Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has sensationally claimed that “no one is disadvantaged by being Indigenous” as she lists how Australia has benefited from colonisation.
Sharing her views in an opinion piece for The Australian, the controversial Liberal senator argued that it was inevitable that the country would be colonised and it was just a question of “who and when”.
The Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs said British colonisation provided Australia with a common law legal system, democracy, freedom and prosperity that indigenous people had not previously known.
Ms Price admitted that Australian history was “not perfect” and there were “embarrassing chapters” but said the country was now a “modern success story”.
“Crimes, violence and injustices were committed by bad actors, but I don’t think it should be controversial to say that both black and white Australia were making the best of things by the standards of the time,” he wrote.
‘This is demonstrated by the fact that something resembling a nation emerged from these decades of disruption.
‘So much so that when duty called our first Anzacs to serve in the Great War, more than a thousand indigenous Australians signed up to fight. Many of these heroes went above and beyond what was expected.’
Ms Price also said indigenous prosperity was being held back by a culture of victimhood, which she said was creating division.
Liberal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (pictured) criticised the “progressive left” and said activists were responsible for the divide between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
She said indigenous culture before British colonisation was marked by violent conflict and that if we continue down a “separatist path”, the negative parts of indigenous culture will be left alone to “grow and fester”, such as arranged marriage, violent cultural revenge and attributing tragedies to “witchcraft”.
He said the “progressive left” puts too much emphasis on the “less pleasant” aspects of indigenous history, rather than celebrating the events that led to the nation’s “great prosperity, security and success.”
She said it is not commonly acknowledged that British rulers ordered colonists to maintain friendly relations with Native peoples, although the instructions were often ignored.
He also noted that Europeans and Aborigines were considered equal before the law and that settlers who killed indigenous people were sentenced to death, citing the Myall Creek massacre, where seven white men were convicted and hanged.
He also claimed that many descendants of the “Stolen Generations” now enjoy greater prosperity and success than those generations who were simply abandoned and left to live in poverty and misery, and argued that the best way forward for the nation was for everyone to see themselves as modern Australians.
“The fact is that no one is disadvantaged just because they are indigenous. But those who are disadvantaged will continue to be so if we do not learn the lessons of our past and move forward together,” he wrote.
‘Last year, in my speech to the National Press Club, at the height of the Voice referendum debate, I made more than one headline when I highlighted the positive impacts of colonisation on Indigenous Australians, rather than simply regurgitating the standard deficit narrative peddled by those seeking to maintain a victim mentality.
Shadow Minister for Aboriginal Australia Jacinta Nampijinpa Price is pictured arriving at a press conference in February alongside nationalist leader David Littleproud and Shadow Minister for Infrastructure Bridget McKenzie.
“I hold that view, because when one takes an honest and impartial position on the history of our nation, it is obviously true.”
The claims come as research shows Indigenous Australians continue to suffer inequality compared to non-Indigenous Australians across a range of well-being factors, including life expectancy, infant mortality, education and employment.
The Closing the Gap policy, launched in 2008, seeks to reduce the well-being gap between the two cultural groups by increasing education, literacy, health, safety, housing and life expectancy for First Nations people.
According to data released in March, only five of the 19 goals identified in the Close the Gap framework for Indigenous Australians are on track to meet the 2031 deadline.
The report, which only provided updates for eight of the socio-economic goals, found that four goals are not on track, including the number of children represented in foster care and adults in the prison system.
Two of the goals (healthy birth weight and increased legal access to land and sea for cultural and economic purposes) are on track, while there was no change in data for the remaining three goals, which are on track.
Speaking about the results, Australia’s Minister for Indigenous Peoples Linda Burney said she was “slightly encouraged” that there were now five targets on track, compared with just four last year.
“The fact that babies are born at a healthy weight is something that I think has enormous implications,” she said.
“We can talk about goals and numbers, but at the end of the day, these are real people: our brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers and cousins.”