Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price addresses National Press Club

September 14, 2023

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Today is the first time that I have addressed the Press Club as shadow minister for Indigenous Australians.

It's actually the second time I've been given the opportunity to address the National Press Club, and the first was in November of 2016, when I stood alongside Marcia Langdon and Josephine Cashman to address the critical issues of family violence and sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities. Three Aboriginal women speaking with one goal to tackle the scourge of Indigenous family violence.

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Marcia cautioned me prior to the address. Saying, that I should not draw a link between the high rates of Indigenous community violence and the acceptance of violence within traditional culture. Her suggestion is that there is no correlation – my experience screams otherwise.

So I could not bring myself to expunge a painful truth for the sake of the audience who might not want to hear it. I could not sugar-coat the reality of so many communities because it would be otherwise unpalatable.

I've been told that by speaking out, by amplifying the voices of the victims, and the vulnerable, by bringing attention to the rampant abuse and neglect, that I am repeating the words of the oppressor.

I've been told I'm a sell-out. I've been racially abused, vilified, lampalled [?lampooned], and threatened with violence. And why? Because I want to stop children from being abused. Because I want to stop women and men from being killed.

The truth is, for all the moral posturing and virtue signaling about truth-telling, there is no genuine appetite in Canberra to tell the truth, or, to hear the truth. This could not be any clearer than in this Government referendum on the voice.

Australians desperately want to the right thing for their fellow Australians, regardless of background. Many who have engaged with this proposal, hoping to find a way to help the indigenous Australians who most need assistance, are left disappointed. They are left with the falsehoods, misleading information, and promises, that can't be kept.

And this ... and should never have been made.

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The voice is flawed in its foundations. It is built on lies, and an aggressive attempt to fracture our nations founding document and divide the country built upon it.

That division has now seen the 'no' campaign branded as being base racism and sheer stupidity. When in fact, what would be racist is segmenting our nation into 'us' and 'them'.

And you have to say it would also be stupidity to divide a nation when it has been growing ever more cohesive.

To split it along fractures of race rather than try to bring it closer together.

Our most marginalised deserve better than this. They deserve the truth. – the unvarnished, untainted and yes, maybe, unpalatable to some people, truth.

The first lie that underpins the voice is that Indigenous Australians do not have a voice. We've been told by the Indigenous minister, for Indigenous Australians, that Indigenous people do not get a say on policies or the decisions being made on our behalf.

I am one of eleven Indigenous voices currently in Parliament, and I will not accept the lie, the rationalisation of many Indigenous voices of the 'yes' campaign who suggest our democratically elected voices are redundant because we belong to political parties.

The patronising suggestion that we cannot focus our efforts on improving the lives of marginalises Aboriginal and Torres Strait Australians, because we are simultaneously responsible for constituents of all backgrounds, is unambiguously wrong and should be rejected resolutely. It is a suggestion that is offensive, not only to me, but my Coalition colleague Senator Karen Little, but to all representatives that are of Indigenous heritage in federal Parliament.

It has been argued by the advocates of the 'Voice' that such a concept has never been undertaken before. I would argue that establishing a taxpayer-funded bureaucracy comprised of indigenous only representation and tasked with simply providing advice, is absolutely something that has been undertaken before.

The failed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, or ATSIC< was established to provide formal involvement for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in government processes.

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ATSIC consisted of elected representatives that oversaw the delivery of programs, distribution of grants, loans for small enterprise and larger loans.

The National Congress of Australia's First Peoples, which went into administration, was designed to be a representative voice for Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people, although some of its former directors and chairs now advocate for a voice in wake of its failure. Noel Pearson once criticised it as a black fella's wailing wall.

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The only difference between the 'Voice' and organizations like these is that we are being asked by a few elites to enshrine it within our constitution, without even knowing its functions or powers.

Unlike the others, if the 'Voice' fails we cannot simply dismantle it. And make no mistake, it is only an elite few who are asking.

The claim that this is an invitation from Indigenous people to the rest of Australia is the second lie, the voice is built upon.

To say this has come from First Nations people, plays into backwards, neocolonial, racial stereotyping, suggesting that all Aboriginal people think the same, feel the same and want for the same things.

Indigenous Australians have a long history of engaging in and contributing to our communities, our country, and our democratic process. And we have done it in different areas, in different fields, with different approaches and different skills.

Despite racial stereotyping that suggests Aboriginal Australians are one homogenous group, we are not. We have participated in public debate throughout our nation's history and we have often disagreed on many political positions.

The incredible contributions that many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people made to our nation – contributing to it, not trying to tear it apart – is one of the greatest strengths and sources of pride for our country.

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One of those great Australians was David Unipon, Australia's Da Vinci., who patented 10 inventions between 1909 and 1944.

Another was senator Neville Bonner who did not believe in dividing our country, but believed in the power of the individual and self-agency leading to opportunity for contribution. It was Bonner's voice that prepared the way for more Aboriginal voices to our Parliament.

It was his vision to see more Aboriginal Australians elected to Federal Parliament, and that vision has been realised.

Bonner's great niece and former Queensland senator, Joanna Lindgren, recently said at a 'no' event in Queensland, that her great uncle never would have supported an amendment to our constitution that divided Australians along the lines of race through a 'voice'.

Ernie Bridge, Albert Namatjira, Eddie Marbo, Vincent Lingiari, M. K. Turner, the list goes on, and includes 19 Federal parliamentarians of indigenous heritage – democratically elected voices. Who have represented all Australians since Bonner's entrance in 1971.

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It includes 49 state and territory parliamentarians of indigenous heritage. 14 of whom have come from my home, the Northern Territory, who followed din the footsteps of Hyacinth Tungutalum, a fellow Country Liberal Party member elected in 1974.

I wish I could spend this entire speech just listing inspiring Aboriginal Australians and their contributions to policy, government, our Australian way of life and so many important issues. But I have to address the third lie that underpins the divisive voice. That is that it is simply an advisory body.

Nowhere in the question that will be put to Australians or in the proposed chapter on which we are voting do the words 'advice', 'advice' or 'advisory' appear. If the Prime Minister truly intended for this body to be a simple advisory body as he, his government, and the advocates of the 'voice' repeatedly tell us, then it would have been stipulated in the proposed chapter.

Instead, proposed chapter 9, section 129, part 1, determines: 'There shall be a body called the Voice.' And part 2 specifies that: 'it shall have the power to make representations to the Parliament and executive government on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.'

You see, words matter. Words proposed for amendment within our nation's constitution matter a lot. And they matter to every single Australian.

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As Chris Merritt, legal affairs expert and vice president of the Rule of Law Institute of Australia explained recently during a 'voice' forum, the difference is significant. Describing the 'voice' as an advisory group understates its significance and gives the misleading impression it would be a benign sounding-board for ideas.

That the 'voice' will produce representations, not advice, suggests its role would be more like a lobby group that acts only in the interests of its clients. Not the interests of the government, the parliament or even the nation.

It is the Prime Minister that has many times, trotted out talking points that he wants us to focus on the question and only the question, but at the same time, the role he insists the 'voice' will have is not in the question.

This point is critical, and it leads to the fourth lie that the 'voice' is built on.

No matter what the government, the advocates and the activists say about what the 'voice' will or won't do, the fact is they don't know.

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They don't know who will be on the 'voice'. They don't know what it'll choose to make representations on. They don't know how a high court will interpret the proposed new chapter.

For all their promises, the third and final part of the proposed chapter specifies that though the parliament shall have the power to make laws, it will be subject to the Constitution. Which means it'll be subject to High Court interpretation. And the amendment is such, that the power to make representations comes before whatever laws the Parliament might pass.

Assertions that the 'voice' will only care about health and education, or anything else that has been claimed, are misleading conjecture. They don't know.

The Government has repeatedly promised equal representation, gender balance and youth representation, but these are not promises the Government can make. The reality is that they don't know what form the 'voice' may make in the future. They don't know.

What we do know is that many of the most senior advocates of the 'voice' have very different views of than that of the Government. They talk about it as the first step towards establishing treaty, reparations, compensation, and a mechanism to punish politicians, presumably this means politicians like me who are not afraid to stand up to them.

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There has been no shortage of false claims that it is the 'no' campaigners who are fear-mongering over the scope of the 'voice', but the reality is that our concerns come from the 'voice' advocates themselves.

For example, we've heard calls for Australia Day to be abolished by referendum working group members. Taylor Reid directly rebuked minister Burney's comment that the 'voice' won't make representations on Australia Day when she said: 'It might be the Australian Government's preference to keep things like Australia Day. But trying to limit the scope of what the people can advocate for to change, is just stupid.'

In front of friendly audiences, where they aren't trying to pull the wool over the eyes of ordinary Australians, the people who are in the room with Anthony Albanese, designing this, make clear what they expect the 'voice' to be.

Militant unionist and key working group member, Thomas Mayo, told the Search Foundation's 'Snapshots of Communists in Australian History' event on the 'Voice' in March of 2021: 'We understand as unionists that you don't make an agreement with the boss without building power first. Without building representative structures any more than a Communist Party or any other political party can function without structure and elected representation

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Australians, including Aboriginal Australians, have every right to be concerned that such radical demands are being made by advocates of the 'Voice'.

So let's be very clear. The widespread community support of recognition of indigenous Australians in the Constitution, bears no relation to what the architects of the 'voice' have put forward.

This very obvious point was made by Amanda Vanstone in the Appendix of the 2017 Uluru Council final report. I encourage you to go and read it.

She pointed out that the 'Voice' proposal created a dissonance between what the public believe recognition meant and what has been proposed. She observed, it could be very divisive and damaging to pursue this without properly working through that dissonance.

Well here we are, divided, by a proposal, that its own advocates are very clear is about being separate, not united.

The designers of the 'voice' continue to push the idea that we are different to everyone else despite also being Australian.

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A massive disservice has been done to the Australian people and indeed has contributed to the division created by this debate, when Government talking points are being laundered as facts, despite there being clear agendas stated by the designers of the 'voice' and despite the Government assurances being often flagrantly contradictory and incoherent.

We are seeing that this division is now beginning to play a significant role in the demands now being made by Aboriginal institutions. Institutions such as the Victorian Government's established truth-telling commission Yoorrook.

Make no mistake. Such so-called truth-telling commissions have no desire to tell history in the round. They desire to misrepresent Aboriginal life prior to the arrival of the British as some form of Pascoenian paradise. They want to demonise colonial settlement in its entirety, and nurture a national self-loathing about the foundations of modern Australian achievement.

Following a Royal Commission type process, the truth-telling commission have demands for sweeping changes that would seek to legislate separatism based on racial heritage.

The Commission demands that an indigenous-led watchdog be established with the power to arrest and search Victoria police officers and investigate police complaints and deaths in custody.

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Contrary to the Royal Commission into black deaths in custody making no findings of institutional racism, the truth-telling commission claims racism and the effects of colonisation are to blame for high rates of incarceration. The Commission calls for an entirely separate child protection system that treats Indigenous children differently to other Australians.

This demand is based on claims that systemic racism is the cause for high rates of child removal despite the fact that children of Indigenous heritage are nine times more likely to be the subject of substantiated child protection claims than non-indigenous Victorian children. Nowhere within the truth-telling commission's findings are these statistics highlighted.

During my time working at the Centre for Independent Studies, I published a policy paper titled ' Worlds Apart: remote Indigenous disadvantage in the context of wider Australia.' One of the areas I research was crime and its nature.

We know that a fundamental cause of any person on a pathway to incarceration, for both youth and adults, is exposure to domestic violence, abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, lack of education and incompletion of schooling. When all of these elements are combined, then the likelihood of engagement in criminal behaviour and incarceration is virtually inevitable.

This relates to any person of any background, but the reality is that Aboriginal children are exposed to all of the factors at a greater rate than any other group of Australian children.

Separatism, attributing to causes to racism and colonisation, does little to nothing to address the true causes. We are led by grievance before fact. We overlook the opportunity to execute pragmatic common sense approaches capable of realistic and positive outcomes.

The demands now being made by the truth-telling commission on the Victorian Government give us an insight into the potential conduct and demands the 'voice' might bring.

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No matter what the outcome is on October 14, it is imperative that we examine the failures of our past in order to understand how to do better.

Our nation's rule book belongs to every Australian, and it is not a document to be taken for granted or to be jeopardised for the same of a vibe. To undertake such a significant amendment, the Prime Minister owes the Australian people a clear, concise, realistic demonstration of how his 'voice' will deliver the outcomes that all good Australians want for our marginalised. As yet, he's unable to do that.

Remember, it is the Labor party who have gone down this path of division by hitching recognition, which most Australians support to the 'voice'. The coalition is consistent in supporting recognition but we, rightly, say 'no' to a divisive 'voice'.

If the referendum goes down, that's on Labor, for choosing a divisive and non-consultative path which sets back recognition. What has become abundantly clear is that when racial separatism that designates a class of Australians as an 'other', is prioritised over serving Australians on the basis of need, we experience failure.

An industry has been established that provides opportunity for the already privileged to occupy positions that are supposed to deliver outcomes for our marginalised, based purely on the fact they share a racial heritage. Such positions should carry immense responsibility. But unfortunately, very little has come in the way of accountability.

It is for this very reason, that I, along with my colleague senator Karen Little, have put motions before the Senate to establish an inquiry into structures that currently exist to deliver the much needed outcomes to our marginalised communities.

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If the tax-payer is funding these structures, like land councils, native title and similar organizations, but they are not delivering outcomes, then it is incumbent on us as elected members of Parliament to provide a platform for the marginalised to hear from them as to how they are being failed.

So when the Prime Minister says the 'Voice' is the last chance we have to overcome the disparity of marginalised Aboriginal Australians, do not believe him.

Do not believe him when he attempts to undermine the importance of the Aboriginal members of Parliament, who are fighting to effect real change via the democratic structures by which we have been elected.

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Remember, the Prime Minister himself has cited examples where local communities have had input on policies that have worked. This is already happ0ening, and our support for regional and rural consultation is about amplifying that success rather than doubling down on previous failures.

We don't need a 'voice' to Canberra, we need accountability. It is incumbent upon us as members of Parliament to determine what actions are required in order to fix the current structures and apply greater accountability.

It is not for us to initiate a mechanism for a transfer of constitutional power to an entity controlled by a handful of individuals, then relegating an entire group of Australians based on racial heritage to this entity.

My hope is that after October 14, after defeating this voice of division, we can bring accountability to existing structures and we can get away from assuming inner-city activists speak for all Aboriginals and back to focusing on the real issues: education, employment, economic participation, and safety from violence and sexual assault.

Two years ago I filmed a documentary to give a voice to the voiceless and the vulnerable, to the women, children and men who have suffered in silence. To those who have survived horrific violence at the hands of those closest to them. Those who have been murdered to those closest to them. And those alleged to have been murdered but whose deaths have never been properly investigated or brought any justice.

It highlighted the people who have not previously been heard because the cause of their pain has not been colonisation or racism. The cause of their pain has been much closer to home.

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These are the voices that will not be represented within the new Canberra 'voice'. The Canberra 'voice' would not have a purpose if the lives of the most marginalised were dramatically improved. The Aboriginal industry would come to a screaming halt if the gap between our most marginalised and everyone else, including privileged Aboriginal people disappeared.

We need to be listening to people like Sharon Long. The cousin of a young indigenous girl who died hours after being sexually assaulted in a remote community. And her beautiful nieces and sisters that she cares for that are all here today. recently they made their way to Canberra to be heard, while minister Burney, Prime Minister Albinese and in fact the entire Labor Government, Teals, the senator David Pocock, have been happily travelling the country to do events with leading activist 'yes' campaigners.

They couldn't find the time for them. 31:25 They listen to the Qantas sponsored leaders of the activist industry but not to an ordinary Aboriginal woman, actually on the ground, living the disadvantage they claim they care about.

Sharon not only takes care or her siblings and nieces, but has recently brought her elderly grandmother from Bulla in the Northern Territory, to her home in North Queensland. Because her house in community was made unlivable when a male family member tried to set fire to his girlfriend in the room next to her nana's bedroom.

Despite Sharon's calls to the Northern Land Council, and other organizations to intervene and provide support for her grandmother, her cries have fallen on deaf ears.

It is why Sharon has little faith in the multi-million dollar organizations responsible for representing the needs of the vulnerable. Why would a 'voice' be any better? Especially when its advocates hold nothing by contempt for those of us who question it and who challenge its intentions.

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The 'voice' will become yet another battleground for many Aboriginal voices to disagree, fall out, and create division.

The division must be rejected, and certainly must not be enshrined within our Constitution.

I want to thank my husband Colin for standing with me against division. I want to thank my parents for their support. Who are here today.

Thank you to the Aboriginal women who have travelled here today.

And thank you to everyone around the country who have joined us in this fight against those who want to divide our nation.

On October 14 we must say no to the voice of division.

Thank you.

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