ABC Defends Coverage of ‘The Voice’ Debate

An employee walks past the logo of the ABC located at the main entrance to the ABC building located at Ultimo in Sydney, Australia, on June 5, 2019. AAP/David Gray

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has stood by an interview it conducted with Indigenous leader Noel Pearson following the federal opposition’s decision not to back the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

On April 5, opposition leader Peter Dutton announced that MPs of the centre-right Liberal Party voted “overwhelmingly” to not to support The Voice.

Sometime this year, Australians will go to the polls in a national referendum on whether to embed a 24-member advisory body into the Constitution that can make “representations” to Parliament on matters affecting Indigenous peoples.

“We’ve been clear that we don’t support [Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s] ‘Canberra Voice.’ It’s divisive, and it’s not going to deliver the outcomes to people on the ground,” Dutton told reporters in Canberra.

Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton at a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on April 5, 2023. AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

“Our proposal is a local and regional Voice so that we can listen to those women and listen to those elders on the ground and get a better outcome,” he said.

Pearson’s ABC Critique of the Liberal Party

In response, ABC Radio National’s RN Breakfast ran a 16-minute interview with Pearson, an advocate for the “Yes” campaign for The Voice, who delivered a scathing commentary on the Liberal Party and Dutton.

“I couldn’t sleep last night. I was troubled by dreams and the spectre of darkness, the Dutton Liberal Party’s Judas betrayal of our country,” he said on April 6.

Noel Pearson at Sydney Town Hall on Nov. 5, 2014. Peter Rae—Pool/Getty Images

“He doesn’t mind chucking Indigenous Australians and the future of the country under the bus, just so he could preserve his miserable political hide,” Pearson said.

“I see the leader of the Liberal Party, Mr. Dutton, as an undertaker,” he added. “Preparing the grave for Uluru. It’s a very sad day for Australia that we can’t have bipartisanship.”

Indigenous Senator Jacinta Price, an advocate for the “No” campaign, criticised ABC for selecting interviewees that aligned with one side of the debate.

“Anytime anyone like me or Peter Dutton asks a question or expresses some scepticism about what would be the biggest ever change to our Constitution, the ABC goes straight to their contact list of Voice activists to trot out their divisive political talking points,” she told the Daily Telegraph.

“They let Voice activists label their opponents racist, call them names, and launch into partisan political point scoring—all while accusing the ‘No’ side of stoking division.”

National's Northern Territory Senator Jacinta Price prior to being interviewed by television at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on July 28, 2022. AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

Pearson has previously claimed that Price was opposing The Voice because she was caught up in a “celebrity vortex.”

“It gets her out in front of people, and it gets a lot of cheers, but it’s also a redneck celebrity vortex, and ultimately it’s a tragic redneck celebrity vortex that she’s caught up in,” he told ABC Radio in November.

“This has been a campaign in the making for the past three years, and their strategy was to find a black fella to punch down on other black fellas,” he said.

ABC Defends Reporting

Meanwhile, ABC issued a statement on April 7 saying the host of its RN Breakfast (RNB) program had interviewed people from both sides of The Voice debate.

“[Patricia] Karvelas put forward the arguments of opposition leader Peter Dutton on several occasions during the interview with Noel Pearson,” it said.

The headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in the background behind a UTS building in Ultimo of Sydney, Australia, on Jan. 5, 2023. Daniel Teng/The Epoch Times

“Previous editions of RN Breakfast have featured interviews with senior Coalition MPs and other prominent figures, including Julian Leeser, Paul Fletcher, Barnaby Joyce, Sussan Ley, Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe, and business advisor and commentator Warren Mundine.

“Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has been invited onto the program on numerous occasions. She is yet to accept that invitation.”

ABC also said the opposition leader Dutton was interviewed prior to Pearson.

However, Mundine, an advocate for the “No” vote, pushed back on ABC’s claim saying to not use him as an example.

“This year, I’ve had half as much airtime on RNB as Pearson, never a 16-minute rant. He’s had three of them in four months. Since Nov 1, I count six times more RNB airtime to blackfellas pushing Yes than us blackfellas in the No campaign,” he wrote on Twitter.