Legal and political experts have rejected a false claim that Australia’s upcoming Indigenous rights referendum is part of a “secretive push” to create a totalitarian republic endorsed by the United Nations. Social media posts attribute the plan to a fabricated statement purportedly by former Labor Party leader Kim Beazley in parliament decades ago, but there is no record he ever made the remarks.
The claim was shared here on Facebook in a group with 6,500 members on August 31, 2023.
The post states the Australian Labor Party was not being transparent about the real aim of an October 14 referendum which will ask voters to decide whether Indigenous Australians should have an institutional “Voice” in national policymaking.
It goes on to claim former Labor Party leader Kim Beazley had revealed a plan in parliament in 1990 while answering a question from the late senator John Button about whether Australia should become a republic (archived links here and here).
According to the post, Beazley purportedly replied: “The United Nations has given the Federal Government a mandate of ownership for housing, farms, property and business to government control once the republic has been proclaimed.”
The post taps into the debate whether Australia — currently a constitutional monarchy that shares the British monarch as its head of state — should become a republic headed by a president.
It claims a republic cannot be established in Australia at the moment as the Indigenous population does not have “contracts” with the federal government, upsetting the government’s “secretive push for a totalitarian republic”.
Similar false claims were shared nearly 100 times on Facebook here and here.
Other versions of the claim link the Voice referendum to the Agenda 2030 conspiracy theory, which suggests the UN aims to create a dystopian “world government”, debunked by AFP here.
But the claims are false — Australia can become a republic by referendum without the inclusion of Indigenous people in the constitution and Beazley never said the UN had given a mandate on the issue.
Fabricated quote
A spokesperson for Beazley, who now chairs the Australian War Memorial, told AFP on September 19 that the former Labor leader “had no such discussion and has never expressed such a view”.
AFP reviewed Australian parliamentary records and found that Beazley only mentioned the UN on four occasions in 1990 — the year the false posts claimed he made the comments.
On three of those four occasions he was talking about the Gulf War and the last instance was about tabling documents, records here, here, here and here show (archived links here, here, here and here).
John Warhurst, professor emeritus of political science at the Australian National University in Canberra, told AFP on September 18 the “quotation looks like a total fake”.
Beazley was a member of the House of Representatives and Button a senator at the time, sitting in separate houses of parliament and could not have asked questions of each other, Warhurst said.
No ‘contract’ required
Becoming a republic was “hardly even an issue in 1990”, said Warhurst, who chaired the Australian Republican Movement from 2002 to 2005.
“Australia can become a republic any time through the same referendum process as the Voice,” he said on September 18. “No ‘contract’ with Indigenous Australians is required.”
He dismissed the claim the UN could give a mandate to the Australian government, saying it had “no such role”.
University of New South Wales constitutional law expert George Williams also said there was no need for Indigenous approval or contracts for Australia to become a republic.
“The only requirement to become a republic is that the Australian people, voting at a referendum, agree to make the change to the Constitution,” he said on September 25.
According to the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), a bill must first pass both houses of parliament before a referendum can be called (archived link). A vote must be held between two and six months after the bill is passed.
“This was the method used in 1999, but it failed when a majority of Australians and a majority of states did not support the proposal,” Williams said.
The entire process of the 1999 referendum is recorded on the AEC’s site here, which does not mention any Indigenous approval (archived link).
AFP has previously debunked false claims relating to the Voice referendum here, here and here.