Thursday, 18 May 2023

Voice to Parliament

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (16:13): (245) My matter is for the attention, I believe, of the Attorney-General, but it also will be a matter of interest to the Premier and the Treasurer. It concerns the Voice proposal to amend the Australian constitution. I will make some general comments in a moment, but although this is obviously a national constitutional amendment under section 128 of the Australian constitution, it will clearly have impacts and outcomes for Victoria. We are a federation.

It is clear that the Voice proposals have the capacity, and I would argue the certainty, to impact on Victoria’s arrangements and Victoria’s position. For instance, the words for the referendum allow the Voice to implement or to advocate and to impact on administrative and executive actions. I would argue that a whole series of matters with the states fall into this category. Some of it is legislated, but some of it is clearly administrative and executive action. For example, federal–state agreements on quite a wide front are agreed between federal government and state governments at a national level, and indeed in some cases at an individual state–federal level. Intergovernmental agreements fall into this category too – even a body like the grants commission has a role in dispersing GST money and other grants and taking matters into account. The Voice will be able to impact directly on the grants commission and have its say with the grants commission, which will affect directly the money that Victoria gets from the national pool. The GST pool and its carve-up will be subject to intervention by the Voice, for example, and I could go on. Victoria has been the great loser out of many of these federal financial arrangements. We are the only state that has always been a net contributor and never received more than we put into the national pool. That has always been a negative for us, and this will worsen it.

There are a series of questions to be asked here, and I say that this is something the state government should look at. What I am asking the Attorney-General to do is look at the legal advice that the state government has about the impact that the Voice amendment, if carried, will have on intergovernmental arrangements, the grants commission and all of the federal–state agreements across a wide front and to release that advice so that people are informed about the impact on Victoria. How will the representatives of the Voice be elected, and what will the weight of Victorians on that be? I would argue we are likely to be short-changed, as usual.