Liberal leader Peter Dutton has confirmed his party will actively campaign against an Indigenous voice to Parliament.

Mr Dutton says that better representing Australia’s marginalised traditional owners would be “divisive”. 

He has made the official stance of the Liberal one that backs constitutional recognition for Indigenous people, but without a Voice to parliament in an amendment. Instead, the party will push for recognition and representation to be rejected.

This decision has been met with strong criticism from Indigenous academic and one of the Uluru Statement's architects, Noel Pearson, who has labelled the Liberal Party's stance a “Judas betrayal” of the Australian people.

“This is a sad day for Australia that there would not be bipartisan support for such an important national enterprise," Pearson said this week. 

“He said the Liberal Party had made a “disgraceful attempt” to derail the Indigenous voice, but remains confident the referendum will succeed.

Pearson criticised the apparent unity ticket between Dutton, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, and former Liberal PM Tony Abbott, calling it a “voice of fear and prejudice and negativity compared to the voice of hope and friendship and reconciliation that Uluru offers”. 

He added that he believes the Liberal Party is out of step with the sentiment of the Australian people on this issue.

The Liberal Party's decision has left the future of the Indigenous voice in doubt, but Liberal MPs have insisted there is still an opportunity for bipartisanship on the Indigenous voice referendum after the party revealed it would not support the current model.

Liberal senator Simon Birmingham said there was bipartisan support for constitutional recognition but did not reveal his position on the Voice. 

“There can still be a means of salvaging something that can provide for the country a unifying, bipartisan moment,” he told ABC News.

Mr Dutton said he had approached the proposal with an open mind but ultimately a lack of detail made him hesitant to support it. His party has put forth and even less details proposal, based on far more limited consultation. 

Duttons disputed claims by the prime minister that he had been consulted on the terms of the Voice. 

“The prime minister misrepresents those meetings... I wouldn't frame it as a genuine engagement,” he told ABC Radio.

The model put forward by Labor would add a new section to the constitution recognising Indigenous people and enshrine a voice. The Uluru statement included a call for the establishment of an Indigenous voice, which it said should be enshrined in the constitution.

It remains to be seen whether the Australian people will support the Liberal Party's stance, but Pearson remains optimistic. 

“I am certain that every attempt to try and kill and bury Uluru will not succeed (and) the Australian people will rise to the historic opportunity we have to achieve reconciliation at last,” he told ABC Radio National.