THE HON TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SUNRISE
MONDAY, 16 OCTOBER 2023
SUBJECTS: VOICE TO PARLIAMENT REFERENDUM.
NATALIE BARR: Returning to politics here at home, Australians have comprehensively rejected the Indigenous Voice to Parliament in a land‑slide defeat of the Prime Minister's referendum. Both nationally and in every state the result was a resounding No. The Northern Territory also voted against the proposal, which left the ACT as the only state or territory to vote Yes. Despite the result, both sides of politics are promising to find a different path forward to address First Nations disadvantage. Let's bring in Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek, and Nationals MP, Barnaby Joyce. Good morning to both of you.
BARNABY JOYCE: Morning, Nat.
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Good morning, Nat.
BARR: Tanya, how did your government get this so wrong?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, I think, Nat, we need to take a little bit of time to consider what's happened here. I was in Redfern on Saturday night with Indigenous leaders, most of whom have been campaigning for a better future, not just for six months or a year, but for decades, and it's been a very tough time for them. We need to take a little bit of time to examine the fallout here and think about a constructive way forward.
I don't think Saturday night's result was a vote against progress to Close the Gap; I think it was a vote against the particular proposition that this referendum had, constitutional recognition through a Voice. But I think most Australians understand that we need to do better to Close the Gap. I'm sure Barnaby agrees with me that it's unacceptable to have a life expectancy gap, health outcomes, education, employment, and we need to do more to close that gap.
BARR: Yeah. I suppose, Tanya, it doesn't take long to look at that map and show that something that your government hung its hat on failed dismally across this country, it was a wipe out, so what do you learn from that, $400 million‑odd down the drain on something people said "Nup."
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, it was a very disappointing result, and there's no two ways about it. But like I say, it was the rejection of this question. I think there is still a lot of goodwill in Australian people to Close the Gap. We need to find a constructive way forward on that.
I mean it is important to take a little bit of time and just let the dust settle on this, to really think through our next steps, to make sure that we're working in a way that brings Australians together to reduce disadvantage in this country.
BARR: Barnaby, is Tanya right, in that the glass‑half‑full here for Indigenous people is that it puts their needs front and centre now?
JOYCE: No, what we saw, that was a divisive debacle, a $400 million divisive debacle. The Prime Minister read it perfectly ‑ his inner-suburban seat of Grayndler ‑ and read very badly the seat called Australia.
When you look at it, it's the inner‑suburban seats, the Teal seats and the ACT, that's who voted Yes. The rest of Australia was thinking about the price of their power, the price of their food, their groceries. They read through this ‑ they're not stupid ‑ they read through this and said, a new racial clause for a selective group of people to be in Canberra with oversight over the executive, I don't know that's going to help.
Even in my electorate of New England when the highest No votes was in the Aboriginal community of Tingha, so they didn't see how this was going to be an issue that helped them, and now we've got the Australian people, we've divided them.
The one thing we do have in common is we've got to stitch Australia back together again. This was a horrible time. It was like somebody having a referendum on "How's your relationship going?" People didn't like it, they didn't want to hand out Nos, a lot of people handing out Yes were coming in from out of town, they knew exactly which way they were going to vote.
And I've been saying it on this program for so long, that this is going to hit the deck. That's exactly the words I used. And the Prime Minister should have done a statesman like thing so much earlier on, a sort of thing that former Labor Premier Peter Beattie would have done and said, "I'm not dopey, this is going to hit the deck, so I'm pulling up and we're going to go about this a different way"; have a proper constitutional convention, an honest and deliberate engagement with those who don't agree with his inner‑suburban position ‑‑
BARR: Barnaby ‑‑
JOYCE: ‑‑ because they didn't.
BARR: Barnaby, David Cameron resigned after Brexit. Should Albo do the same?
JOYCE: Well, I'll leave that to the Labor Party, but no doubt, and Labor Party members themselves have said this, he has lost a lot of paint on this issue, and he did it because it wasn't a surprise ‑ that's what people are annoyed about ‑ it was not a surprise. It was given to him by polls, it was given to him when he went out away from the inner‑suburban suburbs or the Teal seats, he stopped ‑ all he was listening to was his own echo chamber, he wasn't listening to the Australian people.
And there are other things ticking along there. I went to one demonstration where 4,000 people around Labor seats were protesting against wind factories off their coast. They're talking about different things to what the Prime Minister's talking about, and when that starts happening to a Prime Minister, it is not good for their career.
BARR: Tanya, just finally, why didn't you pull it when it became really obvious that it wasn't going to get up?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, we made a number of commitments to the Australian people at the time of the last election. One of them was to hold a referendum; the Prime Minister made that clear on election night. Another one was to deal with cost‑of‑living. And we've got cheaper childcare, we've got cheaper medicines, we're making it easier to see a bulk‑billed doctor, free TAFE ‑‑
BARR: Yeah, we're not talking about that today though ‑‑
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: ‑‑ we've seen increases in ‑‑
BARR: ‑‑ we're talking about The Voice fallout.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: No, but I'm saying that governments can do more than one thing at a time, and the Prime Minister made a commitment, he kept that commitment. I think Australians respect a man who keeps his word.
BARR: Yeah, well, that's ‑ you're right, that's what Australians want to see you do now after this fallout. Thank you very much, we'll see you next week.
END
