Indigenous people ‘distressed and disgusted’ by Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s comments on colonisation, Burney says

Indigenous Australians minister Linda Burney says comments made by Jacinta Nampijinpa Price that there were no lasting negative impacts of British colonisation have caused great distress among the Aboriginal community.

Speaking in Kogarah while handing out flyers for the yes campaign on Friday morning, Burney said the comments were “offensive” and “simply wrong”.

“There are many people I’ve spoken to last night, this morning, that are very distressed and quite frankly, pretty disgusted,” she said.

Colonialism had ‘positive impact’ on Indigenous Australia, says Senator Price – video

“But I am going to focus on the goal here and that is a successful referendum.”

Burney also said the comments were “simply wrong”.

“It’s a real betrayal to the many families that have experienced things like stolen generations,” she said.

“The idea that colonisation in any country … doesn’t have long and far-reaching effects is simply wrong.”

The comments were made by the leader of the Indigenous voice to parliament no campaign and shadow Indigenous Australians minister during her address to the National Press Club in Canberra on Thursday.

During her speech, Price criticised Indigenous organisations, which she claimed sought to “demonise colonial settlement in its entirety and nurture a national self-loathing about the foundations of modern Australian achievement”.

When asked to clarify whether she thought any Indigenous people were suffering negative impacts of colonisation, Price responded “no”.

“I’ll be honest with you, I do not think so. A positive impact, absolutely. I mean, now we have running water, readily available food,” she said.

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The federal opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has since praised Price as a “brave Indigenous woman”, while stopping short of endorsing her claim about colonisation.

“We either accept that people have a broad range of views, or we don’t. The left just say, well, we can only listen to people like Marcia Langton, but people on the right, like Jacinta Price, we can’t listen to,” he told the Today show on Friday morning.

“You’ve got somebody on display who is brave, prepared to stand up for what she believes in and believes passionately about making the better society for Indigenous Australians.”

The federal attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, accused the no campaign of sowing “fear and division across our wonderful country”.

“Hide who you are, cause fear, cause alarm, never actually discuss the actual issue on the ballot paper,” he said of the no campaign when speaking with ABC RN on Friday morning.

“We need to get back to what we’ve got to do in four weeks’ time.”