“The Voice Referendum: Cheating the Constitution,” by Professor Emeritus Michael Detmold, former constitutional law lecturers at the University of Adelaide, in the Quadrant Special Digital Edition, August 2023, delivers a knockout blow to the constitutional soundness of the Voice Referendum.
The short question will be before voters: “A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. Do you approve this proposed alteration?” The prosed law is outlined in a little more detail, albeit, still highly vague in the outline but does mention two things; first the Voice’s function (of making “representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth …”) and second, the Voice’s structure (Parliament’s “power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures”). But, these provisions, Detmold points out, are not going to be inserted into the constitution, and nor is the short question which is actually visible on the ballot paper. So, what exactly would go into the constitution if the Yes is carried? If this is confusing to legally trained minds, how much more difficult would this be for the ordinary voters to know what is going on? And if people are in the dark about this, as I see it, the Voice referendum is nothing more than an expensive and nasty deception.