Voice debate spurs rise in cyber abuse, threats and harassment

The debate around the Voice has spurred a rise in abuse, threats and harassment of Indigenous Australians online.

A spokesperson for eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said there had been a more than 10 per cent increase in the proportion of complaints, “and this will likely intensify as we approach the referendum date, especially targeting First Nations people”.

The share of cyber abuse complaints rose from 5 per cent to 5.6 per cent in the past quarter.

Similar increases in cyber abuse complaints were recorded last year during the AFL Indigenous Round, where the proportion of reports made by Indigenous Australian adults surged to 13.2 per cent.

There was also a “noticeable increase in reports from the LGBTIQ+ community” during the 2017 Marriage Equality Plebiscite postal vote, the spokesperson said.

The ABC’s Stan Grant announced on Friday that he would stand down from Q&A, citing the regular racial abuse directed at him via social media.Credit: ABC

The leader of the No campaign against the Voice, Nyunggai Warren Mundine, said he had experienced an escalation of online racial abuse in the leadup to the referendum.

“I’ve had the most vitriolic and massive attacks on me, and dreadful things have been said,” he said.

“I think it’s about time that the prime minister and the leader of the opposition stood on stage together and said that this has got to stop ... There is a mature, sensible way [to] put your case forward without abusing people.”

It comes after ABC Q&A presenter Stan Grant announced on Friday that he would stand down from the show, citing the regular racial abuse directed at him and his family via social media.

“Barely a week goes by when I am not racially targeted,” he wrote in an op-ed published on the ABC website.

Grant also took aim at ABC management for its lack of public support following his appearance on an ABC panel during King Charles III’s coronation where he discussed the impact of colonialism on Indigenous Australians.

“No one at the ABC – whose producers invited me onto their coronation coverage as a guest – has uttered one word of public support. Not one ABC executive has publicly refuted the lies written or spoken about me. I don’t hold any individual responsible; this is an institutional failure,” he wrote.

Grant voiced support for ABC director of news Justin Stevens and said the ABC lodged an official complaint with Twitter about “relentless racial filth” directed at him earlier this year.

A number of high-profile ABC journalists have since voiced their support for Grant via Twitter.

ABC Radio host Virginia Trioli said she was “appalled and saddened” that a “brilliant broadcaster and thinker” had been “forced from the ever-crucial contest of ideas”.

She later said that since tweeting in support of Grant, her timeline had been flooded with “the most awful racist shit and inflammatory Voice disinformation”.

ABC Radio National host Patricia Karvelas said she “felt sick” about the abuse Grant had experienced, along with “the bullying from media that should know better”, while ABC’s 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson said the abuse directed at him was “disgusting”.

“There are no words adequate to the horror we feel at this,” she wrote.

Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury Andrew Leigh also weighed in on Twitter, writing that Grant’s experience should “serve as a wake-up call”.

“Social media can’t be allowed to poison our society,” he said.

Grant will make his final appearance on Q&A on Monday.

The 2022 Mapping Social Cohesion report by the Scanlon Foundation found that 61 per cent of Australians believe racism is a very or fairly big problem – an increase from 40 per cent in November 2020 – while just 2 per cent believed racism was not a problem at all.

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