Opposition Indigenous Australians senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has outlined the reasons why she will be voting No in the Voice to Parliament referendum.
The coalition senator said an advisory body was a ‘step backwards’ and will create a ‘wall between Australians’ in a short opinion piece published by News Corp.
‘As more people tune in to the debate, it’s clear they understand the significance of the change they’ve been asked to consider, and they have questions,’ she wrote.
‘The one I get the most often, ‘Why are you, an Aboriginal woman, opposing the Voice? The answer is simple, it’s the Voice of division.’
Opposition Indigenous Australians senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has outlined the reasons why she will be voting No in the Voice to Parliament referendum
The coalition senator said an advisory body was a ‘step backwards’ and will create a ‘wall between Australians’ in a short opinion piece published by News Corp
Senator Price said Australia had spent 122 years trying to break down barriers between races and encourage better understanding of Aboriginal Australians.
She claimed the Voice would not promote recognition or reconciliation because it had been an ‘invite only process every step of the way’.
‘A movement of academics, activists and elites who think they know better. Trust us, they say, we’ll get it right and give you the details later,’ she wrote.
Senator Price said advocates for the Voice had ‘doggedly’ pursued a advisory body to Parliament despite push back from legal experts.
She claimed those experts had been subject to ‘name calling’ and ‘abuse’ for disagreeing with the principles of the Voice.
‘When Yes campaigners realised they couldn’t win on the merits or their proposal, they turned to emotional blackmail,’ she wrote.
‘They make promises they know they can’t keep.’
Senator Price then turned her attention to Yes campaigners – who she said were dismissing arguments against the voice as ‘racist and stupid’.
Professor Marcia Langton described Australia as a ‘horrible, racist country’ in audio from 2017
Senator Price said Anthony Albanese’s Voice to Parliament was being used as a mechanism to undermine the last 122 years of work to bring Australians closer together
She used the example of Yes advocate and Professor Marcia Langton, who branded Australia as a ‘horrible, racist country’ in a audio recording that resurfaced last week.
‘What fantasy world do they live in that would make them even ask the question?’ the Voice architect is heard saying in the clip.
‘Of course Australia is racist. It’s a horrible, racist country.’
Senator Price said the Voice was being used as a mechanism to undermine the last 122 years of work to bring Australians closer together.
‘For them, this Voice isn’t an attempt to unite, but a tool to divide,’ she wrote, adding she didn’t want her own family or country divided.
‘My mother is Warlpiri, my father is of Irish descent, all three of us are Australian. I want us to be one, together and not two divided,’ she wrote.
‘That’s why I’m voting No to the Voice of division.’
It comes after Prof Langton branded followers of Senator Price as ‘barking mad racists’ in a piece she wrote for The Saturday Paper in 2018.
Senator Price said Yes campaigners were dismissing arguments against the Voice as ‘racist and stupid’ and that legal experts were copping ‘abuse’ for disagreeing with its principles
The Yes campaigner also took aim at the politician’s mother, Bess, who she claimed had a ‘revulsion’ for her own culture.
‘Jacinta Price is useful to politicians,’ Prof Langton wrote.
‘She legitimises racist views by speaking them against her own people.
‘When she walks through Alice Springs and Tennant Creek with the prime minister, she waves a flag for the increasingly normal brand of race politics coming from Canberra.
‘The damage she causes to the Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory is well known.’
Last week, senator Price claimed colonisation had had no lasting negative impacts on Indigenous Australians during a speech to the National Press Club in Canberra.
Senator Price responded ‘I’ll be honest, no’ when asked if Indigenous people were worse off because of British settlement.
‘A positive impact? Absolutely. I mean, now we’ve got running water, we’ve got readily available food,’ she said.
‘Many of us have the same opportunities as all other Australians in this country.
‘We certainly have probably one of the greatest systems around the world in terms of the democratic structure in comparison to other countries – that is why migrants flock to Australia.’
Mr Albanese is pictured with Noel Pearson during a Yes campaign event last week
Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney blasted the claims, saying she was shocked by the remarks which were ‘simply wrong’.
‘They are offensive and a real betrayal to the many families that have experienced things like the stolen generations,’ the minister said.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has backed Senator Price, despite her failure to endorse a coalition policy of local and regional Indigenous Voices.
Mr Dutton previously said he would support regional Aboriginal Voice-type bodies rather than a national model.
He said people should listen to Ms Price and not the ‘capital city views’ of others, saying her comments were drawn from experience living in Alice Springs.
‘She was brave, prepared to stand up for what she believes in, and believes passionately about making a better society for Indigenous Australians,’ he told Nine’s Today Show last week.
During the same interview, Mr Dutton backtracked on his previous calls for a second referendum on constitutional recognition for Indigenous people, should the upcoming vote fail.