Jacinta Nampijinpa Price

Jacinta Yangapi Nampijinpa Price (born 12 May 1981) is an Australian politician from the Northern Territory. She has been a senator for the Northern Territory since the 2022 federal election. She is a member of the Country Liberal Party, a politically conservative party operating in the Northern Territory affiliated with the national Coalition. She sits with the National Party in federal parliament. She has been the Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs since April 2023.

Price has Aboriginal and Anglo-Celtic heritage – her mother is Warlpiri community leader and former politician Bess Price, her father an educator with Irish ancestry. After a career as a singer-songwriter, she was a councillor for Alice Springs between 2015 and August 2021, serving as deputy mayor in her last year as councillor. During this time, in 2019 she stood unsuccessfully for the Division of Lingiari at the 2019 federal election.

Price's activism and views focus primarily on issues faced by Aboriginal communities, and she is a vocal advocate for conservative Aboriginal politics in Australia. She has highlighted the high rates of domestic and other violence in Aboriginal communities, and advocates for a law and order approach. She is critical of welfare dependency and "opportunistic collectivism". She opposed the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament, and thinks that calls to change Australia Day and the Australian Flag are counterproductive to Aboriginal advancement.

Early life
Price was born on 12 May 1981 in Darwin, Northern Territory, and grew up in Alice Springs. Her father, David Price, is of Anglo-Celtic descent and was born in Newcastle, New South Wales. Her mother, Bess Price, who served in the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly, is a Warlpiri woman. Her parents met in Yuendumu in 1976, working at the local school; David as a teacher in the bilingual program, while Bess was producing Warlpiri literacy materials.

Bess Price is a fellow member of the CLP, who served as a minister in the Adam Giles NT Government, holding portfolios including housing and statehood, and was a vocal supporter of the Howard government's 2007 Northern Territory Intervention, that implemented new legislation in response to the crises facing Aboriginal communities.

Price has written that her mother was "born under a tree and lived within an original Warlpiri structured environment through a kinship system on Aboriginal land. Her first language was Warlpiri, and her parents, my grandparents, only came into contact with white settlers in their early adolescence in the 1940s."

She travelled widely with her family as a child, camping in the bush on swags. By the age of seven she had visited every Australian state and, by 12, had travelled around the world.

TV and musical career
Price is a NAIDOC Award-winning singer, songwriter and recording artist. As a child, she learned the violin before joining local hip-hop groups Flava 4 and C-Mobs. In 2001, she was chosen to sing the national anthem for the Yeperenye Federation Festival.

In 2013, she released her first music album Dry River, a mix of folk, soul and country music, paying tribute to her life growing up in Central Australia. Triple J likened her sound to that of Tracy Chapman, while Land Rights News described her sound as a blend of folk, blues and country which "reflects her Aboriginal/Celtic heritage". The album was produced by Bill Chambers and Colin Lillie. Within the music industry, Price developed the Desert Divas program, which nurtures female Indigenous musical talent.

Price also had a TV career in the children's television program, Yamba's Playtime, where she played the best friend of the lead character Yamba the Honey Ant. Price is in addition a regular guest on Sky News Australia.

Alice Springs Council (2015–2021)
Price was elected as a councillor on the Alice Springs Town Council in 2015. At her swearing in to the Alice Springs council in 2015, Price's mother Bess Price officiated, as NT Minister for Local Government. She served until August 2021, when she did not stand for re-election. She was also the Deputy Mayor of Alice Springs in her last year as councillor. Despite saying she was committed to the Alice Springs Town Council, she left the council six months into her four-year term, triggering a by-election.

Price shared a close relationship with fellow councillor Jamie di Brenni, and agreed with him on most issues. She said in a 2017 interview that her values aligned with generally "with the old white fellas" on the council; however, she was against fracking as there is a potential risk to water sources from this practice. Price said that council had not done enough to combat the disproportionate amount of violence against women seen in Alice Springs, and she would like to see more campaigning on the issue. She had called a forum with women, including town camp residents, to discuss community needs and antisocial behaviour. She had also worked with the council's Youth Action Group, and had championed recreational and creative opportunities for youth in the town.

2019 federal election candidate
Price stood unsuccessfully, as the Country Liberal Party candidate, for the Division of Lingiari at the 2019 federal election. She secured 44.54 percent of the two-party preferred vote against long-serving Labor incumbent Warren Snowdon, to his 55.46 percent.

In January of that year, Greens Lingiari candidate George Hanna, who is also indigenous, had shared a meme about Price, referring to her as a "coconut", a metaphor for someone of indigenous background who is attuned more to white cultural norms and values than those of native culture: like a coconut "white on the inside". Price described the post as despicable and racist, and called for the Greens to disendorse Hanna, but the Greens refused. Aboriginal activist Steve Hodder Watt accused Price of hypocrisy, and published messages in which Price referred to him as "white".

Price was also criticised over a video of an Al Jazeera video which she had posted to her Facebook page in 2014, and which had featured a critique of violence in Islam by writer-psychiatrist Wafa Sultan, a Syrian-American ex-Muslim. The Australian National Imams Council called the video Islamophobic. In response, a CLP spokesperson told the ABC News that her motivation for sharing the video was part of her long campaign against the use of religion or culture to justify violence against women.

Senator for the Northern Territory (2022–present)
Price became a Senator for the Northern Territory at the 2022 federal election, replacing Sam McMahon, whom she defeated for preselection in June 2021. She was pre-selected in the Country Liberal Party's number one Senate ticket position for the election, and successfully won the second of two seats alongside Labor's Malarndirri McCarthy. As a senator elected from a territory, Price's term commenced immediately, as opposed to senators elected from the states, whose terms are fixed to start from 1 July.

In federal parliament, Price sits in the National Party room.

Maiden speech
Price delivered her first speech in the Senate on 27 July 2022. Prior to making the address, she took part in a traditional ceremony with her grandmother handing her a nulla-nulla hunting stick sourced from her Country. "The ceremony was telling the story about Jukurrpa, which is Dreaming relating to our family", Price said. "Passing on through this nulla-nulla the authority to me to speak on behalf of our area." Wearing traditional headdress for her maiden speech, she then outlined her priorities for office, citing housing, women's safety and economic development as key concerns. The Age reported that Price made an "impassioned plea against 'false narratives' of racism and [called] the push for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament a symbolic gesture that could divide black and white Australia". Price called for a restoration of law and order in remote communities to combat the scourge of violence:

"My vision, my hope, my goal, is that we can effect change that will see women, children and other victims in these communities become as safe as any of those living in Sydney, Melbourne or any other Australian city. My goal is to halt the pointless virtue signalling and focus on solutions that brings real change that changes the lives of Australia's most vulnerable citizens. Solutions that give them real lives, not the enduring nightmare of violence and terror they currently live.

It is not good enough that the streets of our Northern Territory towns — and other towns across regional Australia — have gangs of children aged from 6 to 16 wandering around with no adult supervision in the early hours of the morning. It is not good enough that almost all of these children have witnessed or been subject to normalised alcohol abuse, domestic, family and sexual violence throughout their young lives and is the reason for their presence on our streets. Such neglect in great numbers would not be accepted in the prosperous suburbs of any of our capital cities."

- Jacinta Price, maiden speech to the Senate.

Price invoked the legacy of the first Aboriginal Senator Neville Bonner to criticise welfare dependency and "opportunistic collectivism" as barriers to Aboriginal advancement:

"Like my distinguished predecessor Senator Neville Bonner, I believe free enterprise coupled with sound fiscal management in a progressive commercial environment forms the basis for economic independence. In other words, business and jobs are the key to economic health for a community, not the shackles of welfare dependency. Under the current Land Rights Act, coupled with growing welfare dependency, this environment has not had the opportunity to materialise... The intent of the Act was to provide access to conduct traditional activity and provide opportunity for economic use. But despite traditional owners having around 45% of NT land mass and 80% of the NT coastline under the Act, and it serving over 30% of the NT population, it has failed to deliver economic independence or generate employment opportunities. Traditional Owners have been left to pick the lock that the layers of gatekeepers have so welded around the Act ... It is a constant cycle of Indigenous Industry gravy train consumers, in a static system that gathers under the banner of 'opportunistic collectivism'."

- Jacinta Price, maiden speech to the Senate

Indigenous leader and politician Warren Mundine called the address the "greatest speech" he'd heard in parliament. Journalist Greg Sheridan called it "magnificent... a kind of Australian Gettysburg Address that should be read by all Australians". The Age newspaper called the speech a "red flag for Albanese" on the Indigenous Voice issue.

Shadow minister for Indigenous Australians (2023–present)
Price was appointed the Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians in the Dutton shadow ministry on 18 April 2023.

Political positions and activism
Price's activism primarily focuses on issues faced by Aboriginal communities.

Aboriginal autonomy
Price generally takes a conservative view towards issues facing Aboriginal communities. Price has criticised what she terms "paternalistic" approaches to Aboriginal autonomy. She advocates for law and order, racial equality before the law, and an end to welfare dependency and what she calls an "opportunistic collectivism" in Indigenous policy.

Price criticised former Australian Labor Party leader Bill Shorten for paternalism during his visit to Barunga in 2018.

Crime in Aboriginal communities
Price has highlighted the high rates of domestic and other violence in Aboriginal communities. She advocates for law and order, and racial equality before the law. She rejects the "white privilege" narrative and has criticised left-wing public discourse around Indigenous deaths due to violence and, in particular Aboriginal deaths in custody. In her maiden speech, Price rejected the idea of racism causing Aboriginal deaths in custody as a "false narrative", and told Parliament: "We cannot support legislation that prioritises freedom of the perpetrator over justice for the victim, in an attempt to reduce rates of incarceration."

Price rejects claims of systemic racism in the Australian prison system against Aboriginal people, citing the finding of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1987–1991) that there was no evidence that proportionately more Aboriginal Australians die in custody than non-Indigenous Australians. In her maiden speech, Price said "Our greatest problem lies with the fact that in the [30 years after the Royal Commission], over 750 Indigenous Australians were murdered at the hands of other Indigenous Australians — yet there is little concern or acknowledgment that this is why Indigenous Australians are incarcerated at such high rates."

Following a June 2020 Black Lives Matter protest in Melbourne, Price accused protesters of being ignorant and uncaring, stating: "70 percent of Aboriginal men and women incarcerated are incarcerated for acts of violence against their loved ones. [The Left] don't care because the perpetrators are also black, people only care if there is seen to be a white perpetrator. It's not racism that is killing our people, it is the actions of our own people". She argued that Black Lives Matter activists have been "ignoring the real crisis" facing Indigenous people.

Australia Day debate
Price thinks that calls to change Australia Day and the Australian flag are counterproductive to Aboriginal advancement.

In 2018, Price supported the "Save Australia Day" campaign promoted by One Nation politician Mark Latham. In 2021, she again criticised the push to change the date of Australia Day, saying that changing the date would not improve the lives of Aboriginal people. Price described Australia Day as a "magical day" and rejected claims that the day commemorates the subjugation of Aboriginal people.

Indigenous welfare policies
Price has been a vocal supporter of alcohol restrictions in remote Aboriginal communities and the cashless debit card, and criticised the Labor government for overturning these welfare policies. In her maiden speech, she said the overturning of grog bans would allow alcoholism and accompanying violence to flourish, while the cashless welfare card had improved the lives of many families on welfare, who could "feed their children rather than seeing their money claimed by kinship demand from alcoholics, substance abusers and gamblers". On 4 August 2022, she called for urgent action on the alcohol crisis in remote communities.

Voice to Parliament
Price opposed the Albanese government's proposal for a referendum to enshrine an Indigenous Voice to Parliament within the Australian Constitution on the grounds that it would be a racially divisive bureaucracy that couldn't be dismantled, that it would set Indigenous and non-Indigenous people on an unequal footing, and would imply that Aboriginal people are a "separate entity to the rest of Australia". Noting her objections to the Voice, Aboriginal journalist Stan Grant told the ABC Insiders program on 31 July 2022 that Price will be "a significant and important voice on [the issue] and clearly others in the Coalition Opposition have gathered around her..."

In her maiden speech, Price told Parliament that the Labor government was "yet to demonstrate how this proposed Voice will deliver practical outcomes and unite rather than drive a wedge further between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia". In a 2022 book entitled Beyond Belief... Rethinking the Voice to Parliament, Price wrote: "The globally unprecedented Voice proposal will divide Australia along racial lines... It will constitutionally enshrine the idea that Aboriginal people are perpetual victims – forever in need of special measures."

In November 2022, Price spoke to the media alongside Nationals leader David Littleproud to support the Party's formal announcement of opposition to the Voice, telling reporters, "What we need now is practical measures and we have to stop dividing our nation along the lines of race."

"No" campaign
Price fronted the "No to Voice" campaign. She, along with her Scottish husband, featured in the advertisement that talked about her life, and her upbringing in Alice Springs, and advocated for people to vote against a "race-based referendum". In the advertisement, she said she did not want her family to be divided along the lines of race. In a Sky News interview, she called the Indigenous Voice to Parliament a "bureaucratic structure which I think is divisive and dangerous and undermines democracy as we know it", but mentioned she supports the recognition of Indigenous Australians in the constitution. The Australian electorate voted against the proposal 60% to 40%.

Three weeks later, in a keynote speech to the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship in London, Price described the outcome of the referendum as a turning point in the fight against identity politics: "They tried to teach everyday Australians that we belong to a racist country, tried to teach our children that they shouldn’t be proud to call themselves Australian, tried to suggest that if you voted No that you belonged to the wrong side of history – well, we showed them."A correspondent from The Sydney Morning Herald said the Senator received a standing ovation. In an interview on the sidelines of the conference she mentioned that several European diplomats had wondered why Australia had even considered creating division along lines of race.

Awards and recognition
Price was presented with the inaugural Freedom and Hope Award at the Australian Conservative Political Action Conference held in Sydney in October 2022. Crikey described her as "the breakout star" of the event.

During her artistic career, Price was named Artist of the Year at the NAIDOC Awards in 2011, and was nominated for Most Promising New Talent in Music in the 2012 Deadly Awards. Her album Dry River, was a finalist in the folk category for the NT Song of the Year Awards in 2012.

Legal proceedings
Price launched defamation proceedings against the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2019 in response to its coverage of her "Mind the Gap" tour. She received a full public apology for "false and defamatory" material in April 2021.

In 2020, Price was sued for defamation by Nova Peris, former federal government senator for the NT, who is also Aboriginal. Price had accused Peris of protecting sexual predators while on the television program Studio 10. According to transcripts provided by the Supreme Court of Victoria, Price stated that Peris had been involved with "powerful men who have made it to powerful positions who have never been condemned". Price later apologised to Peris for these remarks.

In August 2022 journalist Peter FitzSimons threatened to sue Price for defamation when she complained that he had been rude and aggressive in a telephone interview. Price urged FitzSimons and his newspaper, The Sydney Morning Herald, to release the recording of the interview but they declined to do so.

Personal life
Price has three sons from a first marriage. She is said to have experienced domestic violence in a later relationship; after a lamp was thrown at her head, she required six stitches, and believed if she returned to the relationship. By 2008 she had met Colin Lillie, a Scottish-Australian singer and songwriter, whom she married in a traditional ceremony before being married under Australian law. Price is a stepmother to Lillie's son from a previous relationship.

Outside of elected office, Price served as Indigenous program director for the Centre for Independent Studies, a libertarian think tank based in Sydney. Her January 2021 paper, Worlds Apart: Remote Indigenous disadvantage in the context of wider Australia, surveyed the statistics on third-world conditions and extreme levels of violence in remote communities.