This will be a familiar story to The BFD readers: a gutless council caves in to unhinged activists and tries to shut down a speaking event by a visiting public figure. The only differences are that it’s Australia, not New Zealand, and the public figure is an Aboriginal woman.
An Aboriginal woman who, like Don Brash and others, has the temerity to speak truth to the power of the media-cultural elite.
An Aboriginal woman was shouted down at a public speaking event in Brisbane last week because she objects to the “modern construct” of a welcome to country. Just days earlier the same welcome to country “construct” was used to try to ban Jacinta Price’s speaking tour — Mind the Gap — from the NSW coastal town of Coffs Harbour.
“Welcome to country” is about as genuine as a sequined dream-catcher. It’s a phoney-baloney “ceremony” made up by actor Ernie Dingo in the 1970s. But it’s become part of the virtue-signalling-white leftist’s basic toolkit, not to mention a nice little earner for “indigenous elders”. Now it’s being used as a political nulla-nulla, to bludgeon into silence anyone who dares stray from the narrative.
The national broadcaster ignored the Brisbane protest and at Coffs Harbour ran vicious attacks on Price while ignoring her side of the debate and denying her a response.
If indigenous disadvantage is our greatest national shame, then the way media handles Aboriginal issues does little to help.
To see the condescending, racism-of-low-expectations way the media deals with Aboriginal issues, one only need observe their language. Journalists who never use the word in any other context, earnestly demonstrate their “right-on” credentials by referring to alcohol as “grog”, or witter about a “mob”, or “country”. More importantly, the media, like the left in general, treat Aborigines like pets, or children, unable to take any responsible for their own failings or future.
Consider the extraordinary treatment handed out to Price, a Warlpiri woman, Alice Springs councillor, Coalition federal candidate and political activist, in Coffs Harbour last week, at the hands of that city’s council, local indigenous groups and the regional ABC radio station. Price’s national speaking tour, subtitled Bridging the Indigenous Divide, had already toured South Australia and Victoria.
Having failed to win the Northern Territory seat of Lingiari for the Coalition at the federal election, Price continues to advocate a message of personal responsibility and practical solutions to indigenous disadvantage, criticising the contemporary focus on symbolic issues such as welcome to country ceremonies and shifting Australia Day.
Her mission is to empower indigenous people and improve their lives but her proposals and rhetoric clash with the politically correct lines of the so-called progressive left.
Incredibly, after booking the local theatre, Price’s tour operators received a letter from Coffs Harbour City Council suggesting she seek permission from local indigenous organisations to speak. Think of the blatant racism (and sexism) at play here. A theatre is booked by an Aboriginal woman to speak and the council says she should seek permission.
[…] There are a number of issues at play here. The council was behaving in an appalling manner by imposing hurdles on this particular Aboriginal speaker that, to our knowledge, had not been imposed on anyone else.
Price’s freedom of speech was being threatened. Also, the ugliness of indigenous politics was being played out with the usual nasty attacks coming from overwhelming leftist indigenous groups towards Price, as a right-of-centre indigenous activist.
The same people who screech about imaginary “racism” at every turn, have no hesitation in hurling racist and sexist abuse at an Aboriginal woman who dares speak out. They’re given a nation-wide platform for their bigoted bile by the taxpayer funded ABC.
The ABC was lined up against the truth-tellers and dissenters.
It amplified the demonisation of Price, gave unquestioning coverage to the illiberal forces, left the council unchallenged and did not have the professional ethics or common human decency to give Jacinta Price so much as the right of reply. It is enough to make you despair. But Price is determined to soldier on.
Jacinta Price is expected to lodge a formal complaint.
theaustralian.com.au/business/media/lefts-shabby-portrayal-of-activist
If history is anything to go by, the ABC will ask itself, “Are we biased?”, and answer, “Of course not!” Case closed.