Albanese calls on voters to ‘rise to the occasion’ on Indigenous voice and ridicules opposition claims | Indigenous voice to parliament

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has urged Australians to “rise to the occasion” of the referendum, saying he wants to discuss with the opposition how the Indigenous voice could work in the event of a successful vote.

The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, claims the referendum will leave Australia “split down the middle”, again calling for the government to scrap the voice and instead pursue symbolic constitutional recognition of Indigenous people.

Albanese in turn called the Coalition disrespectful for focusing on the voice’s potential to advise on parking tickets, interest rates and roads, urging a less politicised debate about the voice.

“People, I think, have to rise to the occasion. My government intends to rise to the occasion,” Albanese said.

“Leadership isn’t about just doing the easy things. It’s about doing things that are hard. Changing our constitution is hard. There’s no certainty, but it requires leadership. And if not now, when? And if not under my prime ministership, under whose?”

With parliament having passed the constitutional alteration bill to bring on the referendum within six months, the respective campaigns are preparing to launch new advertising and grassroots efforts. The yes campaign, in particular, believes public support for the voice will increase once the referendum focus shifts from parliament to the community.

In a final push on Thursday before the parliamentary winter break, Dutton again claimed the government had hidden information about the voice from the public, telling the chamber that he didn’t believe Australia was ready for a referendum.

The opposition has urged the government to significantly alter the referendum, to abandon plans for a constitutionally enshrined voice and instead pursue simple Indigenous constitutional recognition – an proposal continually rejected by numerous Indigenous-led consultation processes as inadequate, including the Uluru statement from the heart.

Dutton reiterated his stance on Friday morning, saying that pollsters and credible commentators thought the voice would either fail or pass with a very slim margin, splitting the country “down the middle”.

“I think there’s an opportunity to unite our country here, instead of divide, and that is that we should proceed with constitutional recognition,” he told Radio National.

Albanese on Thursday described Dutton as “devoid of empathy”, describing the opposition leader’s speech as “completely unworthy of the alternative prime minister”.

At a press conference on Friday, Albanese said he respected that some people may not wish to see the constitution change, but ridiculed the opposition’s claims around the voice’s potential incursion into areas of infrastructure, defence and Reserve Bank decisions.

“Some of the arguments that are put forward, that people know are not true, the people putting them forward know are not true,” he said.

“I don’t believe that Senators arguing that a road in Victoria was going to be the subject of the voice believe that that’s the case … the idea that the voice is going to sit around and the governor of the Reserve Bank is going to say, ‘oh, I wonder what the voice thinks?’ Like, seriously. This debate is too important for that politicisation.”

He pointed to parliamentary speeches from the attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, which stressed that the voice would be empowered to make representations on matters which have “different consequences” for Indigenous people.

Albanese said he had privately begun discussing the legislation that, in the event of a successful referendum, would set up the voice.

“I would seek to get as much consensus as possible around that. I’ve said that to the leader of the Liberal party and the leader of the National party,” he said.

“I think that would occur, because it’s in the interests of it going forward that there be as much ownership in this building as well of those processes so it doesn’t change. But of course, the whole point of it being legislated is to reinforce the fact of the primacy of this parliament.”