The Voice will make "a huge difference and put a smile on my face" if it gets up, Newcastle surgeon Kelvin Kong says.
Dr Kong, an ear, nose and throat [ENT] surgeon and Worimi man, had the referendum and innovation on his mind on Friday.
He spoke to the Newcastle Herald to mark the announcement of key speakers for the Hunter Innovation Festival's conference on October 19.
As one of the speakers, he will focus on the connections between technology and medicine.
He was also keen to talk about the Voice, given Wednesday's announcement of the referendum date.
The University of Newcastle Professor said it's a "yes yes yes" for him.
"I'm so strong about this," he said.
"Whenever I'm talking about this I come back to peeling away the noise pollution.
"All we're trying to do is recognise that there's a special place for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in our constitution."
He said the Voice would "unite us".
"We all own this culture together," he said.
He became Australia's first Indigenous surgeon in 2007, but much has changed in medicine since then.
As well as his work in the Hunter, he travels to remote communities to provide medical services that would otherwise be unavailable.
Technology helps him innovate, so health workers in remote Australia can "send me images via secure servers".
"I'm looking at them, diagnosing and helping to manage from far away, which overcomes the tyranny of distance," he said.
"From the Hunter we're helping NSW, the Territory and the Kimberley through innovations we're driving here."
Professor Kong touched on the long waits to see specialists in the Hunter's public hospital system, including in his field.
"It is hard to get outpatient appointments in the hospital," he said, adding that innovation was needed to address the problem.
"There's a new program I've started, which is giving that access we really need. We're trying to cross-pollinate ideas and get good thinkers to improve this.
"The problem we have in health, particularly in specialist care, is we're so busy and bogged down with work, we don't get the time to step outside and breathe and say are there ways we can improve or help?"
He said the key was examining how to make the system better and "maximised" with the "limitations we've got".
He said the biggest advance in the ENT field was Cochlear implants.
"It's phenomenal," he said.
He surgically implants the devices, including in babies as young as eight months, to treat deafness.
"You change their life purely by technology. That's really cool to see," he said.
In the past, these people would be "deaf for life" and living in a "different world".
"Now I can say you're not going to live like that. You'll have normal hearing and speech. We're lucky to have that kind of technology in Australia.
"It's powerful to see the tears when you switch it on and they hear for the first time."
