Linda Burney admits Voice is about Treaty

A recently resurfaced video of Linda Burney confirms what we all knew or suspected all along: Voice is about treaty and financial payments. The Voice is the mechanism through which government could be forced to the negotiating table over a treaty. It is also the entity with which government might negotiate a treaty.

Since her comments in 2020, the government clearly realized that treaty is unpalatable and did its best to cover this with a thin veneer of platitudes and aphorisms. It’s no wonder Anthony Albanese becomes so angry when ever he is confronted with the Voice-treaty connection, as we saw in his interview with Ben Fordham.

It is very clear that the Voice could force a treaty and financial payments to occur. This is for several key reasons. They all relate to the Voice’s level of clear and real power.

First, the voice is the only constitutionally enshrined body with a right to make representations. Representations and information are not per se bad. The problem is that it is the only body that has the right to make those representations. Further, after giving the Voice this right, we enable it to litigate if it alleges the government ignored it, even if the government did no. As such, the Voice can engage in vexatious litigation – or the threat thereof – to bring the government to the negotiating table.

Second, the voice would have the right to be consulted on matters. This is because the right to make representations connotes a right to be consulted. No other entity would have that constitutionally enshrined right. Thus, the government is only bound to consult the voice and is not bound to obtain countervailing views. This clearly gives biased, one-sided information. This enables the Voice to control the narrative, which gives it power. It could also – again- litigate to stop action if it feels it were not consulted sufficiently.

The result of these matters is that the Voice could force the government to negotiate and/or could feed clearly biased pro-treaty information through to the government via its representations.

Third, the Voice might expand the government’s legislative powers by virtue of the government being able to legislate with respect to the Voice, which implies legislating with respect to its representations. This may enable the government to legislate further than it already could, potentially into areas of additional funding and the like. This could enable a de facto treaty via financial payments, even if a treaty per se does not occur. However, whether this power exists would be a matter for the courts.

Regardless, the recent revelation of Linda Burney’s comments Is telling. Perhaps the biggest source of misinformation during the referendum has been the government and its repeated assertions that we should ignore what the Voice implies for future policy – and for treaty.

People might wonder whether the government – and parts of the ‘yes’ campaign – are just attempting to pull the wool over our eyes.