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Warren Mundine on the new united 'No' vote body:
Australians for Unity.

Joe O'Brien (ABC News presenter): ... campaign is called 'Australians for Unity'. Warren Mundine is one of its spokes-people and he joins us now from Canberra.

Warren Mundine, so there was a 'No' committee launched at the end of January. Senator Price was part of that with you. Senator Price, in the media was described as, at the time, defected from that two weeks later saying she wanted to represent the grass-roots more effectively. Now there's a merge on between the two groups.

The referendum is still 5 months away, but its a bit messy isn't it?

Warren Mundine: Well, what people were saying about it is not fully correct. Senator Jacinta Price and myself were always working together. What we did was look at about, OK, you work on this campaign, you work on that campaign. And try and bring the two campaigns closer together, and working together. And we've been negotiating that over a few weeks now, and we've finally got to the position now where both sides have agreed to merge. And it makes common sense because the 'Yes' campaign is under one umbrella group, which is driving their campaign. We need to do the same with ours. It brings together our volunteers, our bank accounts and our funding. And also saves us money in so many ways of actually getting our message out there.

And of course, Jacinta again, we were at a function last night, and we're sharing the stage and getting around, and getting a more crisp message out there.

Joe O'Brien: Yes, so give us an idea of the support base for this merged group now. What funds do you have access to and how many people have put their signatures to the campaign.

Warren Mundine: Well, the campaign grows every day. We've got up to about 37 thousand volunteers now. We have several million dollars in our bank account. We're nowhere near what the 'yes' campaign have but our campaign, as Jacinta Price has said, is on the ground. It's going to be a working with people, going out into the migrant communities, going out into the different communities across Australia, and having a very tight targeting. Because, as people know, its a two [indistinct] to change the constitution, not only do you have to have a majority of votes, you have to have a majority of states. We're going to be working vary targeted on what states we're going to be hitting. We're not gonna miss out on any, because we've gotta keep out supporters alive and our donors alive in New South Wales and in Victoria. But we will very much be targeting the other states.

Joe O'Brien: Yeah. Why are you really keen on targeting the migrant population.

Warren Mundine: Because 50% of Australians are either born oversees or their parents are born overseas. Also they're a group of people that doesn't have that lingering history of the tragedies of the 18th and the 19th centuries. They come after all that. So they're 50% of the population we'd be mad not to be targeting that group of people. So, we will be.

Joe O'Brien: And what are the key points of your opposition to the proposed Voice?

Warren Mundine: Well first of all, over 90% of Australians, according to our polling, say that they do want to have recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders in the Constitution. So do we. We want to see that recognition as well. So there should have been a two-part question: recognition and voice. But when you get to mentioning the Voice, the polling drops by about 40%, to around the low 50s and that.

So for me, if your gunna have a voice to parliament, it should be legislated, and it should be legislated today, they think it's so wonderful and so good. We believe that having the Voice, and we're backed up by legal opinion, you know, there's a whole fruit salad of legal opinions out there. Some legal people say it's good, some legal people say it's no. We've been through all that process and we believe it is changing our constitution ... 1967 we got ... we shifted race out of the constitution, and now we're going back to putting race in the constitution again.

Joe O'Brien: So just to be clear, based of what you've said there, if there is to be a Voice, would you be comfrotable with some sort of voice, but it should be legislated rather than put in the Constitution?

Warren Mundine: Well we have a democracy here, and in that democracy the government of the day, whoever that government is, they are elected on a platform. They have a right to legislate and put things through. We just went through a budgetary round at the moment. I don't know why they don't just do that. Split the vote. Make it recognition and then have a look at a legislative approach.

Joe O'Brien: I guess the argument would be, from the Government, that they want this to be a mopre permanent body that can't be struck down by the whims of whatever Government is in power at the time.

Warren Mundine: Well I thought Denny Gilbert and his senior counsel, he's one of the prominent lawyers in this country, and even he's advice is saying, that even if the Voice is in the Constitution, there's no force on the Government to actually legislate it. So I don't know why we're going through all this argument. And look, these are not my words, I'm not going to pretend I'm a constitutional lawyer. I'm not even a bush lawyer. All I know, all these different opinions are coming back to one thing, and that is in the one area, the Gilbert approach, which is, oh well, the Government of the day doesn't have to legislate for it. Then you've got other people who're saying you're gunna have to legislate it but it's gunna have this power, it's not gunna be this advisory group. Even the prime minister said that you'd be a very brave Prime Minister to not listen to and take onboard the Voice's recommendations. And yet, other people are saying that the Voice, you know, you don't have to take on those recommendations.

To me it's just all over the place. If you're fair dinkum about it, and you're serious about it, legislate it now so we know what it looks like and if there's any problems you can fix them. But putting it straight into the Constitution ... we're pretty stuck with it then.

Joe O'Brien: Yeah, and so if we're stuck with that ... Indigenous Australians are still way behind in many health and education markers, and incarceration rates are getting worse. Billions of dollars have been thrown at this over many decades. You'd be aware of many of those efforts. Indigenous people are still way behind general standards in the Australian population in many areas. Why not just give this a go.

Warren Mundine: Look, I'm a businessman. When I do business decisions I have data and evidence before me, before I make those decisions about what my companies are gonna do. So what we're being asked is 'just give it a go. It mightn't be harmful and that.' Well how do we know it's not gonna be harmful? If we haven't has the full thing explained to us, like I would, as a businessman from my staff, before I make my decisions, because I've got the information before me and am able to twig that information, if I don't like it, to a better position. Or I can say 'yes' or 'no' to that infoma... At this stage we've got none of that.

They talk about the Calma-Langton review. I had an Aboriginal woman, who's a graduate of PhD. She went and did a critique of that. And I wrote in the Australian, a 5-article series for the Australian. And it is all over the place. They talk about we don't want to have elections. We talk about this and that and that.

To me, Aboriginal people have got a voice already. We are in the Constitution. We are citizens of this country. So therefore, every law, everything that affects this country and every citizen in this country affects us. Also as I've said, I've worked in the energy and mining industries. We can't do anything on our mine sites or our energy sites without negotiating, consulting, working with, and having agreements signed off with Aboriginal, traditional owner people. That's a voice. Andrew Forest just learnt about that voice only a few weeks ago, he tried to do irrigation on his farm, and it was knocked back by the Aboriginal people because of a sacred river. And so that's a voice, a powerful voice.

So why are we setting up another bureaucracy at regional and federal levels, to sit around a table and have conversations—and this is the words of the 'yes' campaign people—it's only advisory. So that means governments can ignore it. At the moment, governments and private sector businesses like my own, can not ignore traditional Aboriginal people, because that would be the end of our businesses.

Joe O'Brien: OK, and Warren Mundine, about 5 months or so out from this referendum, how are you feeling about your prospects of success.

Warren Mundine: If there was an election this weekend I'd say the 'No' campaign would win it, but we gotta be realistic. It's like any election, no one's gonna really focus on this until end of June. Because that's when the bill will pass through Parliament. And then the Prime Minister will, soon afterwards, will set the date for that referendum.

So when the date's set, that's when the vast majority of Australians will then start focusing on it. And that's when we're going to be going 24/7—and I presume the 'yes' campaign's going to be doing the same thing—about prosecuting our case.

Joe O'Brien: And why are you so passionate about this that you're taking on this pre-eminent role?

Warren Mundine: I am passionate about it because ... we talked about the ... over the years we've spent billions and billions. I reckon we've probably spent nearly a trillion dollars on Aboriginal affairs over the last 50 years, if you add it all up. And you had good and bad results. Good results like, in 2015 we set up the business economy strategy and from that strategy we took a 6.2 million dollar Indigenous business economy to 8.7 billion dollars today. Over 45,000 jobs were created. 37% of those jobs in regional and remote Australia. This was a massive success. And now we need to look about how we can do investment, and how we can get the business community and getting people to set up their own businesses within small remote communities to move forward. That was a success.

We can't ignore the incarceration rates. We can't ignore the crime, alcohol and other problems [indistinct] in some of our communities. Not all of them, but some of our communities. And Jacinta Price, when she worked for the CIS, put out a paper on the gap, and the gap that we noticed was not the difference between black and white people, it's the gap is even getting bigger between Aboriginals in remote and regional Australia and Aboriginals living in the city.

So we gotta be focusing on those areas—practical outcomes on the ground in those communities.

Joe O'Brien: OK Warren Mundine. We'll have to leave it there. Thanks for talking to us this morning.

   

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