Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander agencies, Voice to Parliament advocates and the prime minister have described a conspiracy theory on the length of Uluru Statement from the Heart as a misinformation campaign to avoid debating the facts. 

Proponents of the No campaign, including politicians and members of the Australians for Unity group, have this week repeated claims first spruiked online that the Uluru Statement from the Heart is a 26-page document.

That’s despite the official one-page signed document being publicly available online for seven years.

Where has it come from?

The conspiracy theory has been doing the rounds online for some time but has this week been repeatedly brought up in parliament in both the Senate and House of Representatives by the Coalition and One Nation.

On Tuesday LNP Member for Callide Colin Boyce used Question Time to suggest the statement was 26 times its actual length.

Deputy Opposition Leader Sussan Ley then sought to table 26 pages of information she said were accessed under a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.

That assertion was repeated in Question Time on Wednesday.

What are they alleging?

Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians Jacinta Nampijinpa Price told Sky News the National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA) gave her “verbal clarification that the document is 26 pages”.

“My office today sought clarification from the FOI team at NIAA to determine whether the Uluru Statement from the Heart is simply one page, or the full 26 pages,” she said.

The agency has since corrected Senator Nampijinpa Price clarifying that was not their response.

The NIAA confirmed the statement is a single page and that the remaining 25 pages included in the FOI release were background and excerpts drawn from the regional dialogues which informed the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

“The NIAA did not provide verbal clarification that the Uluru Statement from the Heart document is 26 pages long,” the letter read.

“What was verbally confirmed was that the publication of the correspondence on the Right to Know website between the NIAA and an individual, was accurate.”

Where are the documents?

The one page, 439 word Statement from the Heart is available online and has been for seven years.

It is also contained in the Referendum Council’s report.

Professor Megan Davis, one of the architects of the statement and a co-chair of the Uluru Dialogue, part of the Yes campaign in the Voice to Parliament, has labelled the theory about a secret 25 additional pages “bizarre” and criticised the proliferation of the claims online and in the media.

“It is like whack-a-mole, nobody is fact checking it’s astonishing,” she told ABC Radio Melbourne.

In a separate statement she said the 25 additional pages were called “Our Story” and were not part of the signed document.

“We have asked Australians to read the one pager and the ‘Our Story’ that follows and the summary of decision-making and many other documents contained in the report,” she said.

“We have conducted thousands of conversations about it and offered many more.

“When we encourage Australians to inform themselves by reading deeply, that is distorted and weaponised by a No campaign that has no alternative and is intent on misinformation and division.”