Jacinta Price – Michmutters

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Australia

Jacinta Price claims Peter FitzSimmons allegedly accused her of ‘giving racists a voice’ after refusal to support Indigenous Voice

Jacinta Price claims Peter FitzSimmons allegedly accused her of 'giving racists a voice' after refusal to support Indigenous Voice

Aboriginal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has alleged newspaper columnist Peter FitzSimons accused her of “giving racists a voice” during an interview last week.

Senator Price – who has refused to support the Albanese Government’s Indigenous Voice to Parliament – made the claims on social media on Sunday night after the interview between the pair was published in the Sun-Herald newspaper.

She told FitzSimons the bipartisan support was due to the “Kool-Aid Australians have been drinking” and defended One Nation leader Pauline Hanson who claimed the Voice was “Australia’s version of apartheid” and walked out of the Acknowledgment to Country.

In a Facebook comment, the proud Warlpiri woman alleged FitzSimons accused her of “giving racists a voice” during the telephone chat but it was not printed in the article.

“I don’t know if I’d do another interview with the bloke again. He accused me of giving racists a voice but that wasn’t printed,” Senator Price wrote before it was later deleted.

FitzSimons has denied all allegations made by Senator Price.

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She later elaborated and said the interview started off “quite well” before claiming FitzSimons became “aggressive, condescending and rude.”

“I’m not a wilting violet but he’s a very aggressive bloke, his interview style is very bloody aggressive, he doesn’t need to launch in,” she told The Australian.

“Accusing me of somehow giving power to racists because the issues I raise are confronting – he loses the point completely.

“I said to him, ‘Get down from the blood ivory tower and come out to one of my communities'”.

Senator Price also compared it to “having a conversation with a brick wall.”

FitzSimons was later contacted by the same publication that reached out to Senator Price for his version of events from last Thursday’s one-hour interview.

The author and columnist denied the allegations leveled against him and described the claims as “complete and utter nonsense”.

He said it was a “professional exchange” with the Senator and he had written “every single word recorded, as I told her.”

“Not even a raised voice. And she approved the entire final result,” he told The Australian in a text message.

“This is not remotely a matter of interpretation. Friendly interview, nice text exchange at its conclusion.”

Senator Price had been quizzed about the history of Australia, the Indigenous Voice to Parliament and her upbringing during the chat.

He asked how the advisory body would “drive a wedge between us all” after she argued in her maiden speech to Parliament in late-July it would divide Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians “further”.

“With a progressive mood sweeping the land, we’re far more unified now than we’ve ever been in our history, and the most prominent wedge, I respectfully submit, Senator, is people like you and your supporters,” FitzSimons posed.

“I don’t accept that,” Senator Price hit back.

“How is having a bureaucracy based on race placed into the Constitution, not driving a wedge? That peddles racial stereotypes of Indigenous Australians being a homogenous separate entity, and we’re not.

“They can call me a “coconut” – (black on the outside, white on the inside) – or an “Uncle Tom” because I’m expressing my views, but I don’t care.

“I’m an individual in my own right, with Indigenous heritage, but I am the first and foremost an Australian, and have no desire for the Constitution to treat me differently.”

She also defended Senator Hanson during the chat after she was quizzed about the One Nation leader’s maiden 1996 speech in Parliament.

“Does it not bother you that she is the most vocal critic of First Nations people in the country, and on this very day, she cites you as proof she’s right?” FitzSimons asked.

“No. I look further and a bit deeper than what is on the surface,” Senator Price said.

“And look, I know Pauline can certainly come across as though she is racist. But I don’t think that she is.

“I think she cares deeply for Indigenous Australians, and that her concern is more about taking more practical approaches towards solving some of our problems.”

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Australia

‘Relentlessly practical’: Former prime minister Tony Abbott backs Jacinta Price amid Voice to Parliament debate

Tony Abbot said Jacinta Nampijinpa Price “knows what she’s talking about” as the debate continues about the Indigenous Voice to Parliament. Picture: Supplied.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott said Jacinta Nampijinpa Price “knows what she’s talking about” as the debate continues about the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

Senator Price has spoken out against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, saying the body would create a division between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians and wouldn’t address the issues facing First Nations communities.

While appearing on Credlin on Tuesday night, Mr Abbott told Sky News Australia host Peta Credlin he has ‘enormous respect’ for Ms Price’s opinion on the matter.

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“I have enormous respect for Jacinta Price and unlike so many of the people who talk a lot about this area- Jacinta Price has lived a life in remote Australia.

“So she knows what she’s talking about. That’s why her focus is so relentlessly practical.”

Mr Abbott said what we need to focus on instead is “what are we actually gong to do to get the kids to school, to get the adults to work and to keep communities safe.”

“Because all too often we apply these different standards and we say well it’s OK for indigenous kids not to go to school, it’s ok for indigenous adults not to go to work because of culture.

“We tolerate things that we wouldn’t tolerate for a second in suburban Australia because we say well that’s just the sort of thing that happens in remote places.”

The Voice to Parliament was a key element of the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart and called for an elected Indigenous advisory body to the Federal Parliament.

The proposed body would advise the government on issues affecting First Nations people.

The Labor Government pushed the issue to the center of its agenda when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared on election night that there would be a referendum in his first term.

The former prime minister weighed in on the issue and said there was no need for “constitutional change”.

“I think this proposed constitutionally voice to the parliament is wrong in principle and it will work out badly in practice.

“I don’t believe that we need a constitutional change if we are to have a voice and certainly I don’t think that there is any lack of consultation already,” Mr Abbott said.

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Australia

Aboriginal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price slams Lidia Thorpe for Black Power salute and calling Queen a ‘coloniser’

Aboriginal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price slams Lidia Thorpe for Black Power salute and calling Queen a 'coloniser'

Aboriginal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has taken a swipe at Lidia Thorpe after she made a Black Power salute and labeled the Queen a “coloniser” in the Senate.

The Greens Senator was preparing to take the parliamentary oath on Monday when she walked to the central table of the chamber with her right fist raised in the air.

She then proceeded to reluctantly recite and tweak the oath of allegiance, which sitting members must take prior to serving the Queen.

“I sovereign, Lidia Thorpe, do solemnly and sincerely affirm and declare that I will be faithful, and I bear true allegiance to the colonizing Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II,” she said, drawing uproar from the Senate.

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Senator Price suggested ministers who do not take the oath “then simply don’t take the job” before criticizing the “immaturity” of Senator Thorpe.

“There is definitely a level of immaturity about that kind of behaviour,” she said, according to The Australian.

“If you want to be a protester, then this isn’t the place for it. Go ahead and join the resistance, but we are there to be legislators for the benefit of our nation.

“I think it is just disruptive behaviour. The majority of us in the Senate today…just saw it as contemporary behaviour.”

During the series of events on Monday, one person could be heard telling the outspoken politician she was “not a Senator if you don’t do it properly.”

Senator Thorpe responded by saying “none of us like it.”

Senate President Sue Lines then interjected and urged Senator Thorpe to “recite the oath as printed on the card.”

She begrudgingly corrected herself the second time and was sworn into parliament.

“Sovereignty never ceded,” Senator Thorpe wrote to Twitter moments later, sharing a photo of herself performing the Black Salute.

Greens leader Adam Bandt showed support for his party member and retweeted the same image with the caption, “Always was. Always will be.”

Senator Pauline Hanson – who walked out of parliament during the Acknowledgment to Country last week – said Senator Thorpe did not take her position “seriously”.

“She’s filling a position she does not respect, to represent people she obviously despises, in an institution she does not recognize as being legitimate,” she told news.com.au.

“What we saw this morning was a stunning exercise in hypocrisy, made worse by her happily taking $211,000 a year from taxpayers for work she clearly does not intend to do.”

Senator Thorpe has previously stated her role as an Indigenous woman was to “infiltrate” the Senate.

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Categories
Australia

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price tells Q+A she probably won’t support a referendum on Indigenous Voice to Parliament

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price tells Q+A she probably won't support a referendum on Indigenous Voice to Parliament

Indigenous Country Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has told Q+A she will “probably not” be working to support a referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

On Monday night’s episode, which was pre-taped from Garma Festival and hosted by Stan Grant, Senator Price was asked by an audience member if she would work to support the referendum.

She said there were more pressing issues facing Indigenous communities.

“I’ll be completely honest: there are more pressing issues,” Senator Price said before listing promises about education funding for the Yippinga School in Alice Springs and issues about alcohol making its way back into Indigenous communities.

“I have listened to and spoke to the Yippinga school in Alice Springs,” she said.

“The commitment I made to them if I were to get into government was to build a facility for student and staff accommodation.

“That school looks after Aboriginal kids in the surrounding town camps, and they come from very difficult backgrounds … some of them have to spend a three-hour round trip to go to school.”

Senator Price also said she felt little was being done about alcohol issues in Indigenous communities, describing “rivers of grog” being allowed to flow at present.

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“We know that right now alcohol is being let back out into communities, and this is huge,” she said.

“We know that the voices of the organizations that have been speaking out against allowing the rivers of grog back in have said, ‘Please don’t do this.’ but that’s fallen on deaf ears.

“[I’d rather] get the work done. So no, I probably won’t be supporting a referendum.”

The comments would have come as a blow, albeit an expected one, after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said during the weekend he was willing to take an Indigenous Voice to Parliament to a referendum.

‘Another bureaucracy’

Senator Price had earlier on the show railed against enshrining an Indigenous Voice within the Australian constitution, stating she had misgivings about bureaucratic processes and what would happen if things went wrong once it was in the constitution.

“I don’t feel as though something like this needs to be constitutionally enshrined,” Senator Price said.

“I look at the success of the Gumatj.

“What they have done with their country, the way they educate their young people, have industry up and running—they have their own bauxite mine.

“All those things have already happened and it’s all successfully occurred without the need for enshrining a voice to parliament to do so.

“And my biggest concern with this idea of ​​a constitutionally enshrined Voice to Parliament is it’s another bureaucracy.”

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Senator Price then added she believed a Voice would marginalize Indigenous Australians.

“I wouldn’t want to see us divided up along the lines of race in that regard, and I don’t want to continue to pour money into an industry that has been driven on the back of the misery of Indigenous Australians and propping up another bureaucracy,” she said.

“It’s not something new. It’s just enshrining a bureaucracy into the constitution.

“And if there are bureaucracies that have failed and [people] have not been accountable, how are we going to adjust this, which will exist in the constitution and can’t be dismantled should it fail?”

burney hits back

It was an argument that did not sit well with Minister for Indigenous Affairs Linda Burney, who was steadfast in her support for an Indigenous Voice.

“What we are talking about here is a permanent voice that no government can get rid of, that’s why enshrinement is so important,” Ms Burney said.

“And when it comes to another bureaucracy, it is going to be a body that we will consult with — you and everyone else on what it will look like and how it will operate.”

Ms Burney also shot down any suggestion it would not be clear what people were voting for at a referendum.

“The design of the Voice will happen after respectful, extensive consultation with First Nations people and the Australian community,” she said.

“It will happen before the legislation will take place.

“It won’t be me deciding, that would be so wrong, it will be people that we consult with and build a consensus with that we will listen to.

“There will be a lot of information out to the community about what people are voting on. It would be nuts for that not to happen.”

Asked whether it was a concern the proposal could be shot down, Ms Burney said she felt the time was right, backing the PM’s statement: “If not now, when?” She also said she felt both sides of politics were on board.

“We want to build consensus across the parliament, and I am so happy to see Peter Dutton is open to this, David Littleproud is open to this and the Australian people are ready,” she said.

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“We wouldn’t be embarking on this exercise if there was not a belief the tide wasn’t with us.”

Treaty became like ‘writing in the sand’

However an Indigenous Voice has been floated before and independent Member for Mulka, NT and Yolngu elder Yiniya Mark Guyula remembers when treaty was discussed in the 80s.

Now a politician, something he admitted he did not love being, he said Aboriginal people were more than ready.

“My people here in the East Arnhem land have been ready for a long time,” he told Grant when asked by the Q+A host.

“We have been ready for a long time, because I can talk about the example of the 1988 Barunga petition.

“There were two land councils…. that brought all our elders from both Center and from the East, we were ready for the recognition of our Indigenous identity, but the government wasn’t ready.

“All their promises about ‘there will be treaty’, and that echoed all along and nothing ever happened.

“At that time, it was a new promise that we had got and everybody was happy, but as time went on we waited and waited and waited, and it became like writing in the sand.

“We are ready for this one.

“If that referendum was called now, we would be gathering our people and we would go for it, go for it as soon as we could.”

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