One Nation to Abolish SA "Voice"

“South Australia rejects Voice to Parliament as overwhelming majority backs No vote.”

I remember reading this headline in an ABC story the day after the Voice referendum took place.

Overall, 64.17% of South Australians voted to reject the proposal to establish an Indigenous Voice at a federal level (on a 91.75% turnout). It wasn’t even close.

Only in Queensland did a higher proportion of voters reject the proposal. A significant proportion of the Aboriginal community itself across Australia, including in South Australia, voted to reject the Voice.

The poisonous proposal that sought to install into our Constitution the divisive, race-based ideology that has done so much to polarise our politics and divide Australians was comprehensively kicked into touch. The message was clear: we are all Australians under one flag, and no one ethnic group should be elevated above any other.

What makes the situation in South Australia even more galling is that the Malinauskas Labor Government had already legislated for the SA Voice prior to the federal referendum. That meant that regardless of how South Australians voted in October 2023, the Premier could claim he was not ignoring the referendum result, while still pressing ahead with his own race-based structure at a state level. In effect, the will of the South Australian people could be traduced while maintaining political cover.

Rather than listen to the South Australian people after the referendum result, the State Premier simply ploughed ahead with his deeply flawed and divisive plans to entrench a South Australian version of the Voice.

On 16 March 2024, South Australia held its first-ever state-based Voice election: the SA First Nations Voice to Parliament election. How did it go? Overall, fewer than 10% of eligible voters even bothered to vote. Only about 2,583 formal ballots were counted out of an estimated 30,000 eligible Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voters.

One could be forgiven for asking: just what is the point of all this? The exceptionally low turnout raises a far deeper question. If fewer than 10% of eligible Aboriginal voters chose to participate, who exactly is this body for? The lack of engagement suggests that this project is driven less by genuine demand from the communities it claims to represent and more by symbolic politics. A body with such minimal participation cannot credibly claim a strong grassroots mandate.

Another legitimate question is how much this has all cost. The SA Voice is supported by a Secretariat within the Attorney-General’s Department, led by an executive-level Director (SAES1), with remuneration that can reach around $250,000 a year. Operations alone have been budgeted at $6.1 million, with a further $4.2 million allocated for the first two election cycles, including $2.9 million for the inaugural election and $1.3 million for the upcoming March 2026 election. This sop to race-based political correctness is costing South Australian taxpayers millions of dollars. That may be a drop in the ocean compared with some of the wider Labor waste and our near $50 billion state debt, but it adds insult to injury when voters have so clearly rejected the concept.

Despite there being very little enthusiasm from the actual community this body is aimed at representing, South Australia remains one of only two states in the country to have such a body, despite having voted among the most strongly against the federal Voice.

The situation is quite clearly a farce. In fact, I would go as far as to say it’s an outrage. One Nation SA plans to make an issue of this at the forthcoming state election on 21 March and to call for the complete abolition of the SA First Nations Voice to Parliament. There will be no reform, no tinkering, just the complete and comprehensive abolition of the body.

Going into the South Australian election, two parties have very clear positions. Labor will stick with the Voice to Parliament, whatever its failings, and One Nation would abolish it. However, when it comes to the current official opposition in the State Parliament, the answer is far less clear. The SA Liberal leadership want voters to believe they are against the Voice.

Yet only a few months ago, their own Shadow Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, and current Deputy Leader, Josh Teague, said the following:

“Our position hasn’t changed, our position has been the same throughout: that is that we want a body that is representing Aboriginal people in SA to government and parliament to be workable and productive for Aboriginal people,” Mr Teague told Radio FIVEaa.

That does not sound like abolition. It sounds like support for a race-based body, provided it is made “workable and productive”.

It is time for the SA Liberals to come clean on their position. Do they support a race-based body, or will they abolish it? South Australians deserve a straight answer.

Are we honestly expected to trust the SA Liberal Party to do what they need to do and abolish this poisonous and unworkable body in its entirety?

The way in which the SA Liberals have handled this issue goes to the heart of what is wrong with the Party at both a state and federal level. If the Liberal Party doesn’t know what it stands for, then how on earth are voters meant to?

If you want the referendum result from October 2023 respected and the end of race-based, destructive and divisive ideologies that seek to pit one ethnic group against others, then you really only have one choice this March. You must vote One Nation.

One Nation is focused on coming up with practical solutions to improve the lives of all South Australians, and clearly this includes our fellow Australians from the Aboriginal community. We are dedicated to improving the lot of all South Australians. That means doing the hard yards of serious policy development, not engaging in easy and cheap virtue signalling. Sadly, that appears to be the preferred approach of the uniparty.

“To survive in peace and harmony, united and strong, we must have one people, one nation, one flag.”
– Pauline Hanson