Jacinta Price talks about her plan to tackle Indigenous disadvantage

Firebrand Indigenous leader Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has declared what her first act would be if she was made prime minister.

Indigenous leader Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has declared that her first act if she was made prime minister would be to tackle disadvantage without focusing on race and instil a sense of national pride in ­Aboriginal Australians.

The firebrand campaigner also said that a new “enlightenment” is needed to advance First Nations people.

Senator Price said she believed Australia needed to tackle disadvantage without regard to race.

“First things first, I would want to focus on supporting Australians on the basis of need, not race. Because one thing that I absolutely understand is that being Indigenous doesn’t automatically make you disadvantaged. It’s your circumstances. And then we could focus our efforts on supporting our most disadvantaged,” she said.

And she said she would promote a more rounded understanding of history that would encourage Aboriginal people to be proud of being Australian as well as Indigenous.

“I would push to understand our nation’s history in its entirety and work on being proud to call ourselves Australian,” she said. “If our children don’t have pride in who they are, how are they going to be the future leaders who want to resolve some of our tough problems and recognise what it is that makes us a wonderful country?”

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price wants to change the conversation about Indigenous disadvantage. Picture: Chloe Erlich

Senator Price, whose profile soared after her work for the No campaign for the Voice, said that just as the West had rejected its historical misogyny, so too did Indigenous communities need to move on from some outdated traditional beliefs instead of “romanticism” about them.

She cited a traditional belief that mothers should be punished or ostracised following the death of a child, because premature deaths were attributed to sorcery and a scapegoat was needed.

“We don’t burn women at the stake and accuse them of being witches anymore. So why should we suggest that sorcery is the cause of any premature death or illness?” she asked.

“We’ve got to have our enlightenment stages as well. But we’re continually told this romanticism about being the world’s oldest living culture. Yeah, that’s great. But what does that mean for trying to establish ourselves in a modern Australia? And not just survive, but thrive?”

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price as a child with her family.

Senator Price said her family were once dyed-in-the-wool Labor voters but that she felt the left had worsened the plight of Aboriginal people by treating them as victims and denying them personal responsibility.

“I think like a lot of people, I feel like Labor have abandoned the working class,” she said. “And for Aboriginal people there’s such a dependency, it’s ridiculous. It’s what’s destroying Aboriginal people out in communities … telling Aboriginal people it’s not your fault you’re in this takes away their agency.”

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price at Ngukurr in the NT.

And yet by becoming more conservative and coming out against the Voice she is now treated as a traitor or an apostate by many of her old friends.

“The expectation of activism, activism, activism; just fight for everything to be handed to you. Well, actually, where’s it gonna get you? Where do you stand on your own two feet as a human being?” she said.

“You need to be able to have the opportunity to provide for yourself and your family. That’s the ultimate freedom but that’s not what the left encourages. And growing up in a place like Alice Springs, surrounded by lefty friends and family, all of a sudden there’s all these people that don’t want to know me, don’t want to have anything to do with me. And it’s like: Wow. I’ve known you since I was a kid. The tolerance of them? There’s no such thing as ­tolerance.”

Matters of the Heart by Jacinta Nampijinpa Price with Sue Smethurst will be published by HarperCollins Publishers Australia in February 2025. RRP $36.99. Pre-order now via Amazon.