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Birmingham tells RN he is ‘conflicted’ over voice to parliament
Shadow foreign minister, Simon Birmingham, avoids disclosing what he will vote in the voice referendum, dodging ABC RN’s Patricia Karvelas’ questions.
Do you support the voice?
I’ve been clear that I don’t intend to actively campaign in the referendum.
Why aren’t you taking a position? I mean, you’re making it clear that you want it to be private. If it’s private, that means you are actually sitting on the fence.
Patricia, I think you can hear from my answer there, that I am, in some ways conflicted and think this is a very difficult situation the country has been put in, that we have got a question before a proposed change.
We’re getting a situation where the government is not really directly responding to Ukraine’s requests for the Hawkei vehicles, or the Abrams tanks, nor the D mining equipment they’ve asked for.
[The Albanese government’s] contribution in terms of humanitarian assistance is simply $10m compared with the $65m that had been provided previously. So this is a concern …
Status as the leading non-Nato contributor to Ukraine has slipped away and the type of support being offered now doesn’t seem to be either meeting Ukraine’s requests, providing the modern equipment that they want or need, nor the type of scale that would seem to keep Australia commensurate support of our other parts.
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