Jacinta Nampijinpa Price says state premiers are failing to heed the Voice referendum message and promoting a racist agenda driven by an Indigenous minority, as New South Wales begins to pave the way for an Indigenous treaty.
The New South Wales government, led by Labor Premier Chris Minns, announced yesterday it was seeking to appoint three commissioners as part of a $5 million commitment to explore the possibilities of a treaty with Indigenous communities.
LNP Senator Price said Minns was ignoring the result of last year’s federal Voice referendum and instead listening to an urbanized activist class that did not reflect the wider Indigenous community.
LNP Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has attacked state premiers pursuing state voices and treaties with Indigenous Australians.
“Not only did Australians, and particularly New South Wales Australians, vote no on The Voice, they also voted no on concepts linked to The Voice, which were treaty and truth,” said Senator Price, a minister in the shade for indigenous Australians.
Indigenous Voice to Parliament, described as one stage of a process towards truth and treaty-making in its founding document, the Uluru Declaration from the Heart, was rejected by more than 60 per cent of voters in October past.
Senator Price also noted that a recent vote for a Voice in South Australia’s parliament only recorded a 10 per cent turnout of those eligible to vote.
In the areas where the most marginalized indigenous peoples live, only around 300 of 2,000 eligible voters voted.
“Those prime ministers who think they know what is best for their constituents are fueling separatism in our country,” he told Sydney radio station 2GB on Friday.
“It’s dangerous, it’s useless and in a democratic nation like ours, in 2024, this will set us back.”
Senator Price said low turnout in South Australia, as well as in an election to elect Victoria’s First People’s Assembly, demonstrated that only a minority of urbanized Indigenous activists were pushing concepts like voice and treaty.
“It’s a ridiculous notion, it’s a racist notion to say that we all think the same as a race of people,” Senator Price said.
‘We don’t treat any other race this way, but we continue to have left-wing progressive leaders push that notion, which is a racist stereotype.
The New South Wales Labor government, led by Premier Chris Minns, is spending $5 million to explore the possibilities of signing a treaty with indigenous peoples.
‘We know that when you stand up and consider yourself a victim and attack anyone who will listen to you with that notion, there are those in power who will fall at your feet and give you what you want.
‘The fact that we are indigenous does not mean that we are all marginalized. In fact, only 20 percent of three percent of us are marginalized and our efforts should focus on the marginalized.
Senator Price joined Warren Mundine, his running mate in voting against in the Voice referendum, to condemn the push for Indigenous people to be exempt from land tax, as well as interest on loans and university fees as part of a Victorian treaty.
‘It’s absolutely outrageous. It’s more of a rent-seeking thing,” she stated.
‘To suggest that the rest of Victoria, non-Indigenous Victorians, have to reach into their pockets and pay their taxes to go to people of a certain racial heritage and mixed heritage, is absolutely ridiculous.
“It is separatism, it causes anguish, it causes division within communities.”
Senator Price said indigenous politics was dominated by an urbanized activist class
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has not ruled out race-based financial benefits being included in a treaty with the state’s indigenous population, with negotiations due to take place later this year.
Prominent Indigenous elder Jill Gallagher AO has pushed the case for a number of financial benefits the government should consider for the treaty, which also included exempting Indigenous people from stamp duty and council rates.
Appearing on Sky News, Mundine called these demands a “brain fart” and said they would make no practical difference to the major issues facing indigenous people.
On Friday, 2GB’s Mark Levy also asked Senator Price about her hometown of Alice Springs, where, following a riot, a curfew has been imposed on young people.
Senator Price said this had brought a welcome respite to the crime-ridden city, but she feared what would happen when the curfew is lifted next Tuesday.
“We can’t live like this in the long term,” he said.
“We need to get our community back to what it used to be instead of normalizing this type of behavior because we don’t get it anywhere else.”
He said Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney needed to step up and “get serious about a policy that will improve the lives of marginalized Indigenous Australians”.