By Kevin Airs For Daily Mail Australia
04:50 21 Jun 2023, updated 05:14 21 Jun 2023
- ‘Effortlessly cool’ Blak activist is former ABC journalist
- Jennetta Quinn-Bates was media advisor to Lidia Thorpe
The elegant protester at Lidia Thorpe’s side who became an instant fashion icon with her NO sunglasses is a Walkley scholarship-winning former ABC journalist.
Jennetta Quinn-Bates, 29, cut a striking figure this week in a dress in the colours of the Aboriginal flag, matched with a pearl necklace and her chic protest shades.
She was one of the Blak Sovereign Movement supporters who stood with the ex-Greens senator as she confirmed her opposition to The Voice to Parliament on Tuesday.
Ms Quinn-Bates – who bears a tattoo on her shoulder which reads, ‘Stars can’t shine without darkness’ – was briefly a media advisor to Ms Thorpe before leaving the role in April.
But she was still by her former boss’s side during Tuesday’s fiery press conference in Canberra which saw protesters clash with journalists, and was seen whispering advice into the senator’s ear at one stage.
The black rights activist and Barkandji woman won the first Walkley Young Indigenous scholarship in 2019 while working with ABC TV in Alice Springs.
The award saw her move to Sydney to work with Network Ten and the website Junkee, before a switch to SBS and NITV, and a later move into Canberra politics.
Her social media includes pictures of her with media personalities including ABC chair Ita Buttrose, former Q+A host Stan Grant and talkback legend John Laws.
But it also shows her with Indigenous elders and prominent Aboriginal politicians including Warren Mundine and Ken Wyatt, who represent opposite sides of The Voice debate.
Her Indigenous roots are from Broken Hill in central-west NSW – until her father and his siblings were taken from their family as part of the Stolen Generation when he was just six.
The youngsters grew up in a church-run children’s home in Muswellbrook, in the NSW Hunter Valley, where her parents met through Ms Quinn-Bates’ grandmother who worked there.
‘My father was raised not knowing much about our traditional culture but always told me to be proud!’ she posted on Instagram.
Throughout her life, she has been a vocal advocate of Indigenous and LGBTQI rights, which has come into even closer focus in the lead-up to the Voice referendum.
Even before senator Thorpe had decided her stance on the Voice, Ms Quinn-Bates – known as Netta by those close to her – had vowed to fight and vote against it.
While still working for the senator, she clarified that her views did not speak for the controversial politician who had yet to finalise her own stance.
She claims Indigenous leaders like Professor Megan Davis – a former UN lawyer who helped write the Uluru Statement from the Heart – have silenced Indigenous ‘grassroots voices’.
‘Don’t forget Prof Megan Davis admitting dialogues for Voice to Parliament and Statement from the Heart purposely excluded community leaders / leaders of grassroots movements etc,’ she tweeted recently.
‘This is as disrespectful as it gets when you’re attempting to speak for us. Leaders are decided BY US!’
She added: ‘This is an issue that will just get worse as we enter territory like “Voice to Parliament” where a handful of people will speak for all of us and “represent” our views.
‘I have no faith they will be repped properly. Those who don’t agree will be vilified and silenced, again.’
She added in another tweet: ‘Please don’t be scared to let us hear from people that don’t agree with the Uluru Statement.
‘It would be really refreshing and beneficial for everyone to actually hear opposing views from First Nations people.’
Although her time officially working with senator Thorpe was brief, Ms Quinn-Bates repeatedly praised her boss in tweets.
‘My boss gave me a Parker pen for Christmas with a personalised coffee mug,’ she posted in December 2022.
‘I feel pretty special! My last boss just gave me a headache!’
Last week, senator Thorpe was criticised for wearing a T-shirt in the Senate emblazoned with Gammin – a slang word for fake.
But in March, Ms Quinn-Bates hailed the senator for allowing her to use the word in a media release.
‘Yesterday Lidia let me send out a media release that called the government gammin,’ she tweeted at the time.
‘She let me respond to a media outlet asking racist questions, saying “we don’t respond to racist rhetoric” and today she called my writing perfect.
‘Senator Thorpe is the best boss ever.’
Although she left the senator’s office just days later, she remains close to Thorpe who is now independent since leaving the Greens to represent the Blak sovereign movement.
Both now want to see the Voice referendum fail in favour of a treaty and sovereign rights for First Nations people in Australia.
They believe accepting the Voice would be assimilation into white colonisation and insist Australia’s Indigenous people have never ceded sovereignty.
According to her tweets, she believes the Voice would be powerless – and is just an expensive, indulgent exercise in appeasing white guilt.
‘Atrocious decision by LABOR to spend MILLIONS on a referendum during a cost of living crisis,’ she added.
‘Does Albo not think Blackfullas have enough to deal with, like trying to survive, without adding a campaign dripping in racism?’
In her Instagram feed, she incorporates politics with fashion – and in her most recent post, she models an eye-catching gold dress.
She captioned it: ‘Media can silence grassroots voices – but they can’t silence fashion, DARLING.’
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Ms Quinn-Bates for comment.