Calls for Voice to Parliament to end 'layers and layers of red tape': Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council chair Jamie Newman

Orange Aboriginal Medical Service chief executive and Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council chair Jamie Newman made the comments during an appearance before a joint parliamentary committee which has begun regional hearings to examine the draft constitutional amendments to hold the Voice referendum later this year.

Day two of the five-day hearing was held in Orange with representatives from local organisations including Orange City Council and the Wiradjuri Aboriginal Corporation.

At the hearing, Mr Newman lashed out at the "layers and layers of red tape" his health organisation had to battle through.

Mr Newman said a Voice would provide a "strength-based risk" in a system that maintained "failure and dysfunction in our communities".

He said government strategies were "always focused on the deficit of our people".

"We're funded because our people are sick. We're funded because our people are in jails, we're funded because people have been removed from families, where women are being bashed and men are being incarcerated," Mr Newman said.

He said the Voice would ensure Indigenous people were "heard and seen at the highest level" instead of having to wade through local, regional, state and federal entities.

"Not to be in the constitution sends a clear message to us as Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people that we're not seen at the higher level. We may be able to be recognised and seen, but we're not being heard," he said.

"[A Voice] ensures that there is reference to us as Aboriginal people that we will be heard, even from a small place like Orange or even further to a place like Condobolin."

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Mr Newman said community organisations were regularly competing for funding against other Aboriginal and mainstream health organisations in the regions through duplicated funding arrangements.

The Wiradjuri man spoke about the challenges in establishing the western NSW Aboriginal-led health organisation, which involved facing "multiple barriers with constantly changing governments and all their systems at every level".

"When we have multiple levels of government, not even talking to one another ... it's doomed to failure. Nineteen years of close the gap tells us that it hasn't worked," Mr Newman said.

"Unfortunately, I do not see [closing the gap] happening in my lifetime. My hope is that it will change for my kids and grandkids."

He said the multitude of referral and reference group advisory bodies "ticked a box" for government entities, while also creating division and failing to meet the needs of regional communities.

"We hit barrier after barrier when it comes to framework because people do not know how to put strategy policy into action on the ground for us," he said.

"If our people don't have a single line where we are heard, then we're going to have divide and conquer happening within our communities. This has happened for generations."

The committee will hold two more hearings this month in Perth and Cairns before it winds up in Canberra on May 1.