Meet the Architect behind the ’Voice’... who literally wrote the book

Divisive and aggressive commentary by Referendum Working Group activist Thomas Mayo has destroyed the Prime Minister’s claims that the Voice to Parliament is “a modest request” about “two things only: recognition and listening”. Mayo, the union official and self-described “militant” who wrote the book on the proposed constitutional change, has spoken candidly about the referendum’s aims, describing the Voice as a campaign tool to “punish politicians”, “abolish colonialist institutions” and “pay the rent, pay reparations and compensation”. Rather than what the PM described as an “inspiring and unifying Australian moment”, Mayo told a conference of communists that “there is nothing that we can do that is more powerful than building a first nations’ Voice, a black institution, a black political force to be reckoned with”. At a 2021 Invasion Day protest where he described “the powers that be” as “murderers”, he said he was “sick of governments not listening to our voice” so planned “to use the rulebook of the nation to force them”. Mayo revealed the divisive aims behind the Voice at Invasion Day and Black Lives Matter protests as well as in numerous addresses revealing the Voice’s radical origins to the Search Foundation, which is described on its website as a “successor organisation of the Communist Party of Australia”. Mayo is also on the board of Australians for Indigenous Constitutional Recognition Ltd alongside people like Wesfarmers Chairman Michael Chaney and Liberal strategist Tony Nutt and lobbyist Mark Textor. It is shocking that distinguished Australians like Chaney and Nutt would share board duties with someone who so hates Australia and speaks openly of tearing down its institutions. By choosing Mayo to stand at his side to announce the wording of the referendum question, the Prime Minister has endorsed and adopted his very public statements about the Voice and the consequences of this constitutional change. Mayo sits on the Referendum Working Group that agreed to the question. Not only is he the author of the book on the Voice, he is the author of the referendum question. Australians must now hear in Mayo’s own words his plan to divide the nation. The Prime Minister has left open many questions about the Voice, and Thomas Mayo’s answers will be shocking for Australians who will now see through the ‘yes’ campaign’s spin.