One of the few Liberal MPs who support the Indigenous voice to parliament has appealed to the government to delay the referendum to next year.
Andrew Bragg, who is campaigning for a yes vote, said not enough “middle ground” had been established and he feared that lack of consensus had doomed the referendum to failure.
It was time to recalibrate to “save the concept”, he said, before running a referendum in mid-2024.
Polls show support for the voice has declined over this year, with the double majority needed to pass the referendum in doubt.
“They need to have a proper effort at building bipartisan support that can improve the product,” Bragg said in an interview with Sydney radio 2GB.
“Because it’s the product which is in question here. Not the marketing.”
Bragg said he did not think it was the “right thing” to let go of a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous voice to parliament, but he thought the government approach to establishing the wording of the referendum had left people behind.
“They should have established a committee last year to look at how you can build some consensus around the legal wording and also the detail,” he said. “On the marriage debate, only just five or six years ago, there was a bill on the table, which people could look at before they voted on.
“I would have thought on the voice, there would have been at least an exposure draft bill that could have been considered alongside the referendum question.”
The government says the specific details of the voice, including how many members it has and how they would be chosen, would be set by the parliament if the referendum was successful. Broad design principles of how the voice would operate have been available since March.
Indigenous Voice “design principles” announced today - the exact detail will still be finalised post-Referendum but these are the major guiding principles of what the voice is proposed to look like pic.twitter.com/vU5tJZuCZ2
— Josh Butler (@JoshButler) March 23, 2023
A bipartisan parliamentary committee examined the referendum legislation for four weeks and no changes were made to the question put forward by the government, which was informed by the voice working group.
The Nationals said they would be opposing the voice before the question was put forward. The Liberal party had been running a soft no campaign ahead of the referendum legislation debate before officially announcing it would also oppose the referendum.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has said that given the Coalition’s opposition, he did not believe it would engage in any committee process in good faith and finding a bipartisan middle ground would have been impossible.
Bragg said delaying the referendum to allow a “four or five month” committee process could help to “recalibrate” the debate.
“I believe that there are different ways you can work the voice, there are more simple amendments that could have been considered,” he said.
“I mean, we had a shambolic committee process that ran for just four weeks, earlier this year, which recommended that the voice could not be improved in any way.
“Now, this is a concept which has been drafted in dozens of different ways over the last few years. So to argue that it can’t be improved is just intellectually dishonest.”
Albanese has previously said there were no circumstances in which he would consider delaying the vote.
“You only win when you run on the field and engage … we’re all in,” he said in May.
By law, the vote to alter the constitution must be held between two and six months of the referendum legislation passing. If the referendum was to be delayed, the parliament would have to pass new legislation setting it up, beginning the process from scratch.
Albanese has said the referendum will be held following a short campaign sometime between October and December.
