Election 2025: Backlash against WA Jacinta Nampijinpa Price protest

The Noongar leader inviting others to join him in a protest against Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s visit to the WA city of Bunbury last year described Australia as ‘the most racist country on the face of the earth’.

Noongar leader Robert Eggington. Picture: AAP

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The Noongar leader inviting others to join him in a protest against Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s visit to the West Australian city of Bunbury last year described Australia as “the most racist country on the face of the earth”.

Robert Eggington, 68, plans a peaceful protest against Senator Price’s arrival at the port city on Friday with his wife, grandson and an unknown number of ­Aboriginal critics of the ­Coalition spokeswoman for ­Indigenous affairs.

Slurs and vitriol against Senator Price on social media ahead of her visit to the federal seat of Forrest south of Perth have led to extra planning by Australian Federal Police and state police.

There will also be private security detail at Senator Price’s town hall-style event with Liberal candidate for Forrest Ben Small and WA senator Michaelia Cash on Friday, billed as a discussion of the defeat of the voice, government waste and the ­Coalition’s plan to get Australia “back on track”.

Mr Eggington is among ­Aboriginal opponents of Senator Price who say she is not welcome on the traditional lands of the Noongar people in southwest WA. “Jacinta Price is not the voice of Aboriginal people, she obviously represents a chunk of white Australia,” Mr Eggington told The Australian.

“She represents racist perspectives and the Liberal Party has grabbed on to that. She helped kill the voice and wears that as a medal on her chest.”

There was a backlash on Wednesday to a letter written to Mr Small by local Noongar woman Renae Isaacs-Guthridge, who said the event with Senator Price should not take place until he clarified which elders, custodians or organisations had been consulted and pending “an explanation of how you determined this visit aligned with local community interests”.

Senator Price said this attempt at a veto was about politics, not culture. “The suggestion I am required to seek permission to visit an area before attending in my capacity as an elected member of the Australian Senate is nothing but politically motivated malice,” she said.

“This is not about race or traditional culture – it is about certain people and groups who disagree with me over political issues.”

NT senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. Picture: Gera Kazakov

Mr Small said by Wednesday afternoon he had received a big volume of correspondence from voters about Senator Price’s planned visit, some opposed and others in support.

Mr Eggington has previously discussed Senator Price’s role in the debate over an Indigenous voice in the Constitution by saying she was one of the architects of a campaign that convinced Australians the proposal was racist.

However, Mr Eggington argued on his Tribal Fires podcast last year there was another separate element to the No vote; people who were themselves motivated by racism.

“And of course the other side of No was an extremely racist hardcore representation of the fact that this country still remains as I believe the most racist country on the face of the earth,” he said.

Mr Eggington, who has worked in Noongar communities for decades on suicide prevention and crime prevention programs, said the Yes vote of more than 39 per cent was a victory in itself but young people now had “the privy of knowing just how racist this country is”.

He said post-referendum calls for an end to welcome to country ceremonies and for ­Aboriginal flags to be put away were telling. “Of course we all know they will take our culture, they will want to use our culture for their means but they’ll put our people, as this indicates, into the gutters of life or into the rubbish bins of life,” he said.

“So I think those things are important for our young people to grasp and to understand where they stand in multicultural Australia and that is underneath the multicultural races that have come after the British.”