No campaigner lashes SBS interview after referendum victory as ‘biased and disgraceful’

Warren Mundine has hit out at the taxpayer-funded broadcaster after a heated on-air exchange where host Narelda Jacobs told him off and called Marcia Langton a ‘national treasure’.

Prominent No campaigner and former SBS board member Warren Mundine has accused the taxpayer-funded broadcaster of taking sides in the referendum debate after he took part in what he described as the “worst interview” he’s had during the entire Voice campaign.

Mundine appeared on the SBS program The Point: Australia Decides, hosted by Narelda Jacobs and John Paul Janke on Saturday night. He became involved in a heated discussion after he accused Yes campaigner, Marcia Langton, of calling Australia “a racist country.”

“I’m not going to take any comments from a person that we are a racist country and that we are racist people,” Mr Mundine said, referring to comments Langton made earlier this year when she said if No arguments were pulled apart they come down to “base racism.”

Professor Langton responded to Mundine’s remarks, saying: “This is a very Trumpian play, this is the Steve Bannon playbook, create racial division by lying and then accuse me of being a provocateur.”

Professor Langton and Mr Mundine were talking on air at the same time when Jacobs, a Whadjuk Noongar woman, interjected and appeared to take the side of the prominent Yes campaigner.

“We are not going to sit here and take you abusing a national treasure like Marcia Langton, who never said that Australians were racists and her words were twisted,” Jacobs said.

“I’m going to stop you there Warren, we’ve just seen who Warren Mundine is.”

Professor Langton replied, “yes, that’s right.”

The professor also described No campaigner, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, as the “princess of assimilation.”

Marcia Langton and Warren Mundine debated the place of race in the Indigenous Voice to Parliament proposal on NITV’s the Point shortly after the referendum results were announced.

Read more: https://t.co/QKX6I334ZW#Referendum2023#AustraliaVotespic.twitter.com/rhOl4XkJ2c

— SBS News (@SBSNews) October 14, 2023

Mundine, who was an SBS board member from 2020 to 2022, said the interview was “biased and disgraceful.”

“That SBS interview was the worst interview that I’ve ever been involved in within the entire 12-month campaign,” he told The Australian.

“She (Narelda) had taken a side because she allowed Marcia to say we had a racist campaign, it’s a lie.

“The whole program and the presenters were totally biased.

“She (Professor Langton) is a national treasure and I’m just a redneck No voter.”

“The whole program and the presenters were totally biased,” says Mundine. SBS's program The Point hosted by Narelda Jacobs and John Paul Janke speaking with No campaigner Warren Mundine.

During the program Jacobs also took issue with Mr Mundine’s claims that insufficient details were provided about the referendum proposal.

“We are sitting with Marcia Langton in the studio who did actually provide the detail that everybody needed in the Calma-Langton report and I can’t be here as a journalist with a good conscience and not put to you, you are at odds with a majority of First Nations people in this country.”

Last week Diary reported that Jacobs told The West Australian newspaper that as an SBS employee she is careful in ensuring she does not publicly state her position on the Voice.

Despite this Jacobs posted on Instagram a video of herself where she was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words, “We support The Uluru Statement.”

During the program, Janke, a Wuthathi and Meriam man said “sadly” the referendum had been defeated.

Yes campaigner Professor Marcia Langton and No campaigner Warren Mundine go head to head on SBS's program The Point on the night of the Voice referendum.

An SBS spokeswoman said the “robust debate” between Professor Langton and Mr Mundine was moderated by Jacobs and Janke to “ensure that it remained fact based, constructive, and a safe space for discussion.”

She said SBS supported both hosts and the SBS and NITV team for “delivering an important and challenging discussion on the program.”

Professor Langton was also contacted but did not respond.

Multiple media outlets began calling the referendum as defeated from about 7.24pm AEDT on Saturday, including on the ABC, Sky News Australia and Seven News.

On free-to-air television the ABC’s coverage, led by David Speers, Dan Bourchier and Bridget Brennan had 582,000 viewers nationally for the count, while the decision had 482,000 viewers, official data from ratings firm OzTAM showed.

Seven’s half-hour Voice coverage, anchored by Michael Usher, had 456,000 viewers nationally, followed by Nine News’s coverage led by Peter Overton and Brooke Boney which drew 424,000 viewers.

Sky News Australia’s coverage, anchored by Kieran Gilbert, had 239,000 viewers across it main and regional channels.

SBS’s The Point program drew 75,000 national viewers.

During the ABC’s coverage, 7.30’s chief political correspondent Laura Tingle was also a panellist.

During the discussion she asked if the result meant, “Indigenous people end up feeling like they are not loved by their own country?”

She also said when speaking with Assistant Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy, that the Yes camp had been “fighting off a lot of disinformation.”

ABC Radio National host Patricia Karvelas interviewed Mr Mundine on Saturday night and put to him, “there were many things that your campaign said that weren’t true, do you regret taking that approach?”

On Sunday morning Karvelas said on ABC TV that the referendum became a “super partisan campaign.”

“It became constructed as Albanese’s Canberra Voice,” Karvelas said.’

“I always found that language troubling because on the facts this came from Aboriginal Australians who called for this,” she said.

Karvelas also paid tribute to the ABC’s Indigenous reporters who took part in covering the Voice referendum.

“Our many Indigenous reporters who can I say, I salute for doing such a wonderful result, bringing this story at a difficult time for them personally,” she said.

Karvelas also told viewers she has covered the idea for a Voice “for 15 years.”

“In fact, I wrote the first ever story about Noel Pearson’s idea of a Voice, so it’s been a long time that I’ve been reporting on the different versions of these proposals.”