Senator Jacinta Price has kickstarted her official ‘no’ campaign opposing the controversial Voice to Parliament proposal, branding it ‘wrong and unfair’.
The former Alice Springs mayor is urging Aussies to vote against the ‘dangerous and divisive’ scheme in an email to her subscribers this week.
Senator Price will head up the Fair Australia crusade against the referendum’s proposed constitutional change which she branded ‘useless and costly’.
‘The Voice does nothing to address the real problems. It offers no real solutions,’ the Northern Territory leader told voters.
‘[It is] just an expensive sub-parliament of activists and politicians claiming to speak for an entire race. A constitutional change is forever.
‘It’s wrong and it’s unfair.’
Indigenous firebrand Jacinta Price (pictured) said the Fair Australia crusade will urge Australians to vote against the ‘dangerous and divisive’ scheme
Senator Price added the Voice pitted Australians against each other and elevated one race of people over ‘the rest of us’ (pictured, protesters on Australia Day in Canberra this year)
Senator Price said the Voice to Parliament is not just a small gesture of kindness to Indigenous Australians,’ the Country Liberal Senator said. ‘The Voice is dangerous, the Voice is divisive, and the Voice will have a huge cost and is unfair’
The Indigenous senator said the Voice pitted Australians against each other and elevated one race of people over ‘the rest of us’.
‘This is not just a ‘small gesture of kindness’ to Indigenous Australians,’ the Country Liberal Senator wrote in her latest email to subscribers.
‘The Voice is dangerous, the Voice is divisive, and the Voice will have a huge cost and is unfair.’
She said voting no would be saying ‘yes to an Australia that treats everyone equally, with no special rights for anyone’.
The campaign claims to already have 77,000 signatures backing the no vote and is financially backed by $1.45 million from right wing activist group Advance Australia.
It says enshrining the Voice to Parliament in the constitution would ’tilt the country’s founding document’ to favour one group of Australians over another based on race.
It comes after public support for the Voice started to wane after the federal opposition’s continued calls for more detail on the referendum proposal.
A Resolve Political Monitor survey, published in Nine newspapers last month, showed just 47 per cent of voters now backed the proposed move.
The figure, based on more than 3000 responses from late December, was down from the 53 per cent who supported the move in August and September.
A growing number of people were undecided, rising from 19 per cent to 23 per cent.
Critics of the plan have called out the Albanese government for not explaining how the constitutional amendment would work.
Shadow Attorney-General Julian Leeser and Liberal leader Peter Dutton said on Thursday they didn’t think the plan was on track for success, the ABC reported.
‘A Voice to Parliament will not be a funding body. It will not run programs, it will simply be a source of advice to government,’ Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (pictured) has said
The Northern Territory leader said voting no would be saying ‘yes to an Australia that treats everyone equally, with no special rights for anyone’
And Today Show host Sarah Abo told Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last month Australians were confused over the detail on the Voice to Parliament.
‘The two simple things that people will be asked to vote yes to in the referendum are, one, to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in our constitution,’ the Prime Minister said.
‘The second is to allow an advisory body, to be called ‘The Voice’, to be created to give advice to government, to the parliament, about issues that directly impact Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.’
‘A Voice to Parliament will not be a funding body. It will not run programs, it will simply be a source of advice to government,’ Mr Albanese explained.
But Senator Price said it would do nothing for vulnerable Australians and would set the country on a course of ‘treaties and splintered sovereignty’.
‘A constitutional change is forever … it’s a dangerous road to take, and once you’re on, there’s no turnoff,’ she said.
‘We can see that the Voice means – and already is – dividing us. It means pitting Australians against each other.
‘It means elevating one race of people and giving them a separate body with powers over the rest of us.
‘That’s not unifying, it’s the very definition of dividing.’
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