Rita Panahi: Dunkley Labor candidate Jodie Belyea’s ‘white privilege’ sledge against voters

The Labor candidate for Dunkley’s “white privilege” analysis of No voters puts her at odds with some 56 per cent of the electorate she seeks to represent.

Labor candidate Jodie Belyea seems to be at odds with 56 per cent of the voters in Dunkley. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

In just over a week the seat of Dunkley will elect a new representative. Labor remains favourite to hold on to the seat but their candidate, Jodie Belyea, is doing her level best to clutch defeat from the jaws of victory.

To be fair she has refrained from calling the majority of the electorate racist during the campaign but she did write the following after the “no” vote’s triumph in the 2023 Voice referendum.

“I feel so many heavy emotions because of the display of what I can only describe as the worst of white privilege in the country,” Belyea wrote.

Does she really think only white Australians said ‘no’ to the race-based referendum?

Does she think the majority of the electorate she seeks to represent in the federal parliament are suffering from “the worst type of white privilege”?

Has she even been to Frankston?

Around 56 per cent of voters in Dunkley joined the majority of Australians in rejecting the politics of racial division and privilege.

Do they really want to elect someone who believes they are racist?

Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs Jacinta Nampijinpa Price had this to say in response to Belyea’s post-referendum commentary.

“Indigenous Australians thinking for themselves and having a diversity of views doesn’t suit the divisive narrative that the activists and elites are using to try and divide us,” Price said.

“I hope the same 56 per cent of people in Dunkley who said No to the divisive Voice say No to this sort of behaviour. The last thing we need in Canberra is more division and virtue signalling.”

It’s instructive to note how few of those who pushed the Voice have understood why it failed and failed spectacularly.

Here’s a clue; it had nothing to do with white privilege.