Jacinta Nampijinpa Price is a passionate champion for Indigenous rights

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has been consistently passionate about improving the lives of Indigenous children, addressing tough issues such as domestic ­violence and helping build a unified community.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has long advocated, in and out of parliament, for Indigenous issues to be brought to national attention. Picture: Jamila Toderas

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has been consistently passionate about improving the lives of Indigenous children, addressing tough issues such as domestic ­violence and helping build a unified community.

That was her position when she announced herself as a ­national figure with a compelling speech to Canberra’s National Press Club eight years ago and it remains her position today.

Unity was also a key message of the successful campaign against the Indigenous voice to parliament. Senator Price was inarguably the No campaign’s biggest asset. Time and again during the referendum campaign, her appearances around the country were booked out.

She repeatedly described the voice as divisive, which was ­especially potent from a Walpiri-Celtic woman with a non-Indigenous husband and a blended family.

Senator Price’s personal story endeared her to so many Australians during the referendum campaign. So did her stated love for Australia and her affection for the people who came to listen to her speak.

She told the audience at a Fair Australia rally in Perth on October 2: “You all feel like family, ­absolutely. You so feel like family.”

About 20,000 people attended the 11 Fair Australia campaign events in Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania to hear Senator Price speak. This doesn’t include the people who came to events, organised by third parties, that she attended.

On top of that, TV advertising featuring Senator Price was seen 2.7 million times in 987,000 households, in addition to the 16.5 million Facebook views, 14.7 million Instagram views and 42.9 million TikTok views.

Senator Price’s trajectory in federal politics has been steep and swift but readers of The Australian embraced her long before that, when she was a councillor in her home town of Alice Springs.

They have cheered her on to Canberra, where she is now the alternate Indigenous Australians minister in the Coalition. Subscribers make her a popular nomination for The Australian’s Australian of the Year, an award for national achievement chosen annually by the newspaper since 1971.

Senator Price’s first nomination for this award came five years ago, before she ­entered parliament and was in the news for bracing commentary on some of the favoured topics in the culture wars.

She lashed “self-identifying” Indigenous Australians who claimed to feel hurt by Australia Day, saying “they would also have white ancestors in their family trees and may not even have been born if the First Fleet hadn’t come”.

It is one of the few topics on which she does not entirely disagree with voice proponent Megan Davis, co-chair of the Uluru Dialogues who worked for seven years towards a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous advisory body. Professor Davis does not advocate for an end to January 26 celebrations and says neither do most Aboriginal people she knows.

However, it was Senator Price’s advocacy for Indigenous women and children that put her in the national spotlight. Their human rights are behind much of what she says on the subject of ­extreme violence in Indigenous communities.

In 2016, she shared the stage at the National Press Club with Indigenous researcher and intellectual Marcia Langton and Indigenous lawyer Josephine Cashman to ­deliver a blistering analysis of the nature and prevalence of abuse suffered by Indigenous women.

The three women were united in their call for urgent action to address the epidemic of violence in Indigenous communities. They told how Aboriginal women are between 37 and 80 times more likely to experience family violence than non-Indigenous women and argued that for too long, the voices of victims of domestic violence have been ­oppressed and silenced.

Senator Price was speaking from what she had learned and researched but also from her own experience as a survivor of domestic violence. She shared more harrowing stories from her life and family in 2023 in a powerful documentary broadcast on Sky.

Yimi Junga is an insight into the experiences, personal values and motivations driving the woman who has become one of the most powerful figures in Australian politics. In the film, Senator Price speaks of her own experiences of violence and sexual assault, and of how she became a mother when she was just 17.

The former television presenter and musician is a natural media performer. Her appeal is that she is not performing at all.

We encourage our readers to put in a nomination for The Australian’s Australian of the Year, which was first won in 1971 by economist HC “Nugget” Coombs. Prominent Australians can be nominated by filling out the form above, or sending an email to [e-mail]. Nominations close on Friday, January 19