Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price on the ‘racism of low expectations’ and copping it from her own community
A voice of reason to some and a “traitor” to others, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has revealed what she considers to be “true racism”.
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One of Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s uncles was a revered Aboriginal elder and community leader despite perpetrating horrific repeated attacks on his wife and being a convicted rapist, the firebrand politician has revealed.
Far from being a family secret, the man’s brutal nature was widely known but ultimately ignored, she said, and he was held in high regard, particularly by non-Indigenous people.
“My aunt was subjected to domestic violence over and over and over again in her marriage,” Senator Price told news.com.au.
“Having her coming to my parents as an escape all those years, but her husband always being revered as an elder, (people) thinking he’s a remarkable man … someone who was also a convicted gang rapist among other things, you know.
“That is what I regard as the racism of low expectations.”
And it’s a kind of infantilising of Aboriginal people that has prevented meaningful progress on Indigenous affairs, she believes.
‘Why the hell can’t we?’
In her new memoir Matters of the Heart, Senator Price takes aim at the devastating social issues that are common in Indigenous communities, which she has seen first-hand.
Many of her views have proved controversial in the Aboriginal community, but Senator Price – who will be the next minister for Indigenous affairs should the Coalition win the election – is unapologetic.
“I’m told that I paint all our men in a bad light, which is simply not true,” Senator Price said.
“But we need to stop revering these men and holding them up as elders who should be respected when they are far from that.
“That is what I regard as the racism of low expectations. It’s the broader community being able to excuse or turn a blind eye to the criminal behaviours of these men.”
Senator Price believes there’s a tendency for white Australians to tip-toe around Indigenous issues and for Aboriginal community leaders to quash any legitimate criticism.
“That to me is the true racism … [and] it’s holding us back – and not just holding back marginalised Indigenous Australians but also not upholding the rights of victims as well,” she said.
“You wouldn’t accept it in the non-Indigenous community. We call out people. We see people as perpetrators all the time, and we condemn those actions and behaviours.
“We ensure that they don’t occupy positions of power, so why the hell can’t we do that in the Indigenous community?”
The shadow of violence
Senator Price’s childhood was a largely happy one and the 43-year-old has plenty of joyful memories, which she retells in her book.
“I think I had a really rich childhood growing up in a place like Alice Springs and having access to vast amounts of country and going out and camping and being part of a broad Indigenous family,” she said.
“[There are] memories of walking around the bush with my cousins and my aunties, the freedom and being carefree, nothing else mattered … walking barefoot and digging in the ground and looking for yams and goannas and those sorts of things.
“My upbringing was filled with love. I had incredible love from my family, my parents. But it was littered with tragedy.”
As a child, she was regularly exposed to severe violence perpetrated by or against her aunts, uncles and cousins, she said.
Senator Price has vivid memories of visiting a town camp and despite her young age, sensing the atmosphere shift when alcohol was mixed into the situation.
“Everything turned bad then,” she recalled.
“Witnessing family members inflicting violence on themselves, like a female family member stabbing herself in the leg with a knife, intoxicated, and her little son trying to scramble away from her and being traumatised by that.
“Seeing my aunt’s partner pick up his two-year-old from the hair and swing him around violently in my parents’ front yard and us having to call the police.
“Seeing my aunt knock him out with a mattock in our yard because he was attacking her and then him being dragged away by police.
“Those things stick with me, you know, and have definitely shaped the person that I am today and given me the want to change the circumstances and be honest about these issues.”
‘Racism of low expectations’
In her book, Senator Price writes at length about what she calls the “racism of low expectations”.
For example, over recent years, the issue of Indigenous incarceration rates has been a growing focus of campaigners, who blame “racism and colonisation” for the bleak statistics, she said.
“The Royal Commission into Black Deaths in Custody found that racism wasn’t a factor in the high rates of incarceration,” she said.
“But there’s still a continued approach that denies what the truth really is in these matters.”
The latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows there were 15,711 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in prison as of the September quarter.
That equates to an imprisonment rate of 2701 persons per 100,000 Indigenous Australians, up from 2500 in just 12 months.
Back in 2009, that incarceration rate was 1539 for every 100,000 Indigenous people.
“Why do we have the highest rates of incarceration? Because the majority of our men are incarcerated are therefore committing crimes of violence and the majority of those victims are those that they’re supposed to love. That is the truth,” Senator Price said.
“It doesn’t say that all Aboriginal men are violent, but that is the truth, that women and children are victimised at higher rates. They should be our priority, the victim, not the perpetrator.”
Another critical issue that’s regularly downplayed is the alarming rates of child sexual abuse in Indigenous communities, she said.
By not talking about it because it’s uncomfortable, or out of fear of being seen as racist, Senator Price believes victims are being failed.
Famously, talk show host Kerri-Anne Kennerley was savagely pilloried when questioning why changing the date of Australia Day was seemingly a higher priority than addressing child abuse concerns.
Senator Price said she had been attacked endlessly by parts of the Aboriginal community for drawing attention to the issue.
“Why is it that I should have to sit down and shut up and not highlight that we’ve got the highest rates of sexual abuse of our children in this country?
“Then there are those that say, yeah, but it happens in the white community. Yes it does but when you look at the figures, it’s happening in crisis rates in Indigenous communities.
“If we don’t address it, if we don’t be completely honest about it, we’re never actually going to get to the bottom of it.”
A ‘traitor’ who’s being ‘used’
Senator Price’s views about the issues facing Aboriginal communities and how to tackle them have often proved controversial in Indigenous circles.
Prominent Indigenous academic Marcia Langton has in the past described Senator Price as “the useful coloured help” used by conservatives to rescue their “racist image”.
“Jacinta Price is useful to politicians. She legitimises racist views by speaking them against her own people,” Prof Langton wrote for The Saturday Paper in 2018.
In the same piece, Prof Langton – one of the architects of the failed Voice to Parliament – claimed “the majority” of Senator Price’s followers were “rabid racists”.
When those remarks resurfaced in late 2023, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton slammed them as “bitter and vitriolic”.
“It’s not surprising,” Senator Price told news.com.au. “I’m well aware of Aboriginal politics. I’ve grown up with it.”
But she said the attacks have served as a distraction from the real issues and prevented a “respectful debate and respect [for] each other’s perspectives”.
“I think part of the problem, why we can’t progress, is because many are very fearful of speaking out because of the repercussions. Many are well prepared to jump on and viciously attack individuals who stand up and have a different opinion.”
She has been dubbed a traitor to her race whose views are a betrayal of the Indigenous community.
“It is ugly, and it’s racism,” she said of those characterisations.
“I mean, when a white person stands up and has an opinion, we don’t say, oh, well, hang on a second, all other white people don’t think that and you’re a traitor to your race for saying those things.”
As for being manipulated by white conservatives, Senator Price said those who know her are well aware she doesn’t do anything unless she believes in it.
“No, I’m certainly not being used by Peter Dutton. I am very humbled by the fact that Peter has a lot of belief in me and my capabilities.
“And that is very humbling to know that he has so much faith in me and given me the responsibilities that he has.”
First priorities in government
Those responsibilities are about to grow substantially, if opinion polls indicating a Labor loss are replicated on polling day.
Senator Price is clear on what her first priorities would be as the newly minted minister for Indigenous affairs.
“[The first] would be to examine and get a true breakdown of the current spend in Indigenous affairs,” she said.
“We need to understand what the spend is now but to audit that spending to see where the failures exist, where the successes exist, and how we can better. We need to invest that money to ensure that we are producing the outcomes.
“I don’t believe we’ve made progress in the areas that really matter.”
She has also committed to establishing a Royal Commission into the sexual abuse of children in Indigenous communities “straight away”.
And she wants to devise “a different approach” to land rights to “empower our marginalised” via reforms that allow traditional owners to become contributors to the Australian economy “in their own right”.
“To stand on their own two feet, have economic independence through economic opportunities, and using their own land to do so,” she said.
“I was talking to the Productivity Commission, and there’s so many barriers in place that don’t allow for that to happen.
“It’s one thing to say that we’ve been successful in terms of land rights and sea rights for Indigenous Australians but that has not equated to better outcomes. We need to make sure that we are going to create those better outcomes if that’s the direction we’re going in.”
Climbing out of rock bottom
Senator Price’s book offers a raw and candid insight into her experiences with domestic violence at the hands of a former partner.
As a young mother, she began a relationship with a man who later subjected her to unspeakable violence, from which she eventually fled.
“It was a shock to me because although I’d been exposed to violence throughout my life, being victimised in that capacity was a huge eye-opener,” she said.
“It’s always a shock at first to find that the person that’s supposed to love you and care for you and protect you, impacts you violently.
“It makes you rethink things. And I completely understand how domestic violence victims can become confused and almost disoriented in those circumstances to think, hang on, this person loves me, and now they’re saying sorry, you know, OK, I’ll give them another chance.
“Or, you know, holding out hope that they might change and then being victimised again.”
After returning to Alice Springs, Senator Price struggled to deal with the trauma of what she had endured and turned to damaging coping mechanisms.
When her boys were with their father, she “partied hard” in a bid to mask her pain and block out the dark thoughts in her head.
“Oh, rock bottom was lonely,” she recalled.
“Trying to find a way to feel happiness through other means, you know, alcohol, drugs, that temporary feeling of, right, I’m riding a high. I’m out with my mates. I’m out with my family. I’m going to drink and pop a few pills.
“I’m trying to process what I’ve been through not realising at the time though these feelings of self-sabotage and not feeling good enough and things are my fault, and why am I in this position, how did I get here? And then masking that.”
Living a double life – caring and present mum when she had her boys and chaotic derailing train when they weren’t – took a toll.
Exhausted, Senator Price sought help from a local community support service and began clawing her way back from rock bottom.
“It was coming to terms with just living in that reality and realising that I’m not being the mother that I should be,” she said.
“I have to take responsibility. I have to take responsibility [for] these three little lives who depend on me.
“I think my boys have always been a beacon in my life. Motherhood has always been that beacon for me in my life to strive to do better.”
Australia’s version of Elon Musk
Mr Dutton recently announced that a Coalition government would focus on efficiency and reducing waste, with tens of thousands of public service job cuts also mooted.
Senator Price will lead that efficiency review, mirroring the role played by US President Donald Trump’s right-hand man, billionaire Elon Musk.
Mr Musk leads the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and has taken a knife to vast parts of the American government.
“Essential programs, frontline services, they will always be supported as far as we’re concerned,” Senator Price insisted.
But that promise comes with a caveat.
“I have no doubt that there are those that are fearful of jobs being slashed but I guess if there are failures occurring, we won’t continue to fund the failures. If you know that you are part of what is failing, then you might be concerned.
“But if you’re not, then I’d suggest you probably shouldn’t be [worried].”
Pledges to axe diversity, equity and inclusion programs in government departments by both Mr Dutton and Senator Price have also sparked fears in some minority groups of an amping up of the divisive culture wars.
“My view has always been that we respect and treat each other well … on the basis of the fact that we’re all human beings,” she said.
“Strip away any other element of who we are, whether it’s gender, whether it’s sexuality, whether it’s race or any of those things.”
Originally published as Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price on the ‘racism of low expectations’ and copping it from her own community
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