Piers Akerman: Jacinta Nampijinpa Price dismisses fanciful propaganda about Indigenous ‘harmony’
There is one major voice to consider over the left, and it’s Indigenous Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. Her pushes to better Indigenous communities are compelling, writes Piers Akerman.
Opinion
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Amid the usual vapid maiden speeches last week, the dazzling performance by Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price shone like the blinding first rays of dawn on a brilliant Central Australian morning.
Eloquent and focused, the Northern Territory senator not only exposed the hypocritical poverty of Labor’s approach to Indigenous affairs but went beyond, to paint a positive path toward a better future based on realities and outcomes not wishful thinking and the newly-created myth-laden rituals and concepts beloved of the left and its corporate virtue seekers.
Price, unlike the majority of those now clamouring to claim some Indigenous connection, is the real deal. Her mother was born under a tree and lived within the Warlpiri-structured environment. Her first language was Warlpiri, and her own parents, Price’s grandparents, had their first contact with white settlers in their early adolescence.
Talk about coming from the Stone Age to the Nuclear Age in a generation.
And now the granddaughter of those desert-dwelling nomads is the standout among the new crop of senators in the 47th parliament.
In her spellbinding speech she dismissed the fanciful propaganda that Indigenous people lived in blissful harmony before European settlement, saying: “We have a foundation of a sophisticated, but brutal, culture, where it was kill or be killed over resources such as water, women and later livestock – food for survival – or from doing the wrong thing like marrying the wrong way or sharing knowledge that’s not yours to share.”
That’s a smack in the face for the Labor leadership, the ABC and the numerous academics and former Coalition Indigenous Affairs Minister Ken Wyatt, who wholeheartedly embraced the nonsense written by self-proclaimed Indigenous author Bruce Pascoe which portrayed the country as having invented some sort of parliamentary democracy.
Price called out the extreme violence in communities like Wadeye, Tennant Creek, and her family’s community of Yuendumu which she claimed had been left behind and become even more marginalised and preyed upon by many opportunists for monetary gain, power and control by Labor design.
“My vision, my hope and my goal is that we can effect change that will see women, children and other victims in these communities become as safe as any of those living in Sydney, Melbourne or any other Australian city,” Price said.
“My goal is to halt the pointless virtue-signalling and focus on the solutions that bring real change that changes the lives of Australia’s most vulnerable citizens – solutions that give them real lives, not the enduring nightmare of violence and terror they currently live.”
Heartbreakingly, she mentioned an incident near Alice Springs within the past fortnight in which a 30-year-old mother of three and her two-month-old baby boy were shot dead in what is coming to light as a murder-suicide. She had learnt, she said, that the alleged killer had a history of violence and mental illness, and was due to face court for perpetrating violence against a former partner. She called out what she termed the turnstile justice system in the Northern Territory.
“More often than not, instead of being remanded, perpetrators are put on bail and, more often than not, while on bail, they perpetrate more violence,” she said, adding: “The system is broken when it serves perpetrators exceptionally better than victims.”
Killings occur so regularly in the Northern Territory that locals can’t help but feel desensitisation, she said.
Unafraid of the Indigenous industry’s lobbyists, Price called out the constant claim that racism was to blame for the black deaths in custody or the high rate of incarceration of Indigenous Australians, noting that the royal commission found systemic racism was not a factor in those deaths nor were they more likely than others to be jailed.
She rightly criticised the Land Rights Act, coupled with growing welfare dependency, for the failure to develop businesses and jobs, the keys to economic independence.
As for the Voice to Parliament being pushed by Prime Minster Albanese, she said she “personally have had more than my fill of being symbolically recognised”.
Australia should forget that formulaic Welcome to Country and instead welcome the clearest voice we’ve yet heard on Indigenous matters in our parliament, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.
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