Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wants Australians to focus on the Voice to Parliament following public discourse on republican constitutional change after the passing of Queen Elizabeth II last Friday.

Just last week, a working group of First Nations elders was revealed to be leading the referendum to enshrine Voice to Parliament into the constitution, which will be vital for representation of Indigenous voices in Government.

Albanese said that the nation should acknowledge the 65,000 years of the cultural continuance of Indigenous Australians existing in Australia before thinking about overturning the constitutional role of the monarch.

“If you think about the counterfactual it is, to me, is inconceivable, that the next change that we need for our constitution is anything other than recognising that our national birth certificate, which is what the constitution represents, [we] should acknowledge that our history didn’t begin in 1788,” he said.

Albanese further said that attaining constitutional change for this country is “very difficult” after the challenge in obtaining a vote for a republic at the end of the last century.

“The idea that you would have multiple debates at once is, I think, not feasible,” he said.

To observe a national period for Queen Elizabeth II, the Parliament is suspended until Friday September 23 and Federal Parliament will sit on the week of September 26.

Albanese will be arriving in the U.K on Friday night to attend the funeral of the Queen, followed by a meeting with newly appointed Prime Minister Liz Truss on Saturday.

PHOTO: Two Nations by Michael Coghlan is available HERE and used under a creative commons license.