Piers Akerman: Price proves her worth among headline grabbers

Reflecting on 2018 it was difficult to ignore the sheer mediocrity of the men and women who put themselves forward as our national leaders but the little-known Jacinta Nampijinpa Price shone, writes Piers Akerman.

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Reflecting on 2018 it was difficult to ignore the sheer mediocrity of the men and women who put themselves forward as our national leaders.

This is one of the many reasons that Australians have joined others in the Western world in switching off from traditional politics and exploring the possibilities offered by disrupters — take a bow Donald Trump — and independent politicians — curtsy, please, Kerryn Phelps.

Interestingly, Mr Trump has angered his many detractors by actually achieving many of his goals. Dr Phelps has so far been less successful. She has achieved nothing since her brief but well-publicised entry to politics.

Dr Kerryn Phelps is yet to achieve anything of note. Picture: Christian Gilles

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young has gained notoriety for her nuttiness. Picture: AAP

In fact she has joined the ranks of a team of women in Canberra who, like the publicity queens of social media, are famous for their self-promotion, not for anything they’ve actually done.

Think of former foreign minister Julie Bishop, who has even leapt from an ocean-racing yacht in the Sydney-Hobart challenge to draw attention to herself or some endeavour which no one can name because Ms Bishop’s association with the doubtless worthy cause sunk it from sight.

Or Julia Banks, the sometimes Liberal MP whose incessant whining about the brutal nature of politics has given her colleagues good reason to wish her well in whichever field she now chooses to take her carping views — so long as she is a long way from them.

There are others such as the Greens’ Sarah Hanson-Young and Labor’s Louise Pratt, who have gained notoriety for their sheer nuttiness, but fortunately in the past year there have been several women who have shown what can be done when personal publicity is not the primary goal.

Julie Bishop jumped off the back of Wild Oats during the Sydney-Hobart yacht race … but why? Picture: Craig Greenhill

Perhaps the most impressive personality — but least known across the nation — is Jacinta Nampijinpa Price who, at enormous personal risk, has exposed the glaring hypocrisy of those who parade their concern for the preservation of what they claim is Aboriginal culture.

As Ms Price has pointed out, to her peril, that traditional culture (not the ubiquitous bogus Welcome to Country ceremonies that have proliferated like rampant rabbits across the bureaucracy) is not that kind to Aboriginal women and little girls. In fact, it can be lethal.

While inner-urban Australians like to fly the Aboriginal flag to demonstrate their affinity with the Aboriginal people, they seem blind to the brutal male-dominant culture that flag hides from Western eyes.

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As Ms Price wrote in a most important article for The Australian last month: “Like most traditional cultures around the world, Warlpiri culture is deeply patriarchal; men are superior to women and more privileged, and the collective quashes the rights of the individual. These principles, thousands of years old, come together to oppress women now.”

Her bald statement should have been catnip to the #MeToo movement and those who revel in gender politics, but regrettably they don’t seem to worry that Aboriginal women are routinely bashed, in some cases murdered, under the guise of traditional culture.

The evidence of this brutality is all too obvious in regional centres, where limping, bandaged women are part of the normal landscape.

As we are regularly reminded, this is the oldest living culture in the world.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price says traditional culture is not kind to Aboriginal women and little girls. Picture: Gary Ramage

Given its brutality and psychological cruelty, it’s surprising the level of violence has survived — or perhaps it may be argued that the harshness of the environment into which the ancestors of our Aboriginal people migrated necessitated a certain forcefulness of law, just as the ancient Israelites followed a harsh regime to survive in the desert and at the hands of oppressors, and many Muslims still follow extreme laws laid down by their Prophet.

Stupid sympathisers (and there are a number of activist judges and deluded politicians among them) still try to find ways to accommodate the traditional laws of archaic cultures within our modern legal framework.

This has not been a success.

We have one law and that is the law of Australia, not the law of the Torah, the Koran, the Old Testament or any of the myriad Aboriginal tribes clamouring for recognition.

Ms Price has spoken out for the women who are too frightened by their fathers, uncles and husbands, but her efforts have gone unrecognised by the self-identifying elites because they don’t conform to the bizarre notion that anything with the “traditional” or “cultural” label must take precedence.

Already Australian courts and tribunals have gone too far in recognising claims of cultural rights, be they to take turtle and dugong with the assistance of non-traditional weapons such as rifles used from equally non-traditional craft powered by non-traditional outboard engines.

Ms Price is a realist in a world in which fantasy too frequently prevails.

Inner-urban Australians cannot let Welcome to Country ceremonies, like this one watched by Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Prince Harry, blind them to the harsh reality of traditional culture, says Piers Akerman. Picture: Liam Kidston

In Dr Phelps’ own wealthy and well-educated eastern Sydney suburbs electorate of Wentworth, fantasy is as much a feature of life as a dip at Bondi.

Cultural warriors to a fault, Dr Phelps’ community includes a significantly high proportion of anti-vaxxers and vegans — posing hazards to themselves and to others.

Ms Price’s brave stand has yet to find traction with the feminists and alternate gender crowd because she is clear-eyed about the danger the erosion of tried-and-true values constitutes. Such a position is an anathema to those who conspicuously display their hatred of Western culture.

Better to support counterculture fanatics like vegans, though a vegan couple from Dr Phelps’ electorate is awaiting sentencing on charges of child neglect after it was discovered they had fed their infant daughter such a strict diet of items such as oats and rice milk she developed rickets, meaning her bones could fracture from “normal handling”.

Or to find ways to empathise with claims that global warming is causing Pacific island nations to shrink, though even the ABC’s fact-finding team has found that Tuvalu, one of the grabbiest nations, is actually expanding.

Or celebrate a phony Welcome to Country ceremony to usher in new councillors rather than admit they are tacitly condoning male violence against women in Aboriginal society when they proclaim their support for traditional culture.