Voice supporters need to come out in force after Thorpe’s defection

When Senator Lidia Thorpe walked out on the Greens on Monday,the first parliamentary sitting day of this referendum year,it was the bookend to an earlier walkout,from the forum that produced the Uluru Statement from the Heart in 2017.

Senator Lidia Thorpe has quit the Greens Party to move to the crossbench.

As Thorpe’s choice of earrings bearing the slogan “sovereignty never ceded” reminded us,she has repeatedly claimed that giving a constitutionally enshrined Voice to parliament precedence over a national treaty will undermine Indigenous sovereignty. She has quoted her grandmother,the renowned Gunditjmara activist andelder Alma Thorpe,as saying:“If we go into the Constitution,we’re gone. We’re dead. We won’t be Aboriginal no more,we’ll just be Indigenous Australians. You can’t let it happen.”

As with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s claim that there is insufficient detail on how a Voice would function,this claim has beenrepeatedly dismissed by Indigenous and non-Indigenous legal and constitutional scholars. The question for the referendum now is whether detailed arguments will matter or whether Thorpe and others can reduce the issue to a series of slogans that shape the debate,asTony Abbott did with the emissions trading scheme,or No campaigners in the 1999 referendum for a republic did with “No say – No Way!”

The theatre of Thorpe’s move was obvious. But the political consequences are far harder to foresee. The Senate arithmetic means the positions of the government,the Greens and independent David Pocock are weakened,while those of the opposition and theJacqui Lambie Network improve.

By choosing Thorpe to head an all-Indigenous Senate ticket in Victoria and then as their First Nations spokesperson,the Greens had been forced to run anungainly three-legged race on Voice policy,one that sat at odds with the views of the clear majority of party members. Now they have fallen in a heap before the finish line. Serious questions need to be asked of Adam Bandt and other Greens leaders who put Thorpe in a position of such primacy,only to see her upend the entire arrangement and diminish their representation in parliament.

With Thorpe prominent on the crossbenches for now – though who knows when another walkout might occur – the Greens will also have to reckon with her influence on the party’s First Nations Network,the so-called “Blak Greens”. Now that the partyhas shifted back to full support for the Voice,will there be more departures?

When Thorpe walked out on the Uluru talks in 2017,she did not do so alone. When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese describes the Voice as “not a radical proposition”,he may reassure some sections of the population,but others will see it as proof that it cannot meet urgent needs. As Indigenous author and activist Ronnie Gorrietold our reporter Bianca Hall at last month’s Invasion Day rally,there is a trust deficit that goes back to times when Australian governments heard Indigenous voices and failed to act,from land rights to deaths in custody to theBringing Them Home report.

In an interview with the ABC ahead of that rally,Noel Pearson – one of the leading Indigenous advocates for the Voice – described such protests as “completely justified ... and the only way we can make progress”. But he went on to insist “that protest can’t be perpetual”,and a breakthrough moment for reconciliation has come which has to be seized.

Who will seize it? While Lidia Thorpe left her Monday press conference without taking questions about her “black sovereignty movement”,she is clearly of the view that her charisma can persuade people to follow her down a very different route from that proposed at Uluru (and in case we have forgotten,the Uluru proposals seemedradical and surprising at the time). Disgruntled Greens won’t be the only ones who decide Thorpe’s path has already proved too unpredictable and personality-driven to follow. But it’s another reminder to supporters of the Voice that it’s time their own show hit the road.

Bevan Shields sends an exclusive newsletter to subscribers each week.Sign up to receive his Note from the Editor.

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