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AAP
AAP
Politics
Maeve Bannister

Voice campaign advocates turn to community support

Advocate Dean Parkin wants to see the voice proposal talked over across Australia's communities. (Dan Himbrechts/AAP PHOTOS) (AAP)

Supporters of the Indigenous voice to parliament have launched a week of action to help Australians understand the proposal and answer questions about its purpose.

It's part of a push to start a conversation on the voice in communities rather than politicians and media commentators dominating talks.

From the Heart director Dean Parkin, who was closely involved in the process that resulted in the Uluru Statement, said he wants Australians in all communities to be involved in the reconciliation process of constitutional recognition.

"It's time to bring the conversation ... back to where it should be: in communities across the country," he told ABC Radio National on Monday.

"That's where this whole idea started from and that's where we know the campaign will be won."

Mr Parkin said the most important message he wanted to give to communities was that the voice would bring real and practical change by improving outcomes for Indigenous Australians.

"Our focus, as always, will 100 per cent be on making sure that all Australians are involved in this conversation around the voice and this question around recognition," he said.

"There's a lot of goodwill, there's a lot of anticipation and people saying give us an opportunity to be part of this and let us make our own mind up over time."

A series of "yarning circles" with voice advocates have also been launched to give Australians the opportunity to have their questions answered.

The national online program is being run by the architects of the Uluru Statement of the Heart with sessions aimed at helping people increase their understanding of the proposed voice.

Uluru Dialogue co-chair and member of the government's referendum working group Professor Megan Davis said there had been huge demand for the sessions.

"They're very intimate conversations about the voice to parliament and the referendum, so I urge Aussies, especially those who aren't quite sure about the reform, to get onto ulurustatement.org and register their interest," she told ABC News.

Yet constitutional lawyer Greg Craven, a member of the constitutional expert group providing advice to the referendum working group, said "referendum factions" were obstructing progress.

"One determined bloc demands no detail so it can dictate the model after the referendum, regardless of popular or political preference. This partly explains the detail deficit," he wrote in The Australian.

"There are others who would see the referendum go down unless it reflects their own vision of the voice."

But Prof Davis said there were no factions within the referendum working group.

"The people that I sit among in those working groups have devoted their lives to the service of their communities and they're certainly not people who would want to hamper this referendum," she said.

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