Shameful treatment of activist Jacinta Price by the left

Jacinta Price’s rhetoric clashes ‘with the politically correct lines of the so-called progressive left’. Picture: ABC

An Aboriginal woman was shouted down at a public speaking event in Brisbane last week because she objects to the “modern construct” of a welcome to country. Just days earlier the same welcome to country “construct” was used to try to ban Jacinta Price’s speaking tour — Mind the Gap — from the NSW coastal town of Coffs Harbour.

The national broadcaster ignored the Brisbane protest and at Coffs Harbour ran vicious attacks on Price while ignoring her side of the debate and denying her a response.

If indigenous disadvantage is our greatest national shame, then the way media handles Aboriginal issues does little to help.

I cut my teeth in reporting indigenous affairs by revealing the fabrication of the Hindmarsh Island so-called secret women’s business in 1995, which is a bit like cutting your teeth as a firefighter on Ash Wednesday. Not to put too fine a point on it, this taught me much and changed my life while also imparting two important lessons about our media.

First, the most dangerous thing you can do in reporting indigenous affairs is shun political posturing and search for the verifiable truth.

Second, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and myriad other institutions of the left have little interest in the truth when it comes to such matters but, rather, place a great deal of store in their political posturing.

Consider the extraordinary treatment handed out to Price, a Warlpiri woman, Alice Springs councillor, Coalition federal candidate and political activist, in Coffs Harbour last week, at the hands of that city’s council, local indigenous groups and the regional ABC radio station. Price’s national speaking tour, subtitled Bridging the Indigenous Divide, had already toured South Australia and Victoria.

Having failed to win the Northern Territory seat of Lingiari for the Coalition at the federal election, Price continues to advocate a message of personal responsibility and practical solutions to indigenous disadvantage, criticising the contemporary focus on symbolic issues such as welcome to country ceremonies and shifting Australia Day.

Her mission is to empower indigenous people and improve their lives but her proposals and rhetoric clash with the politically correct lines of the so-called progressive left.

Incredibly, after booking the local theatre, Price’s tour operators received a letter from Coffs Harbour City Council suggesting she seek permission from local indigenous organisations to speak. Think of the blatant racism (and sexism) at play here. A theatre is booked by an Aboriginal woman to speak and the council says she should seek permission.

When asked to provide examples of any other booking being asked to seek permission, the council said it had “never requested anyone” seek permission to “speak at any public function”. This is dissembling — the council had suggested Price seek permission to “come onto country”.

As this kerfuffle developed, a group of nine local Aboriginal organisations put out a media release revealing they had met with the council to “request that the tour be cancelled at their (council) premises”. The release contained disgusting and highly defamatory descriptions of Price’s aims, advocacy and character.

There are a number of issues at play here. The council was behaving in an appalling manner by imposing hurdles on this particular Aboriginal speaker that, to our knowledge, had not been imposed on anyone else.

Price’s freedom of speech was being threatened. Also, the ugliness of indigenous politics was being played out with the usual nasty attacks coming from overwhelming leftist indigenous groups towards Price, as a right-of-centre indigenous activist.

Whatever was happening here, this was a story. On my television program, The Kenny Report, I interviewed Price and referred to the release from the indigenous groups. I also got comment from the council, which said it was not banning Price but reacting to concerns from local indigenous groups: “In keeping with council’s commitment to the traditional and customary protocols of our indigenous community members, council suggested to Ms Price’s representatives that she seek permission from the local Gumbaynggirr Aboriginal community to come onto country.”

As I said on air, this behaviour from the council is nothing short of racist, a view that was endorsed by others on air including Coalition senator Amanda Stoker and former ALP national president and current Liberal candidate Warren Mundine.

The Coffs Harbour ABC station talked about the issue on air the day after Price defiantly went ahead with her speech. Morning presenter Fiona Poole apparently had attended the function but didn’t speak with Price, interview her or seek her views on the controversy. Instead Poole described Price on air as someone who “has very much cosied up with the right side of politics”. Well, yes, Price was a Coalition candidate so there is no secret about her politics; but Poole, strangely, went on to link her to Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones rather than Scott Morrison and Ken Wyatt.

Poole said Price “is very divisive” in the indigenous community. Really? Then how divisive were those people defaming her and trying to stop her event?

The Coffs Harbour ABC sent a reporter, Claire Lindsay, to speak with some of the Gumbaynggirr community groups who had opposed Price’s visit.

Lindsay quoted, on air, some of the defamatory media release declaring that Price was “unwelcome” because she “spreads racist vitriol, vilifies and ridicules Aboriginal people and cultures”.

Incredibly, Lindsay did not interrogate or qualify these statements, seek examples that might support it, or contact Price for her point of view.

The indigenous leaders she interviewed went nowhere near that sort of language on air and failed to raise a single specific instance of anything Price had said that they disagreed with. Nor were they pressed to explain or justify their extraordinary efforts to silence an Aboriginal woman.

This episode is deeply worrying. It speaks to a silencing of dissent in a crucial area of public policy and to the malleability of a local government body in the face of illiberal and malicious political posturing in indigenous affairs. And where was the ABC? Was it seeking truth, defending free speech or supporting an Aboriginal woman whose reputation was being maligned and whose rights were under threat?

No, just like the Hindmarsh Island affair all those years ago, the ABC was lined up against the truth-tellers and dissenters.

It amplified the demonisation of Price, gave unquestioning coverage to the illiberal forces, left the council unchallenged and did not have the professional ethics or common human decency to give Jacinta Price so much as the right of reply. It is enough to make you despair. But Price is determined to soldier on.

Jacinta Price is expected to lodge a formal complaint. I will discuss this with her tonight on Kenny on Media.