect from both campaigns.
“I’ve been really, really clear about respectful dialogue in these conversations, whether people are no voters, whether they are yes voters or whether they’re not sure,” she said.
“As an Indigenous person, that’s been one of the things I’ve been really disappointed about is the divisive nature in which this has been taken to the Australian people. You know, I hear comparisons of the 1967 referendum, which was truly about unity. This referendum, though, I think will go down as the voice of division.”
Liddle’s image is featured on a controversial “vote no” pamphlet that offers nonexistent postal vote registration for the referendum, instead directing would-be voters to a party website to harvest their personal information.
The pamphlet includes a QR code that leads to the same website the party used in last year’s election.
Labor has called for an investigation into the Liberal party’s “misleading” postal vote strategy for the voice referendum.
A Liberal party spokesperson said Labor had previously used a similar website.
Liddle denies that the pamphlets are misleading.
“I don’t think the pamphlets are misleading voters, I think it’s got plenty of information in there,” she said.
