Sunrise host Nat Barr unleashes over Peter Dutton’s Voice plan: ‘You go to Alice Springs and kids are living in squalor

Natalie Barr has unleashed on Peter Dutton after he promised to spend millions of dollars on a second referendum if the Voice to Parliament fails. 

The Sunrise host asked the Opposition leader why he would spend another $450million on a referendum that ‘First Nation people aren’t actually asking for’. 

‘I think it’s the right and the respectful thing to do to simply acknowledge our history and I think is the right thing to do for Indigenous Australians,’ Mr Dutton said.

‘I think it’s the wrong thing for our country to enshrine a Voice in the constitution and we should be very clear about that. I believe an overwhelming number of Australians support recognition but don’t support the Voice.’

Mr Dutton called on the Prime Minister to change the question. 

‘We don’t need a second referendum if the Prime Minister listens to the Australian public and changes the question and just has a simple recognition question put to the Australian people on October 14,’ he said. 

Barr asked how recognition of Indigenous Australians would improve poverty, incarceration rates and other ‘awful statistics’. 

‘It is most acute in regional and remote areas but if you go to some Indigenous communities such as East Arnhem land, they have a functioning society … like you would see in any other regional town,’ Mr Dutton said. 

‘You go to Alice Springs and kids are living in squalor, attendance rates in school and through the floor.’

He said Indigenous Australians in remote communities wanted more tangible outcomes, such as secure housing, rather than constitutional recognition. 

‘They want, for example, accommodation boarding houses at the school so kids can be fed and housed and live safely,’ he said. 

‘I know what you mean, but we have spent billions and billions over many years and those ideas have come up before,’ Barr hit back. 

‘You’re not the first and they’re not the first, so to change something, don’t we have to draw a line in the sand and do what most Indigenous people are calling for?’ 

Mr Dutton said there was ‘good intention’ in parliament and the community, but that billions of dollars of investment wasn’t reaching people living in squalor.

‘The question is whether the Voice changes any of that,’ he said. 

‘I don’t believe it does.’