High Steaks: Jacinta Nampijinpa Price outlines her priorities for Indigenous Australians
No First Nations Ambassador, smaller land councils, no media censorship of Aboriginal communities, and a royal commission into child abuse. Jacinta Nampijinpa Price outlines her vision in our High Steaks interview.
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In 2016, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price stood on the stage of the National Press Club with fellow Indigenous academic Marcia Langton to paint a horrifying image of an issue they were both passionate about: violence in the homes of Indigenous Australians.
Two years later, Langton described Nampijinpa Price and her mother as White Australia’s “coloured help”.
“Her comments and her actions and her behaviour speak volumes about her and her character,” Nampijinpa Price says.
“If she was serious about trying to tackle the problem, that would continue to be her focus, not trying to drag another Aboriginal woman down.”
I ask the fearless Northern Territory Senator about the breakdown of that relationship over lunch at Charcoal, a cosy steakhouse tucked away in Canberra, where she orders the filet mignon with mushroom gravy and I opt for the vegetarian pasta.
“I have buried too many family members to care what people think,” she replies quickly.
It’s this attitude of treating criticism and claims she is a race traitor as water off a duck’s back that has shaped the rise and rise of the woman who sank Anthony Albanese’s vision for the Voice.
She clarifies that although Langton knew her parents when she was a child, they were never close friends, and she was always cautious of her.
“I was always very wary of Marcia as a person … it didn’t surprise me. I almost expected it to happen that if we disagree on a point she’ll come out and attack me,” she says of blistering and deeply personal attacks.
The breakdown of their unity ticket on Aboriginal affairs is also emblematic of Nampijinpa Price’s split from mainstream Aboriginal advocates who favour the left.
She has her own vision and a bold agenda that she rattles off quickly when asked what the former Alice Springs Councillor has to offer instead of the vision she vocally rejected.
Nampijinpa Price wants to abolish the First Nations Ambassador role, create smaller land councils based on language groups, overhaul the Northern Territory’s archaic media censorship laws, and have a royal commission into child sex abuse in Aboriginal communities.
She also wants an audit of $33bn spent in the Aboriginal Affairs portfolio, which she claims props up an “industry built on the misery of our most marginalised”.
“(I want to) create smaller land councils based on language groups if that’s what they (elders) want … the bureaucracy is way too big and there is fighting,” she says.
“In the Territory dismantling land councils and creating smaller groups is being asked for and has been asked for a long time.”
She also wants to promote private home ownership and open up communities for more economic opportunities.
“It’s all ideological, it’s not based on generating wealth for our marginalised, it’s shutting them off from that and keeping them as museum pieces.”
Nampijinpa Price was regarded as Peter Dutton’s secret weapon in his campaign against an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, but she isn’t opposed to a future referendum.
“If I was going to have a referendum it would be to put child protection in the hands of the federal government,” she says of an issue that has been her bigger priority in politics.
“Everything is a dog’s breakfast. State-to-state, territory-to-territory.”
It’s an ambitious target for the woman some say could become Prime Minister one day but the Warlpiri-Celtic Australian says she’s already got a big enough job ahead of her to be caught vying for the Lodge.
Asked if she gets recognised when she’s back in Alice Springs, she replies “all the time”, adding that the feeling is one she still hasn’t become used to.
“My goal going forward is to do whatever I can in this portfolio to implement the changes that I think need to happen to close the gap,” she said.
“I’m not in any hurry … I don’t necessarily think I want a bigger target on my back than I already do.
“My focus more broadly for our country is to establish a sense of national pride again, that’s what is really important for me.”
When I recount a story of brushing up against the Northern Territory’s tough media laws that saw The Telegraph barred from speaking to Indigenous Australians in Uluru — the birthplace of the Voice — in the lead-up to the referendum, Nampijinpa Price gives a knowing smile.
“When I entered Yuendumu, a community I practically grew up in and where my mother was born, with Matt Cunningham (of Sky News) to interview my grandmother, I was confronted by two white women from the media association who wanted to cross-examine me and ask me what I was doing,” she said.
“As the shadow minister for Indigenous Australians, to talk to my grandmother who they sent out to get bush tucker with the kids before I got there.
“They were behaving like gatekeepers with my own family, in my own community and that’s what disgusts me.”
Under a Coalition government, these laws will be abandoned, she promises and Aboriginal Australians will be treated like everyone else.
Nampijinpa Price’s disdain for media censorship is characteristic of a politician who isn’t afraid to speak her mind — even against her own.
She has been vocal on misogyny from Indigenous men and elders, and is an advocate for more action on empowering Indigenous women.
“(A journalist wrote) Warlpiri elders say Jacinta doesn’t speak for them, so one of two men who you might regard by today’s standards as misogynists will comment and it’s to undermine my argument. I’m not trying to speak on behalf of them or Warlpiri men,” she says.
“What I am trying to do is speak on behalf of vulnerable Warlpiri women and children.
“Imagine if we said to a female white politician, these white men from your community say you don’t represent them.”
Nampijinpa Price and her Scottish-Australian husband Colin Lillie share four sons, three from her previous relationship and one from Lillie’s, and it’s clear their blended family is a major motivator in her vision for a united, not a divided, Australia.
The 43-year-old says Kinkade, her stepson, is most like her, with the same political fire in his belly that she inherited from her mother, former Northern Territory government minister Bess Price.
Her relationship with the 17-year-old is proof that kinship doesn’t come from shared race.
“My parents brought me up to understand I belong to the world, I am a citizen of the world,” she says.
“We did a world trip when I was 12 turning 13, we spent three months backpacking mum, dad and me, and I just got to understand we are all human beings and anything that separates us is what’s going on in our heads.”
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Originally published as High Steaks: Jacinta Nampijinpa Price outlines her priorities for Indigenous Australians
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