Jacinta Price: Indigenous women ‘being coerced’ to hide cultural practices
‘If you go to a community and speak to people they’ll deny it happens’: Senator Jacinta Price has accused Labor and the Greens of ‘protecting predators’ and is calling on Canberra to confront child sex abuse in the NT outback.
Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has accused Labor and the Greens of “protecting predators” after a remote 13-year-old girl was promised off and raped by a man more than twice her age.
Ms Price said the 13-year-old girl’s shocking ordeal, which was detailed in an Alice Springs court this month, was the latest example of an Indigenous child being bartered between families.
“I’ve always been very vocal about the fact that young girls are still subjected to cultural marriage arrangements and I’ve always been vocal on that,” she told this masthead.
‘Those elements of traditional cultural need to be abandoned and I’ve been criticised for having such a position.”
Ms Price, whose own mother was ‘promised off’ when she was a young girl, maintained wider Australia was “too afraid” to discuss the issue and that remote communities were hiding such practices from outsiders.
“If you go to a community and speak to people they’ll deny it happens,” she said.
“Or women will suggest ‘no, no, everything’s good’ because they’re being coerced - they’re under cultural practices themselves and so if they speak out of turn there’s always threat of violence to women so it’s fraught with many issues.”
In 2023, Ms Price and former coalition leader Peter Dutton spearheaded calls for a Royal Commission into the Sexual Abuse of Aboriginal children.
More than 100 Aboriginal organisations rejected the motion, claiming there was a lack of evidence to suggest a specific sex abuse issues existed within Indigenous communities.
Ultimately, the motion was shot down.
“And of course Labor and the Greens voted against it... I’m absolutely dumbfounded why they continue to do that because ultimately they are protecting predators,” Mr Price said.
Would the Royal Commission have delved into arranged marriages?
“It absolutely would have been a key a feature,” she said.
NT Children and Families Minister Robyn Cahill conceded last week the child bride’s traumatic experience was a stark reminder “we still have a lot of work to do”.
“It actually gives us the evidence that these things do still continue,” she said.
“(And) there is still misinformation around what we would expect as a community to be okay for our children and we still have a lot of work to do around Aboriginal communities around what is okay and what is not okay.”
Meanwhile, NT Shadow Attorney-General Chansey Paech leapt to the defence of traditional culture.
“The suggestion that Aboriginal culture condones the abuse of children is offensive and divisive and has been well and truly debunked,” he said.
When approached for comment, Indigenous Australians Minister Malarndirri McCarthy kept her thoughts on the child bride short.
“This is a serious criminal offence,” she told the NT News.
“All children must be protected from harm, always.”
Member for Lingiari Marion Scrymgour also weighed in.
“Our government takes all offences against children very seriously,” she said.
“I call on the Country Liberal Party-run Northern Territory Government to fulfil their obligations to protect all Territorians.”
However neither Ms McCarthy nor Ms Scrymgour responded to questions as to where the Federal Government stood on such traditional practices.
The Greens were contacted for comment.
