How times have changed.
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The 1967 referendum, the most successful ever, was the creature of the Holt Coalition government, at the instigation of the then attorney-general, Billy Snedden, and spurred on by the legendary W.C. Wentworth.
In 1964 Arthur Calwell, then leader of the opposition, pledged Labor Party support for such changes, and in 1967 the Australian Parliament voted unanimously for the enabling legislation.
The 1967 referendum had two questions in respect of Aboriginal affairs.
The first deleted the words "other than the Aboriginal race in any state" from Section 51 of the constitution which stated that "The Parliament shall, subject to this constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to the people of any race, other than the aboriginal race in any state, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws".
For those who demand detail to be covered in constitutional amendments, note that section 51 says absolutely nothing at all about what specific laws might be included under the rubric of "for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth".
The second asked: Do you approve the proposed law for the alteration of the constitution entitled- "An Act to alter the constitution so as to omit certain words relating to the people of the Aboriginal race in any state and so that Aboriginals are to be counted in reckoning the population".
This had the effect of removing Section 127 which had read "In reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth, or of a state or other part of the Commonwealth, Aboriginal natives shall not be counted".
Section 127 said a lot about how our founding fathers felt about the place of Australia's First Peoples in Australian society, a legacy which lives on.
W.C. Wentworth later resigned from the Liberal Party, an example followed recently by Julian Leeser who resigned from the frontbench, and earlier by Ken Wyatt, the former Indigenous affairs minister in the Morrison government and the first Indigenous holder of that office - previously held by Wentworth from 1968-71.
![Julian Leeser, left, and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. Picture by Sitthixay Ditthavong Julian Leeser, left, and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. Picture by Sitthixay Ditthavong](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/pMXRnDj3SUU44AkPpn97sC/26e1fbf7-2675-4d44-b638-563f553c9e2a.jpg/r0_416_5200_3351_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Wyatt had had a long and distinguished career holding senior positions in Aboriginal health and education in the WA and NSW governments.
As the first Indigenous Australian elected to the House of Representatives, the first to serve as federal government minister and the first appointed to cabinet, his resignation speaks volumes about the respect of the current Liberal Party for the Voice of their most senior Indigenous political figure on the most pressing Indigenous question of the day - the forthcoming referendum on the Voice.
What can be said of the stated reasons for the Liberal Party going against Ken Wyatt's advice? Leaving aside misrepresentations about the Voice being "a group of academics" and a "Canberra Voice", there are a number of issues to be addressed.
The first is the Liberal Party view that somehow legislated local and regional voices will do the trick, but a national Voice enshrined in the constitution is not appropriate.
Really? Many of the issues are national in character, for example, a main issue in health is market failure in terms of the Commonwealth provision of primary healthcare.
Local and regional voices can't fix that. On many other issues, education, justice, housing for example, much of the responsibility rests with the states and territories but part of the function of a national government is to provide national leadership.
Does anyone really believe that local and regional voices, many examples of which currently exist, can fix these intractable problems by themselves?
But of course, the Voice proposal from the Uluru statement recognised and proposed an integrated system of national and regional voices.
Eliminating the crucial national Voice would have the effect of decapitating the residual disparate local voices from the governments that hold responsibility for addressing the complex issues in Indigenous affairs.
There is also the question of whether the Voice should advise the executive government or just the Parliament.
This is a core requirement for Indigenous Voice proponents - and rightly so as bureaucratic failure in implementation has been a significant feature behind the flatlining in health and other matters in the last decade.
It is really ironic that this failure, a major responsibility of governments, is somehow contorted into an argument against the Voice as it is argued that the Voice would not guarantee progress in Closing the Gap.
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A Voice is only effective if those with the power and responsibility to act actually listen, but the gaps won't close until governments get their act together, train their staff for their complex responsibilities, adequately resource the interventions required and above all listen to the Voice of Indigenous people who have both the technical and cultural knowledge required for success.
It seems extraordinary that major political parties could frame an approach to the referendum on the Voice which would ignore the views of Ken Wyatt and his Indigenous colleagues throughout Australia, and instead propose an approach which more or less guarantees continuing lack of progress in Indigenous affairs at home and potentially perpetuates a view of an Australia that has still to shake of its white Australia legacy abroad.
It is to be hoped that modern-day equivalents of W.C. Wentworth within the Coalition may yet be able to sway the Coalition parties to ensure the referendum unites Australia so the gaps can finally close.
- Ian Ring AO is an occasional commentator and former academic and public servant.