Jacinta Price sues ABC for ‘racist’ defamation

Jacinta Price is suing the ABC for defamation over comments by Aboriginal groups who accused her of spreading ‘racist vitriol’.

Jacinta Price is suing the ABC over a report that delved into an effort by nine local Aboriginal organisations to convince Coffs Harbour City Council to cancel her Mind the Gap speaking tour. Picture: Chloe Elrich

Jacinta Price is suing the ABC for defamation over comments on local radio by Aboriginal groups in northern NSW that had accused the conservative Indigenous politician of trying to spread “racist vitriol” and “hate speech”.

Ms Price, deputy mayor of Alice Springs and a Warlpiri/Celtic woman, is suing the ABC over a report that delved into an effort by nine local Aboriginal organisations to convince Coffs Harbour City Council to cancel her Mind the Gap speaking tour.

The radio report, broadcast on ABC Coffs Coast in September 2019, put the spotlight on freedom of speech by drawing national attention to the conservative politician’s staunch opposition to the idea that Australia Day should be moved to another date.

Ms Price, who launched defamation proceedings in September last year, settled her claim against the Coffs Harbour and Districts Local Aboriginal Land Council in November, but has continued to pursue the ABC for damages in the Federal Court.

In an amended statement of claim filed in December, Ms Price says the ABC defamed her in multiple ways, including by conveying the meaning that she “spreads racist vitriol” and intended to use her “right-wing politics” to “divide” the Aboriginal community.

Ms Price also claims the report conveyed the meaning that she “encourages the type of attitude” that once enabled atrocities against Aboriginal people, after she labelled the rejection of her Mind the Gap talk by Coffs Harbour Aboriginal community groups as “backward”.

In the wake of the report on ABC Coffs Coast, the broadcaster’s Alice Springs station aired an interview with the chief executive of Coffs Harbour’s ­Aboriginal land council, Nathan Brennan. The amended statement of claim says the interview conveyed 13 defamatory meanings, including she should not have been permitted by Coffs Harbour council to speak in the town because she “spreads hate speech” about Aboriginal people and had tried to spread “racist vitriol” to schools.

It further states that Ms Price labelled the Gumbaynggirr ­people, the local Aboriginal group, as “backward”. By doing so, the statement of claim says, she shares the same attitude towards Aboriginal people that has enabled “Europeans to massacre them, to rape their women, to kill them, to steal their land and to treat them as sub-human”.

They say the publication “greatly injured” Ms Price’s personal, business, and professional reputation, and it has caused her to suffer “hurt feelings”.

In a statement on Sunday, a spokesperson for the ABC said it had “put forward a proposal to resolve” the matter but had not yet received a response. At the time, the broadcaster conceded it was “remiss in not ­offering Ms Price the opportunity to respond personally to local criticism”.

Ms Price, the Country Liberal Party’s candidate for the seat of Lingiari at the 2019 federal election, later accused the ABC of a “racist, sexist and illiberal pile on”.

Days after the report, Media Watch host Paul Barry criticised the ABC for failing to interview Ms Price and “repeating claims she was spreading racist vitriol”.