Australia politics live: Marcia Langton says ‘clever falsehoods’ of no campaign are deceiving Australians

Q: What, in your view, is the pathway to success in the next five and a half weeks? Do you agree with Noel Pearson – it’s to listen to the soft noes and to answer their questions? And how do you personally convince the soft noes to vote yes?

Marcia Langton:

My view is that truth telling is the main exercise. Our arguments have been entirely misrepresented by the no campaign and in much of the media for a long time, mostly because of ignorance of Indigenous Australia.

Who’s got time to read the Productivity Commission report? How many journalists actually know what our suicide rates are?

And so I think that it is incumbent of those us in the yes campaign, who are seeking the approval of Australians for the yes vote, to give them information and show them where the information comes from, and explain that these are the facts. And to discourage them from taking the falsehoods to heart.

They’re very clever falsehoods. They appeal to the long-held tropes of discrimination. You know, we’ve heard words like ‘squalid’, ‘underbelly’, ‘maintain the rage’ thrown about.

It’s as if, you know, the frontier wars were still happening.

It’s very disappointing that so many Australians have been deceived and so we have an obligation to make sure that the undecided voters hear the truth.

And that means giving them the kinds of facts and figures that I’ve outlined to you today.

Updated at 23.36 EDT

Key events

Let’s switch gears for a moment for an update on Anthony Albanese‘s visit to Jakarta. The prime minister has released a report written by the former Macquarie boss Nicholas Moore on how Australia can deepen trade and investment with south-east Asia, as foreshadowed here.

While the report contains 75 recommendations, Albanese has promised to “immediately support three initiatives that go to the heart of the strategy and are an investment in Australia’s economic future”.

A government statement described these three priority actions as follows:

Albanese said:

South-east Asia’s fast-growing economies present a major opportunity for Australian business, but we haven’t kept pace with their exponential growth.Our economic future lies with south-east Asia. This strategy outlines how we can harness this growth, and seize the vast trade and investment opportunities our region presents.

For more on the report’s recommendations, see our story from this morning:

The Human Rights Law Centre has issued a statement about the high court’s Ned Kelly Emeralds decision. Despite the win it’s all a bit bleak because his detention, now in its eleventh year, will continue, and the court did not resolve whether ‘home detention’ orders could be made in cases such as his.

Ned Kelly Emeralds said:

Despite being kept in a cage and denied release for over ten years, I continue to stand up so I might one day live a life in freedom. My case shows the unacceptable powers that Ministers have over the hopes, dreams and possibilities for our lives – if the Minister wants it, you can be locked up for a decade, sent to Nauru or given a permanent visa. But everyone deserves an equal chance to make a life in freedom.

Sanmati Verma, managing lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre, said:

The high court’s judgment today gives pause to consider the lengths to which governments will go to deprive people of their freedom. In Ned’s case, this involved the previous Minister personally stepping in to prevent court orders from taking effect, then bringing an appeal against inoperative orders. We should be disturbed by the Australian Government’s ongoing commitment to indefinite, potentially lifelong detention.

Despite his victory today, Ned remains in detention. People are being detained for some of the longest periods on record – on average, 711 days. On last count, there were 135 people who had been detained for over 5 years. This is the legacy of mandatory immigration detention that we must reckon with.

Updated at 23.40 EDT

We get to the final question:

Q: You spoke at length about your Calma-Langton report. Was it remiss of the Prime Minister to have never endorsed the report, considering it claims a lack of detail, having a driving feature of the No campaign?

Marcia Langton:

He said over and over again that the constitutional question is about the principle that goes into the and that the detail is to be legislated by the Parliament. And that’s the answer to your question.

We can talk about all of the models in the world, but what is the most refined and elaborate model is the Calma-Langton report, co-designed by 52 people with a range of wonderful public servants who worked closely with us, and based on consultations with tens of thousands of Australians, Indigenous and non-indigenous.

It’s the best model out there. Sure, you can have a few quibbles about a few points in it, but this matter arises after the referendum should it be successful, and would be legislated by Parliament.

But, there is another opportunity for this Government – and that is to consider what it would do should the Voice referendum fail. And then, I do hope that this Government would turn to our report for inspiration, for policy settings, to empower us, to involve us, in Closing the Gap and other issues that affect our lives.

The address ends.

‘There’s no point in a second referendum’ – Langton

Q: If the polls are right and the voice isn’t successful, would you be willing to work with a future Coalition on a referendum for constitutional recognition, as Peter Dutton has promised?

Prof Marcia Langton:

Not in the least.

There is laughter and applause here, but Langton doesn’t crack a smile. She is asked to elaborate and so generously does so:

There’s no point in a second referendum, because it’s not what we want.

As Peter Dutton outlined, the purpose of his referendum, or to the extent that he did, is not what we asked for.

So on those grounds, no, I’m not interested, and I know that over 80% of Indigenous Australians would not be interested.

And we would communicate that very clearly to the Australian people should he ever be elected.

The other matter is that it would serve no purpose.

We asked for recognition through a voice combining the symbolic and the practical to give us both dignity and a sense of empowerment and responsibility in matters that affect us. Peter Dutton’s proposal, to the extent that I understand what he’s talking about, does not.

Updated at 23.40 EDT

Marcia Langton:

Now, would I decline to be involved in public debate?

Not on matters close to my heart. I will continue to advocate on matters relating to family and domestic violence, as I have for many years. On environmental protection matters, as I have for many years. For decades. You can go to my second book, Burning Questions, on that matter, published in 1998.

Or matters to do with Aboriginal art, film and culture, in a book I published in 1994. Well, I heard it on the Radio.

So I won’t stop writing while the eyes and the hands work. But I think that the debate will change so radically if the No vote that our advocacy will be seen as ineffectual, and so, therefore, how we participate in the public square will be very, very different, because the levels of abuse against the Yes campaigners, including death threats, and daily published insults and abuse takes a toll.

And… I think our generation of leaders will hand over to younger leaders and they, too, then will become targets like Adam Goodes, like Stan Grant, and the cycle will continue.

And in this regard, I think that the media has a responsibility to lift their game in reporting on these issues. And not participate in pile ons on persons who are good and decent people.

The professor’s voice cracks here. It is obvious why.

Q: Just to pick up on the point about the importance of truth telling. You and Noel Pearson have said that there will be a withdrawal of people like from the public debate and discourse in the event of a No vote. If that happens, and in that context, what should happen to the process of formalised truth telling? Can that still go ahead?

Marcia Langton:

Well, Noel said that he’d withdraw from public debate. What I said to our journalist at the Australian was that I would not give another Welcome to Country.

And then, you know, social media lit up with people saying – oh, good, we won’t have any other welcomes to country. That’s not what I said.

Other Aboriginal people are entitled to do whatever they like. And if they want to continue to welcome people to their country, their specific country, like this Ngunnawal or Ngambri country, fine by me.

I said, my country.

That’s the point that they don’t understand, isn’t it?

Marcia Langton finishes that answer with:

All of these issues will remain forever, I expect, if we survive. Another one is environmental protection.

So, most people don’t know that of the Aboriginal estate, and Torres Strait Islander estate – that is the lands in which we have, the lands and waters in which we have rights and interests, one quarter has been entirely devoted to environmental and biodiversity conservation.

That is a larger contribution than any other group in Australia. And that shows you what our values are. And that involves Indigenous protected areas across the country, and thousands of rangers. Some on Work for the Dole pay.

And that reflects our values, too. Those values, we hope, will never go away. Australians should value that. They should appreciate that.

Marcia Langton:

Now, if the Voice proposal succeeds, the recognition and Voice proposal succeeds, Parliament would legislate it.

Legislation can be changed by any Parliament.

And so, wonder of wonders – let’s say that we reach in parity in life expectancy.

Well, that’s not going to happen for the next 50 years on present trends – then the Voice would no longer be required to give advice on life expectancy.

And if, all of the Closing the Gap problems were to result in parity or near parity – there would be no Closing the Gap issues for it to advise on.

But that’s not going to happen in your lifetime or my lifetime. It’s not going to happen in the lifetime of a young Australian.

That does not mean that there are not other issues to be addressed.

Cultural heritage issues, retention of Australian languages and transforming native title into economic opportunities – all of these issues remain, and they will remain in the future. Our cultural heritage is not going to disappear. And nor will the problems of encroaching development and the potential to destroy our sacred sites, our sites of significance, the environmental areas that are meaningful to us.

Q: Some people who say that they have concerns about the Voice proposal are expressing concerns about its permanency. You talked about why you felt it should be permanent. But I’ve heard people say that if the objective is to address the disadvantage primarily in Indigenous communities, and that objective is ultimately achieved through this process, they then argue that the Voice becomes redundant. They say – we’ve achieved the objective, but we’re stuck with the Voice in the Constitution. What do you make of that argument? And what do you say to people who might hold those concerns?

We’ll break this answer into a couple of parts.

Marcia Langton:

Well, first of all, I emphasised some of the Closing the Gap trends. I could have talked about cultural her issues. I could have talked about native title issues. How do we transform the present native title situation into opportunities for economic development for Indigenous people? I could have talked about the involvement of Indigenous people in their own cultures and teaching their own cultures. I could have chosen any emphasis.

But I chose what was important through the Voice process and the Closing the Gap process. So I’ve taken one slice of the problems that we face in the future.

Does Marcia Langton believe the government should lay that out before or after 14 October?

It must be as soon as possible. If the government is not inclined to set out the agenda before the vote, then they should do so immediately afterwards, and that means they should be prepared now to tell us what the future holds for us.

Updated at 23.27 EDT

Josh Butler asks Prof Langton:

“When you appeared with the prime minister in March to announce the referendum question, you spoke about how all of the Indigenous leaders in that process had been involved in major initiatives over a long period of time. You talked about the Don Dale Centre and the deaths in custody royal commission, the inquiry into forced removal of children. You talk to people in these processes and it seems like this is, I guess, the next, the Voice referendum, the next big step is knitting together all of the threads of history. What would failure in this process represent to you? What would a failure in the referendum – what would that represent to you?”

Marcia Langton:

Well, just to add to your question there, senator Patrick Dodson and myself worked on the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody in 1989 and 1990. It was tabled in 1991.

And still, today, state jurisdictions are being asked to implement the very same recommendations such as some of the recommendations of the Yoorrook Justice Commission yesterday.

I fear that a no vote will be interpreted, and falsely, I should say, as a mandate for governments to do nothing and to make our lives worse. I think that’s the greatest danger.

I also fear that a no vote will be perceived, and again, I say falsely, as a mandate for not establishing consultative bodies. And again, I say that that is false. That would be a false interpretation of a no vote.

Many Indigenous Australians who are on the frontlines of dealing with these problems in towns and cities and communities and outstations and home lands are very worried about the prospect of losing the voice because they already have little say, and a loss will mean that they have even less.

So, these are matters of great concern. I do hope that the government sets out an agenda for reform that’s based on common sense, on the recommendations of many inquiries and royal commissions, and on expert advice, before the rabble takeover and turn a no vote into a mandate to cause us even further harm.

Updated at 23.30 EDT