CheckMate June 16, 2023
This week, CheckMate revisits a widespread but bogus claim about a list of secret “demands” linked to the Voice referendum.
We also debunk a suggestion that the Voice, if established, could veto future referendums seeking to remove it from the constitution, and announce the launch of a new misinformation tip line by FactLab’s CrossCheck unit.
The Voice claim that refuses to die
As polling suggests support for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament is in decline, online misinformation about the proposed body continues to spread, with one particular claim taking hold despite being fact checked multiple times.
First debunked by CheckMate in April and tackled again by FactLab this week, it relates to an apparent “secret list” of proposals set to be put forward by Indigenous groups should the referendum be successful.
That list has taken various forms over recent months but is often shared alongside a claim that the proposals (sometimes couched as “demands”) have been uncovered in “secret government documents” obtained under freedom of information (FOI) laws.
The list suggests, for example, that the Voice would lead to First Nations people receiving land tax exemptions and paying only half the normal rate of income tax, while statues of white explorers would be torn down.
Such claims have been bolstered by an email authored by Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who is now the Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians.
Her email, sent on behalf of No campaigners Fair Australia and also referencing “secret government documents”, states that “the real agenda behind [Anthony Albanese’s] Voice referendum has finally been revealed”.
According to Senator Price, a Voice would “force” Australians into a treaty, which would then see Australians “pay a percentage of the GDP — that is, a percentage of the entire nation’s economy — to the Voice … every year”.
“On top of that, Australians [would be] forced to pay ‘rates/land tax/royalties’ to the Voice.”
But the supposedly secret documents released under FOI laws contain little more than the meeting minutes from a number of regional dialogues with First Nations communities held more than six years ago by the bipartisan Referendum Council, the purpose of which was to discuss what constitutional recognition might look like.
Importantly, many of the ideas raised at the dialogues went no further, with the Referendum Council’s website explaining that suggestions were whittled down to just a handful of “consistent themes” and “guiding principles” on which agreement could be reached.
Senator Price’s claim that Australians would pay a proportion of GDP to the Voice each year appears to be based on ideas shared during the Adelaide and Hobart dialogues alone, at which no suggestions were actually made that money be paid directly to the Voice.
A summary of the Adelaide meeting in April 2017, for example, merely states that “there was strong support for Agreement Making as a vehicle for implementing policies such as … economic measures like seeking a percentage of GDP”.
Minutes of the Hobart meeting, held a few months earlier, mention only that participants from one of five working groups had said that a treaty must include “a fixed percentage of Gross Nation [sic] Product” and “rates/land tax/royalties”.
Separately, FactLab has tackled a lengthier version of the list circulating on social media, finding that more than one-third of the 31 items do not appear in the FOI documents at all.
In fact, the first 11 items on the list appear to be based on an unverified letter sent to One Nation senator Pauline Hanson by an anonymous member of the public, who claimed they had overheard the proposals being discussed in a Canberra cafe by members of the National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA). The allegation has been denied by the NIAA.
And while some of the items included do feature in the minutes of some of the meetings, they reflect ideas, discussions and suggestions generated by delegates at the dialogues, not concrete proposals.
Moreover, in many cases, the listed items are devoid of context.
The creation of a “black parliament”, for example, was proposed by a speaker in Dubbo but conceived as a way of achieving political representation “other than through the proposed constitutional Voice”.
No, the Voice could not ‘veto’ a future referendum to abolish it
Social media users have wrongly claimed that the creation of a Voice would amount to a “bloodless” coup that gives “an unelected black monarchy” the power to veto any future referendum that seeks to remove the Voice from the constitution.
According to one popular post, featuring text overlaid on an image of the Minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney:
“YOU’LL NEED ANOTHER REFERENDUM TO REVERSE IT BUT IF ONE IS PROPOSED … THE VOICE CAN JUST VETO IT. THAT IS HOW MUCH POWER IT GIVES A SMALL GROUP OF ELITES.”
However, RMIT FactLab has found that claim to be false.
The Constitutional Expert Group, a panel of eminent legal experts who advised the government on the wording of the proposed amendment, released a communique last year that said the draft provision “does not in any way provide the Voice with a veto power over the functions or powers of the parliament or the executive”.
George Williams, a law professor with the University of NSW and a member of the expert group, told FactLab that although the Voice, once enshrined in the constitution, could not be abolished by government or parliament, it “could be removed via a later referendum”.
Meanwhile, the Australian Solicitor-General, Dr Stephen Donaghue KC, has provided the government with independent legal advice stating that the proposed Voice would operate “only as an advisory body” and “clearly has no power of veto”.
Several dubious claims about the Voice wielding veto powers have circulated during the referendum debate, including by Deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley, who even warned that the Voice could hold a “de facto veto” over public holidays.
FactLab’s CrossCheck unit launches Voice tipline
RMIT FactLab’s CrossCheck unit, which works collaboratively with other news organisations to support online verification efforts, has launched a public tipline ahead of the Voice to Parliament referendum.
The tipline is a means by which members of the public can alert CrossCheck to any suspect information they come across in social media feeds and chat apps or receive via mail.
In addition, a Memorandum of Understanding signed by CrossCheck, SBS and the national Indigenous broadcaster NITV, will help journalists understand the influence of misinformation in the referendum and mitigate the associated risks.
CrossCheck director and RMIT principal research fellow Anne Kruger said the team was honoured to have secured the trust of Australia’s leading broadcasters serving Indigenous and culturally and linguistically diverse communities.
“CrossCheck aims to uphold and maintain the integrity of information in a time when information flows are increasingly vulnerable to manipulation,” Dr Kruger said.
“We alert our media and community partners daily of emerging online narratives and trends so they can be ahead of the misinformation e-curve. We also act as an active helpline for senior editors and professional communicators on how to slow down misinformation in news reporting approaches.”
You can alert CrossCheck to suspect claims by emailing [email protected]
Labor MP wrong on homelessness figures
The Greens and the Labor government are continuing to clash over the proposed Housing Australia Future Fund bill, with the legislation at risk of being blocked by the minor party in the Senate.
It’s a battle that has been playing out for weeks, with Labor MP Michelle Ananda-Rajah going head-to-head with the Greens spokesman for housing and homelessness on a recent episode of ABC TV’s Q+A.
Highlighting the problem of homelessness, Dr Ananda-Rajah suggested the Greens were “standing in the way of progress” when it came to social housing, stating: “We have, tonight, 122,000 people sleeping rough.”
“Eighty per cent of those are women,” she continued. “Where women go, children follow. One in seven of those are 12 years or less; they are children, they are babies.”
But this week, RMIT ABC Fact Check found Dr Ananda-Rajah to be wrong.
While official figures show that 122,494 people were experiencing homelessness on census night in 2021, only 7,636 of those people were “sleeping rough” as defined by experts.
Additionally, males made up the majority of both the total count of people experiencing homelessness (57 per cent) and those sleeping rough (66 per cent).
There were 208 children aged under 12 sleeping rough on census night (about 3 per cent). However, one in every seven Australians experiencing homelessness was indeed a child.
Edited by Ellen McCutchan and David Campbell, with thanks to Sonam Thomas
Got a fact that needs checking? Tweet us @ABCFactCheck or send us an email at [email protected]