CANBERRA, June 21 (Xinhua) -- The Australian government is "miles away" from supporting a proposed indigenous advisory body to Parliament, according to the attorney-general.
In an interview with the Australian Financial Review (AFR), Attorney-General Christian Porter, who is also the minister for industrial relations, said that any move to enshrine the indigenous voice to Parliament in the Constitution could prompt a Brexit-style "mess".
The advisory body was a key recommendation of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, a landmark accord on the path to indigenous recognition in the Constitution that was endorsed by 250 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders in 2017.
If established, the body would advise Parliament on legislation concerning Australia's indigenous people.
Any change to the Australian Constitution must first be put approved by the Australian people in a referendum.
Porter said that the "first and last question" for such a referendum was what it would mean in terms of precise changes in the words of the Constitution.
"If you are to successfully change Australia's constitution, you've got to do three things: you've got to precisely describe the words of the text that you intend to adopt, you have to precisely describe what that textual change does do, and you have to precisely describe what that textual change does not do," he said.
"The Uluru statement is, unfortunately, miles away from meeting those three necessary criteria for any successful constitutional change," he said.
In order for a referendum to be successful, a majority of voters in the six states must be in favour of changing the Constitution.
Australia's last eight referendums, the most recent of which were held in 1999, were all unsuccessful.
