Jacinta Nampijinpa Price attacks ‘activist class’ for stoking racial divisions
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price says voice advocates are stoking racial divisions by using ‘emotional blackmail’ ahead of the referendum.
Opposition Indigenous Australians spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price says advocates of the voice to parliament are stoking racial divisions by weaponising “emotional blackmail” and “coercive control” tactics ahead of the referendum.
Senator Price, a senior leader of the No campaign, hit back at the intervention by Race Discrimination Commissioner Chin Tan, who “appealed to political leaders and the media to steer clear of making race the focus of the voice to parliament debate”.
Writing in Inquirer, Senator Price said “asking Australians to avoid highlighting race in the voice debate is like asking someone to avoid getting wet walking through monsoonal rains”.
“This is not the fault of everyday Australians but of the unyielding activist class that for the past decade has doused petrol on the flames of identity politics,” Senator Price writes.
“Through what has now become the formula of public discourse towards Indigenous Australians, we are effectively robbed of individuality. We are not afforded individual freedom or respect based on our unique human capabilities.”
The Northern Territory senator, who sits in the Nationals party room, said the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart was being sold to Australian people “with the racial – and incorrect – stereotype of uniform Indigenous groupthink”.
“The dialogues that culminated in the statement were strategically held with invited-only, unelected individuals of Aboriginal heritage as well as a selection of non-Indigenous Australians,” she writes.
Senator Price said the referendum was asking Australians to enshrine into the Constitution a “victim narrative that sustains a multibillion-dollar industry that works in two ways: to justify its existence, and to discourage and disparage anyone who seeks to call it into question”.
“We teach our children that emotional blackmail and name calling is unhealthy, and as adults in personal relationships these behaviours are characterised as coercive control. The voice to parliament debate has been captured by these tactics, which have been weaponised by proponents of the voice throughout debate.”
Nationals leader David Littleproud said the party’s 21 MPs would have a big say on the No pamphlet, which will take four weeks to finalise once the constitutional amendment passes the Senate. “We will play a very significant role in who chairs it and obviously the wording,” he said.
Asked what he felt was important to include in the pamphlet, Mr Littleproud said: “We have always felt that there is a key (tenet) to our country that every Australian is equal and we believe that there are already 227 voices which represent 26 million Australians and we already elected 11 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to parliament. We also think that there is significant risk to this because eminent legal minds from both the Yes and No side (are) saying this will have to be tested in the High Court.”
Mr Littleproud said the absence of a proposed and final model for the voice was worth emphasising in the pamphlet.
He said Anthony Albanese could have done this work by now if he had wanted to.
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