Indigenous Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price condemns Crikey’s ‘eugenics’ headline

A Crikey headline on an opinion article accusing the No campaign of being a ’Trojan horse for Eugenics thinking’ has been labelled ’disgraceful’ by Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.

Online news website Crikey’s headline on an opinion article accusing the No campaign of being a “Trojan horse for Eugenics thinking” has been labelled “disgraceful” by Indigenous senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.

On September 19, the website’s publisher Private Media ran a 1500-word comment article written by its public affairs correspondent Maeve McGregor, who said in the article that the No campaign was “as clever as it is slippery and dangerous”.

The article was critical of opposition Indigenous affairs spokeswoman Senator Price’s recent National Press Club speech and said: “She falsely and flatly denied the ongoing consequences of colonisation on First Nations people and invoked the language of assimilation.”

In the article, McGregor said, “Underlying the right’s moral indignation against the voice, if we’re to take it seriously, is an irrational, self-implicating fear Indigenous peoples will use the constitutional change to exact revenge for the dark chapters of Australian history.”

McGregor also said: “The endpoint of assimilation heralds something altogether more dangerous, and that is the resurrection of eugenics-inspired thinking.”

Senator Price condemned the headline and attacks on debate in the coming referendum.

“Disgraceful attacks like these have no place in the public discourse, especially when we are debating something as important as a change to our Constitution,” she said.

“No credible news outlet would ever consider publishing them.

“The Yes camp – and that includes Crikey – should stop sneering at ordinary Australians who disagree with their plan to divide the nation.”

The website originally ran the headline, “The right’s No campaign is Trojan horse for Eugenics thinking,” before hours later writing, “The right’s No campaign is Trojan horse.”

Crikey’s editor-in-chief Sophie Black defended the headline.

“The headline was changed for brevity: originally from ‘The right’s No campaign is Trojan horse for Eugenics thinking’ on (the) website to ‘The right’s No campaign is Trojan horse for Eugenics’ to make (the) headline shorter for our newsletter,” she said.

“We then shortened it further to ‘The right’s No campaign is Trojan horse,” all within a short space of publishing.

“We won’t be apologising and stand by the article entirely.”

Email correspondence sent to Crikey subscribers at the weekend did not mention eugenics in the short teaser.

“The right’s No campaign is a Trojan horse,” the newsletter read. “Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s comments exposed the ideological game plan of the right, and it’s ugly.”