‘Nonsense’: PM fires back over Uluru doc

The Prime Minister drew some backlash this week after he told a radio presenter he hadn’t read an extra 25 pages inside the Uluru dialogues.

“I know what the conclusion is, the Uluru Statement from the Heart is one page,” the PM told 3AW on Wednesday.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton responded by accusing Mr Albanese of “making things up” as he went along.

“I don’t know whether he’s deliberately doing it or he’s not across the detail or he believes that if he tells the truth, it will give rise to more questions,” Mr Dutton told 2GB.

Mr Albanese clapped back on Friday by calling the affair “complete nonsense”.

“I have had a look at them, but there’s hundreds of pages of records and information, a whole range of documentation, because there were literally hundreds of meetings in the lead-up to the Uluru Statement from the Heart being determined in 2017,” Mr Albanese told River FM 92.9.

“It has sat there for six years, and then at the last minute as part of the misinformation campaign that is out there about the Uluru statement, to suggest somehow that this is secret is wrong.”

The Uluru Statement from the Heart was the result of a three-year consultation process, which engaged more than 1200 Indigenous leaders around Australia.

It asked for three reforms, including an Indigenous Voice to parliament, followed by a Makarrata Commission to oversee “treaty-making and truth-telling”.

Earlier this month, the Coalition’s Indigenous affairs spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price aired claims that “secret” documents showed the Uluru Statement to be not one but 26 pages long.

According to the National Indigenous Australians Agency, the Uluru Statement from the Heart is a one A4 page document followed by “25 pages of background information and excerpts”.

There is also an additional 100 pages of material that was released under freedom of information laws in March.