The Prime Minister’s commitment to implement the Uluru Statement From the Heart in full is in grave danger of being derailed by the shorthand title, ‘The Voice’ that we keep hearing about.

Supporters of a ‘Yes’ vote inside the government and the broader community fear the label is easily misrepresented and open to misunderstanding.

Their fears are heightened by the early attacks on it by opponents of the proposal: Northern Territory CLP Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and her mentor Nyunggai Warren Mundine.

Warren Mundine says Indigenous people should be recognised in the constitution with other groups. Photo: AAP

Key right-wing organisations like Advance Australia, the Conservative Political Action Conference, the Centre for Independent Studies and the Institute of Public Affairs are backing Mr Mundine’s campaign with its ‘Recognise a better way’ slogan.

The slogan is a concession to the vibe so far driving majority opinion in the polls that recognising the unique position of First Nations people is a fair thing to do.

Recognition long overdue

The Voice is but one element of the statement hammered out at Uluru in 2017 after nationwide consultation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities about how they should be given the respect and recognition they were denied when Britain seized their country.

The ‘Yes’ campaign, which begins in earnest at the end of February, must spell this out more clearly and show how the Voice is fit for purpose.

From the five years of consultation and discussion it became very clear to Indigenous leaders that a mere form of symbolic nice words in the Constitution, now proposed by Mr Mundine and his allies, would not do.

Words alone would not redress the injustice of a bloody dispossession as far as an overwhelming majority of delegates at Uluru were concerned.

Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney addresses an Uluru Statement From The Heart summit in Sydney in June. Photo: AAP

Instead they resolved to seek “constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country”.

The recognition of their founding place in the history of this continent is to be entrenched in an advisory voice that governments cannot abolish, but they can by act of Parliament determine its shape and form.

This is a guaranteed protection against a future government dismantling the Voice as the Howard government did rather than reform ATSIC – the old Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.

The Voice then would play a key part in “agreement making between governments and First Nations and truth telling about our history”.

This is the “Voice, Treaty, Truth” essence of the Uluru Statement which lays out a path to “walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future”.

Commitment made

Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe is calling for a treaty rather than the Voice. Photo: AAP

Mr Albanese says he is fully committed to this and the Greens party room later this week is expected to endorse it, despite one of its senators, DjabWurrung Gunnai Gunditjmara woman Lidia Thorpe dissenting.

It is sad, if not reprehensible, that a Yuin, Bundjalung and Gumbaynggirr man like Mr Mundine seeks to subvert this generous offer of reconciliation, disrespecting the very uniqueness of his own peoples by equating them with waves of migrants from Europe and elsewhere who have arrived since 1788.

It is the ‘No’ campaign that is sowing confusion and enflaming division by calling for a recognition of migrants as well.

This is surely disingenuous – what injustice constitutionally in the history of the Australian nation has been done to migrants that needs to be redressed in this way?

None.

Proven tactics

Mr Mundine’s ploy of holding out the prospect of another referendum was successfully used by the ‘No’ campaigning monarchists to split republicans in the 1999 referendum.

Its purpose this time can only be to mask the intent of continued discrimination against the oldest inhabitants of this continent.

The Prime Minister says the proposal is a generous, modest and gracious offer from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples that if it is not taken up now, when will it ever be?

At Monday’s launch of his $300 million plan for the arts and cultural sectors, Mr Albanese gave precedence to a “First Nations First” fund to broaden the ability of producers, filmmakers and artists to continue the songlines that have mapped the landscape of this continent “through the great immensity of time”.

Prominent Indigenous actor and producer Rachael Maza said it was “profoundly ground-breaking”.

The Prime Minister has a lot more work to achieve a similar response to the referendum later in the year.

Paul Bongiorno AM is a veteran of the Canberra Press Gallery, with more than 40 years’ experience covering Australian politics