The feud between Sky News hosts Peta Credlin and Chris Kenny escalated on Tuesday when the pair accused each other of spreading ‘nonsense’ and ‘telling lies’ about the founding document for the proposed Indigenous vote to parliament.
Credlin, who strongly opposes The Voice, exchanged accusations with Kenny, who claimed she was spreading a “furphy” that the Uluru Statement of the Heart would be a 26-page document instead of just 440 words.
The issue is whether the Uluru statement has a broader agenda of change than just the Voice’s “advisory body,” which Kenny, as a supporter of the proposal, denies.
Kenny said claims that the statement contained steps towards a treaty between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, as well as calls for more ‘truth’ about colonization were ‘nonsense’.
“Credlin’s claim hinges on the fact that in some public Word document or file they put several more pages in the same set of documents with the Uluru statement,” Kenny said.
Chris Kenny rejected claims by fellow Sky News host Peta Credlin that the Uluru Statement of the Heart was longer than the one page usually referenced
“These pages are not the Uluru statement, they are not government policy, they have no status whatsoever.”
A similar denial was also made by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during Tuesday’s Question Time at the House of Parliament, when asked if the statement was a longer document.
“Nothing exposes the falsity of the No campaign’s arguments like this conspiracy theory and they’re struggling to sort out their scares,” Albanese said.
“I mean, what part did Marcia Langton play in faking the moon landing? There’s a lot of projection going on here, sir, more projection than a film festival.’
Credlin accused the unlikely allies of misleading Australians ahead of the referendum expected to be held in October or November.
“Now I’m all for alternative points of view, but you can’t have alternative facts and no one, least of all prime ministers, gets a chance to mislead the House,” she said.
Credlin added that ‘one of the strengths of Sky (News) is that there isn’t a group here that thinks, all of us, all hosts are free, indeed encouraged to express our views’.
Credlin cited Voice architect Megan Davis and an FOI request to show that the Statement from the Heart was a 26-page document
However, she accused Mr Albanese and Kenny of trying to hide ‘the whole box and dice’ of the full statement because it outlines ‘the voice, the treaty and the truth’.
To back up her claims, she cited Uluru Statement of the Heart architect Megan Davis, who said on two occasions that the document was “long…about 18 to 20 pages.”
Credlin said Ms Davis had called out the Prime Minister’s ‘lie that the Uluru statement is a simple one-pager’ and this was also verified by the National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA), an advisory body to the Minister of Indigenous Affairs.
A request for freedom of information led to the release of documents from the First Nations National Constitutional Convention that took place in Uluru in 2017 and led to a heart statement
The document released by the FOI can be found at the NIAA website and is listed as Document 14 in a collection of convention materials.
Credlin said the government’s FOI lawyers had twice confirmed to the person who submitted the FOI request that the 26-page addendum was the full Uluru Statement of the Heart.
According to Credlin, the first of the 26 pages, normally considered the full statement, was just the introduction.
“He (Mr Albanese) and Chris Kenny cannot credibly claim that the FOI lawyers of the government’s own Indigenous body are somehow wrong in confirming what I have told you” said Credlin.
A road map from the 26-page document that Credlin says is the complete Uluru Statement of the Heart
“That document has 26 pages, including three pages of road map diagrams.
“It’s all in there, including reparations calculated, perhaps based on Australia’s GDP, paid to Aboriginal people.”
A roadmap showed that a Makarrata (Treaty) Commission was being set up to act as the umpire sitting above parliament and the vote in treaty negotiations.
Credlin cited the document as saying that such a treaty was “the pinnacle of our agenda” and “would be the vehicle for indigenous peoples to “achieve self-determination, autonomy, and self-government.”
“This, I repeat, is all in the statement from the heart to which the Prime Minister has fully committed his government no fewer than 34 times,” Credlin said.
All Australians should read and understand Uluru’s full statement before voting.
“The mere fact that the government is now trying to bury this statement says everything about what will happen to this country when the Prime Minister’s voice stands.”
A referendum will be held at an undetermined date later this year, where Australians will vote on whether or not to recognize Indigenous peoples in the constitution through the creation of the Voice.
Passing the referendum requires the consent of an overall majority of voters to be obtained and it must also be approved in a majority of states.