A major central Australian Aboriginal organisation has delivered a stinging rebuke to new opposition spokeswoman for Indigenous Australians, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.
It came as another Liberal MP threatened to break ranks on the party’s official opposition to the Indigenous Voice.
Victorian MP Russell Broadbent reportedly told ABC radio on Thursday that he didn’t agree with the official Liberal decision to advocate for local and regional Indigenous voices but not a national Voice.
“I think on Indigenous issues you need to hear Indigenous voices,” he said.
“[Opposition Leader Peter Dutton] has said we’re going to have local input and then we’re going to have regional input.
“I thought the next step would automatically be that you’d have national input. So there’s a difference there to what the party is proposing.
“But that’s just me. It’s just a bigger issue for me.”
Mr Broadbent said Indigenous people nationwide were “broadly at the bottom end of the pecking order and that’s where they’ve been for a long time”.
“It’s actually about the relationship with Indigenous people and what is the core problem…. The definition of insanity to me is to keep doing what you’ve been doing for no result, for billions and billions of dollars spent for no better result.”
Elsewhere, the NT Central Land Council has come out swinging after Senator Price appeared in an advertisement backing the ‘no’ campaign against an Indigenous Voice, saying she did not speak for or listen to it.
“She needs to stop pretending we are her people,” Central Land Council deputy chair Warren Williams, from Yuendumu, said in a statement on Thursday.
“We are tired of her playing politics with the grassroots organisations our old people have built to advocate for our rights and interests.”
In the nine-minute ad filmed in her hometown Alice Springs, Senator Price shares her experience growing up in a blended family with an Indigenous mother and a white father.
“What’s important to me is that we don’t divide ourselves along the lines of race in this country,” she says.
“I don’t want to see my family divided along the lines of race because we are a family of human beings and that’s the bottom line.”
Senator Price was promoted to the shadow cabinet after Liberal MP Julian Leeser resigned from the frontbench so he could campaign in favour of the ‘yes’ campaign.
She appears alongside her husband Colin Lillie, who was born in Scotland and recently became an Australian citizen.
In the ad, Mr Lillie said he wouldn’t stand for a racial line being put through his family.
“Later this year politicians will be asking us to vote on a major change to our constitution. They want to establish a so-called Voice to parliament. This is a really big deal,” Senator Price said.
“The constitution is the rulebook for governing the country and they want the rules to change.
“I’ll be voting ‘no’ because this will not unite us, this will divide us.”
But Mr Williams said the Voice was a big opportunity.
“The Voice comes from the people,” he said.
“We want to go ahead with it. We will probably never have that chance again.”
He said the council was well aware of the scale of the challenges its members and their families faced.
“We have many good men and women who are trying hard to make our communities better places, who are desperate to be heard, and Senator Price’s divisive approach isn’t helping,” he said.
Senator Price has claimed NT authorities are returning fostered Aboriginal children to abusive homes.
National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds said there was no evidence to support such a claim.
Mr Williams said by generalising about Aboriginal people without any evidence and authority, Senator Price was hurting them.
Lajamanu community leader Valerie Patterson said the Senator was misrepresenting the support for the voice in remote communities.
“I am a Warlpiri woman and I will vote ‘yes’ because I believe that having the right to be heard by the parliament and the government will open a door for our children,” Ms Patterson said.
“Senator Price should support us, not tell lies about us.”
On Wednesday, Torres Strait Islanders and far north Queenslanders addressed a parliamentary inquiry examining the wording of the proposed constitutional change.
Torres Strait Island Regional Council Mayor Phillemon Mosby said the people of the Torres Strait saw the Voice as unfinished business.
“We stand with our Aboriginal brothers and sisters of this country, as Torres Strait Islanders, we support the voice to parliament,” he said.
The advertisement featuring Senator Price was released on Wednesday by the campaign group Fair Australia. It is funded by conservative lobby group Advance.
The proposed Voice would recognise Indigenous Australians in the constitution and establish a body that would advise government on matters that affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Australians will vote in the referendum on the Voice later this year.
-with AAP
