Anthony Albanese urged to scrap the Voice to Parliament vote to avoid ‘dividing the nation’

Anthony Albanese returned from a series of overseas summits on Monday and told parliament the referendum would take place on October 14.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton urged the prime minister to cancel the vote to avoid dividing the nation.

“Australians will be able to determine their views on that date,” Mr Albanese told Parliament.

Governor-General David Hurley issued the referendum order on Monday after an executive council meeting in Canberra.

Overall support has reached new lows, with all states except Tasmania set to vote “no” on a constitutionally enshrined advisory body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

A Resolve Political Monitor survey, published Monday in Nine Newspapers, showed that 43 percent of voters supported a plan to include an indigenous voice in the constitution, down 20 percentage points from a year ago.

The percentage of Australians in favor of the plan fell for the fifth consecutive month and Victoria moved to a ‘no’ majority since the previous survey.

A successful referendum will require a “yes” vote from more than 50 percent of voters in four of the six states.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said there were still many undecided voters who could be convinced to vote “Yes”, adding that the purely consultative body, without veto power, was “much less scary as some members of the “No” campaign claim. ‘.

Yes23 spokesperson Dean Parkin said the majority of activists and volunteers he saw going door to door around the national were from the “Yes” camp.

“We knew we would be in this position going into the final vote,” he said.

“But what we need to do is very clear: we need to get out and have as many conversations as possible between now and the referendum.”

Independent senator Jacqui Lambie said the government had “failed miserably” in its attempt to sell the vote’s positives and provide details.

But she also rejected the opposition’s promise to hold a second referendum on constitutional recognition, calling it a “brain fart”.

National leader David Littleproud said the Prime Minister needed to split the issue to avoid dividing the nation, with most people in favor of constitutional recognition for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

He denied that a failure of the referendum would send a negative message to Indigenous Australians, saying it would be seen as a rejection of the Prime Minister’s model.

“Many Indigenous Australians feel that way now and that’s why I think it’s wrong for Indigenous leaders who support ‘Yes’ to make generalized statements about how Indigenous Australians will feel,” Mr. Littleproud to journalists in Canberra.

Applications for postal voting close on October 11.

Voter rolls close seven days after the writs are issued, meaning people have a week to make sure they are registered.

Hundreds of early voting centers will be available from October 2, with centers opening a day later in the ACT, New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia due to a public holiday .