Aboriginal Senator Jacinta Price has accused Indigenous voters in parliament of believing ‘racial stereotypes’.
The Country Liberal Party’s new Northern Territory senator is a staunch opponent of the proposed advisory body, unlike the other 10 Indigenous MPs.
Senator Price used her maiden speech to parliament on July 27 to protest the draft and proposed a referendum to enshrine it in the constitution.
The broad bipartisan support for The Voice is the result of too many Australians ‘drinking the Kool-Aid’ and not listening to a silent majority of Aboriginal people.
Country Liberal Party Senator Jacinta Price (center) delivers her maiden speech in the Senate Chamber at Parliament House in Canberra, Wednesday, July 27, 2022
Rather than being a unifying voice to promote Indigenous issues, Senator Price claimed it would simply be another layer of bureaucracy separating her people from white Australia and assuming they would always be “victims.”
Senator Price even defended The Voice’s other bitter critic, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, as someone who “cared deeply about Indigenous Australians.”
This was despite Senator Hanson storming out of the House of Lords instead of going through a recognition of the country and calling the Voice “apartheid.”
Senator Price defended both their positions in a rampant debate with author Peter FitzSimons in his… Sydney Morning Herald column.
She said traveling around the world with her teacher parents – Indigenous mother and white father – when she was 13 opened her eyes “to how we are all human beings.”
Senator Price said she was too busy for politics when she was young, as she had her first baby when she was 17 and two more by the time she was 21.
But she later became politically active when she noticed “stories about Indigenous Australians” that she did not agree with.
While recognizing the difficulties faced by many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, she believed that an Indigenous vote of parliament was not necessary.
Colonization and subsequent laws had a lot to do with some of the critical issues. I’m not denying that,” she told FitzSimons.
“But I know very well that another part of it is that we accept violence within our culture. It’s a patriarchal culture and meanwhile, the Voice to Parliament like this doesn’t really indicate how it should help.’
The former deputy mayor of Alice Springs said it “feels like yet another bureaucracy” and she didn’t know why it should be included in the Australian constitution.
In her maiden speech to parliament on July 27, she outlined her opposition to an indigenous voice in parliament.
“Perhaps a piece of advice, because that’s what you’re looking for: Listen to everyone, not just those who support your virtue signaling agenda, but also those who contradict you,” she said.
“Personally, I’ve had more than enough to be symbolically recognized.”
FitzSimons told her he was surprised that she supports Australia Day on January 26, the anniversary of the white settlement.
Mrs Price replied that for her it is not about the impact of colonization on us black boys. It’s about how we’ve come together since then as people from all kinds of different backgrounds.’
She said you could pick any day of the year when you would discover that something terrible happened on that day in Australia’s history.
FitzSimons also told Ms. Price that according to many people it is “time to recognize the shocking past … and do everything possible to fix the future,” but she is “a very prominent voice that makes us depressed.”
The new senator for the Northern Territory said that opinion is just a… story created to suggest that most Aboriginal people think so.
She said many Indigenous people do not see themselves as victims of history on Australia Day, but see themselves as “proud Australians”.
FitzSimons asked Ms Price if it ever bothers her that there are ‘people with little to no respect for Aboriginal people’ like Pauline Hanson among your supporters.
She replied that she doesn’t think Ms Hanson is racist and in fact ‘cares deeply about Indigenous Australians’ and her concern is about ‘taking more practical approaches to solving some of our problems’.
Ms Price added that it is a shame that less concerned Indigenous Australians are not speaking up about domestic violence, child sexual abuse and alcoholism in their communities.
“They’re more concerned about how the general public sees them, rather than actually solving some of these problems, so they’re silent,” she said.
Ms Price, one of 10 Indigenous senators and MPs, said the reason why Indigenous people have “failed so much” is because they are always viewed as a separate entity.
New Coalition senator, Aboriginal woman Jacinta Price, strongly opposes an Indigenous vote in parliament. Pictured is the parliament building in Canberra
Aboriginal woman Jacinta Price has defended One Nation leader Pauline Hanson (pictured) by saying she is not racist and in fact ‘cares deeply about Indigenous Australians’
She said she “cannot support this idea… We are all just Australian citizens, and we should be treated as such.”
A vote to parliament, if enshrined in the constitution, would mean that Indigenous people would be seen as victims forever, Ms Price said.
“I’d rather people understand that we have to stand on our own two feet without such a mechanism.”
She added that including a race-based bureaucracy in the constitution would drive a wedge between black and white Australia and she doesn’t want the constitution to treat her differently.
Peter FitzSimons (pictured right, with wife Lisa Wilkinson) had a fiery debate with Aboriginal Senator Jacinta Price over an Indigenous vote to parliament, which he supports and she opposes