- Coalition senator has again accused the ABC of being biased
- Ms Price said national broadcaster ‘must pull people into line’
Indigenous Coalition senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has again accused the ABC of biased support for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
Ms Price, who is the Shadow Indigenous Australians minister, is a leading figure in the movement opposing the Voice.
The NT senator said ABC lacked ‘balance’ after it emerged three of its most prominent presenters gave promotional quotes for a book in the support of the Voice.
Quotes from 7.30’s Laura Tingle, Radio National host Patricia Karvelas and ABC Canberra’s Dan Bourchier appear on the cover of Thomas Mayo’s Finding the Heart of the Nation book.
‘As a publicly funded broadcaster, the ABC must pull its people into line and ensure balanced reporting,’ Senator Price said.
Tingle called the Uluru Statement – which has led to the upcoming referendum on the Voice – a ‘truly transformational gift … if only we take it’.
Karvelas said the book was ‘a profound piece of work that asks us to consider a future where First Nations people … are placed at the heart of our country.’
Bourchier said the Voice was ‘a powerful reminder of the gift from the Elders and a call to action to all Australians’.
But Ms Price said ‘The Uluru Statement is a document signed by just 250 people at an invitation-only event that does not represent all Indigenous Australians.
‘They are exploiting Uluru and culture to ram their own political agenda into our nation’s rule book and founding document,’ she told the Daily Telegraph.
Earlier this year, ABC staff were given training to ensure their personal views did not cause their reporting of the Voice to be biased one way or the other.
But Karvelas has been roundly criticised by Ms Price and other opponents several times, particularly for an interview she did with Indigenous leader Noel Pearson where he called Peter Dutton’s opposition to the Voice a ‘Judas betrayal’.
On another ABC interview last November, Mr Pearson said Ms Price is caught up in a ‘tragic redneck celebrity vortex’ involving rightwing views and think tanks.
‘Jacinta is a very compelling figure but she’s caught in a vortex,’ he said.
