Former prime minister Tony Abbott has told a parliamentary inquiry the Voice to parliament will divide Australia along the lines of ancestry, as he criticised the process leading up to the referendum as “altogether too abbreviated”.

Abbott, a staunch opponent of the Voice, was a last-minute addition to Monday’s hearing schedule after this masthead revealed that he had been blocked from appearing by Labor MPs on the committee.

He flew to Canberra to give evidence in person after the committee reversed its decision earlier this morning.

This is what Abbott had to say:

I think that giving this Voice a right to make representations effectively to everyone on everything is going to make government much more difficult than it already is.

I think the first time the Voice makes representation, which is in its view inadequately heeded, it will be off to the High Court and I am very confident that any conceivable contemporary High Court will find that the Voice has an implied right to be heard, and that the government and the executive have an implied obligation to listen.

Frankly, I think that this process has been done badly from the beginning. I think this particular proposal should be pulled and I think we should start again, in a less partisan way.

If the government nevertheless is determined to go ahead, I would very much urge this committee to recommend to the government that the current proposal be significantly altered, in particular, to specify that nothing that the Voice does should be justiciable and nothing that the Voice does should constitute a veto on government.

Because if that is not specific, in the actual Constitution itself, you can be absolutely certain that the High Court will find that it is in practice.

Legal concerns about the Voice have been dismissed by an eminent group of former judges and constitutional experts.

Former High Court justices Robert French and Kenneth Hayne and Solicitor-General Stephen Donaghue are among those who have backed the amendment as legally sound, while Ian Callinan, also a former justice, has argued that concerns the Voice could delay and disrupt government and business activity “cannot be brushed aside”.