'Fake progress': Senator Lidia Thorpe calls for Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum to be scrapped

Speaking at her first National Press Club address on Wednesday, Senator Thorpe also called for reparations to First Nations people, but warned that they would "send the country broke" if not negotiated properly with clans and nations.

Senator Thorpe - a leading force in what she has described as the "progressive no" campaign against the Voice to Parliament - said the proposed advisory body was a way to "fake progress without actually having to change the thing".

"This country, your system of government has been built on lies. Lies. And the referendum for the Voice to Parliament is a continuation of these lies," Senator Thorpe said.

"[The Voice] promises to finally fix the Aboriginal problem. It is false hope because it is tricking people into genuinely believing that a powerless advisory body is going to protect our country and sacred sites, save our lives, keep our babies at home."

Senator Thorpe said that the referendum had caused nothing but "harm and division", arguing that a treaty between the Australian government and First Nations people would put an "end to the war that was declared on us when the ships arrived".

Asked how treaty could address the issue of reparations for Indigenous peoples, Senator Thorpe said it would be up to each clan and nation to determine the amount, but warned that reparations could "send the country broke ... with what is owed".

"It's up to those clans and nations but there is a lot of money owed to First Peoples. I mean, look at the resources that have been extracted over 200 years," she said.

"We don't want to send the country broke, I'll put that out there now ... that's why we need to negotiate."

Questions remain whether 'no' vote will stall treaty

But the independent senator dodged several reporter questions on Wednesday about how she could expect to garner public support for treaty if the Voice to Parliament fails at this year's referendum.

Senator Thorpe said that Australia will remain a "racist country", regardless of whether or not the Voice succeeds, and acknowledged that treaty "will take some time".

"We just need the government will and the people power to make it happen," she said.

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The senator instead called on the government to do five things: practice truth telling; establish Treaty; and implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and the Bringing them Home Report.

She also described Native Title as "racist" for forcing First Nations people "to claim [our] own land and justify our existence and connection to the coloniser", calling instead for a moratorium on the sale of Crown land.

Senator Thorpe, a former Greens member, quit the party at the start of this year over her opposition to the Voice, telling the National Press Club that the Greens' decision to "support the Voice on a day that I was violently ill was a bit of a kick in the guts".

But while Senator Thorpe - who now represents the Blak Sovereign Movement on the crossbench - doesn't intend to recontest her Senate seat when her term end in 2028, she hinted that other candidates from the movement could be set to run at the next federal election.

"They're very excited by the notion," she said, adding that "I just don't want to be the one having to organise them and you know, doing all the campaigning.

"I think that we should have a black sovereign movement in a party where we have candidates to really ramp it up and bring truth and healing to this country for once and for all."