Prominent ‘Yes’ campaigner and co-author of the Uluru Statement from the Heart Professor Marcia Langton has complained loudly about racism from opponents of the Voice.

But it was revealed this week that she had once published a newspaper article calling fellow indigenous colleague Senator Jacinta Price and her mother the “coloured help”.

The newspaper column was published in The Saturday Paper in 2018.

In the column headlined "The folly of Jacinta Price", Langton described the shadow Indigenous affairs minister and her mother, a former Northern Territory cabinet minister, as "useful coloured help" representing conservatives.

“Bess and Jacinta (Price) have become the useful coloured help in rescuing the racist image of these conservative outfits," she wrote.

She claimed that “the majority” of Senator Price’s social media followers were “the rabid racists who claim to support a pro-Aboriginal cause by backing the aspirant’s bizarre political agenda”.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton slammed Langton’s comments after they surfaced on Thursday.

“Well it’s not an off-the-cuff remark or something she said in passing that she now regrets this is a common theme over a long period of time," he told Sydney radio.

“And there’s something in the motivation that I guess we don’t know about, but it’s certainly very bitter and vitriolic.

“And it deserves further examination too… Because Marcia Langton’s likely to be one of the people who will form the body of the Voice.

“I suppose Australians have got to ask themselves between now and October 14 whether somebody like Marcia Langton as part of the Voice, and advising government on every issue that the government’s contemplating, whether or not that’s going to help Indigenous people in remote communities.”