Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians and leading No campaigner Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has rallied the No campaign in a crucial must-win state.
Senator Price spoke before hundreds of No campaigners at the Adelaide Convention Centre, telling volunteers to fight to “maintain equality” and end what she sees as the racial division that has erupted in the country ahead of the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum.
Loud protesters gathered outside the event, chanting with a megaphone: “Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.”
Senator Price, appearing alongside South Australian Senator Kerrynne Liddle and Nyunggai Warren Mundine AO, criticised the protesters, saying there had been a growing ugliness in the campaign.
“This is the level of racism and division the prime minister has to take responsibility for,” she said.
South Australia is considered a key battleground in the referendum campaign, with thousands of Yes and No volunteers expected to fan out across the state to persuade voters to back the change, which would embed a permanent advisory body for Indigenous Australians in the Constitution.
Mr Mundine said the referendum was “dividing the nation” was the central argument for a Voice was a “lie” because Indigenous Australians already had voices in the government.
Senator Price said South Australia was a crucial state for the campaign and she criticised Premier Peter Malinauskas’ state-based Voice model.
She said it had gone “silent” and had not improved the lives of South Australia’s most marginalised people.
South Australia became the first Australian state to legislate a First Nations Voice to Parliament, but elections for the advisory board were put back to March 2024, as the state-based model was being “overshadowed” by the referendum and causing confusion.
More to come.