Linda Burney says Indigenous Voice to Parliament to have full in-tray; four main priorities from day one

The Minister for Indigenous Australians will seek, in an address to the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday, to fill in some of the gaps in knowledge on the Voice and balance off concerns about "pro-active" representations it is expected to make to Parliament and executive government.

In the speech, a copy of which has been seen by The Canberra Times, Ms Burney is to talk about her Voice motivation, the unjust death of a friend and renowned photographer Michael Riley at just 44 to the preventable disease of rheumatic fever.

The minister insists the Voice, if passed at a referendum later this year, will make a practical difference to Indigenous Australians as it takes the priorities of local communities to Canberra while receiving requests from government.

"From day one, the Voice will have a full in-tray," Ms Burney is expected to say. "I will ask the Voice to consider four main priority areas: health, education, jobs and housing."

"The Voice will be tasked with taking the long-view. Unlike government, it won't be distracted by the three year election cycles. It will plan for the next generation, not the next term. It will be focused on making a better future for the next generation.

"The time to make a generational difference is now."

The minister is to decry the "systemic and structural disadvantage" at the core of where the Voice has come from and will point out that more than half of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are under the age of 25.

She does not regard Indigenous young Australians as starting on a level playing field.

"They need hope," she is expected to say. "They need opportunities their parents and elders didn't have. They need a Voice."

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The Minister lost a friend Riley in 2004, at the age of 44, to end stage renal failure after an early life in poor conditions, picking up chronic infections.

"I visited him every day in hospital. I watched him go blind in one eye. His Aboriginality condemned him to an early death. A preventable death," Ms Burney is to say.

"I remember being at his bedside with his cousin Lynette when he passed ... I remember the injustice of it.

"And it's what still motivates me to this day. It's what motivates me every day to put one foot in front of the other."

The speech will seek to address opposition criticism and increasing concern from voters that there is not enough detail about the proposal. The "yes" side insists there is ample information about Voice, which has been many years in the making and has been based on First Nations consensus.

However, after some false starts, the official "yes" campaign is gearing up now for a sustained campaign.

Perilously low levels of support for the Voice were revealed in a new survey of 10,000 voters conducted last month by ACM, the publisher of this newspaper. The "yes" backing, several months out from a likely October vote, came in at 38 per cent in the survey compared to a vote-smashing 55 per cent who oppose the proposition and 7 per cent said they were undecided.

A majority of respondents, at 72 per cent, felt the government had not done enough to explain the Voice to the community.

Ms Burney is to say that the Voice is needed because the gap between Australians and Indigenous Australians isn't closing fast enough.

"We need the Voice because we need to do better," she is expected to say. "And we particularly need to do better by young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people."

Indicating how it will work, she said a local community will identify a problem, like low school attendance, and it will approach its representative on the Voice and it will raise the issue with them. The Voice then has the power to take that to government and the parliament.

"We know listening works. We know it delivers practical outcomes," the minister is to say.

"Doctors get better outcomes when they listen to patients. Bosses get better outcomes when they listen to workers. Policy-makers get better outcomes when they listen to First Nations communities."