Musician Kamahl has backflipped again on his Voice to Parliament position in a televised interview.
The 88-year-old appeared on The Project on September 24, a day after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese coined the term "Kamahl-mentum" following the musician's change of heart to vote 'yes'.
Kamahl told The Project he had started with a "flippant no" before he was persuaded to support the voice.
But he said 48 hours later he realised he had made a mistake.
"No is an informed decision. The first 'no' was an uninformed decision and then 'yes' was a semi-informed decision. And now 100 per cent I am well and truly committed to saying no," he said.
"This whole thing if it comes to be is based on race."
He claimed $40 billion a year was being spent on Indigenous Australians and questioned where the money was going to.
Host Hamish Macdonald probed where he got the figure from.
Kamahl said somebody had told him and his position wasn't "fully informed" - only as informed as he could be in 48 hours.
After quoting the $40 billion figure again Mr Macdonald pointed to a fact-checked claim by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott that $30 billion a year was being spent by the National Indigenous Australians Agency on Indigenous programs.
The claim was found to be false with the total budget of the NIAA in 2022-23 sitting at $4.5 billion.
"Okay, I made a mistake, the fact remains Indigenous people need help by making them a separate race from Australians that's not acceptable," Kamahl said.
"Call me a hypocrite or uninformed but I'm informed now - whatever I said before now, wipe it out, start all over again and forgive me."
Kamahl's move to vote 'yes' had been sparked by conversations with voice advocates, including comedian Dan Ilic who shared on X he had spoken to Kamahl directly.
"There's nothing like the power of a personal conversation - if you have an elder person in your life who is voting no... talking to them and give them the right information," he said.
IN OTHER NEWS:
Following the interview on The Project, Kamahl returned to X to confirm his no stance.
"The PROJECT gave me the chance to publicly & decisively declare NO to the VOICE. I KNOW NOW, the VOICE is DEVISIVE (sic)! There must be BETTER WAYS FORWARD!
"I was right about the 40 Billion Indigenous Spending Claim & I'm a proud 54 yr old Foreign Born Australian !"
