Jacinta Nampijinpa Price
Jacinta Yangapi Nampijinpa Price (born 12 May 1981) is an Australian activist and politician from the Northern Territory. Price is a member of the Country Liberal Party, a politically conservative party operating in the Northern Territory affiliated with the national Coalition. Price has served as a councillor for Alice Springs since 2015, and is currently the Deputy Mayor of Alice Springs. Born to a Anglo-Celtic father and a Warlpiri mother, Price's activism primarily focuses on issues faced by Aboriginal communities. Price is known for her right-wing views on criminal justice policy, arguing that the  issue of "black-on-black violence" is ignored in favour of discussions about racial discrimination against Aboriginal Australians. Price unsuccessfully stood for the Division of Lingiari at the 2019 federal election, representing the Country Liberal Party. In June 2021, she defeated incumbent CLP Senator Sam McMahon for preselection at the 2022 federal election. Early life. Price was born on 12 May 1981 in Darwin, Northern Territory, and grew up in Alice Springs. Her father, David Price, is of Anglo-Celtic descent and was born in Newcastle, New South Wales. Her mother, Bess Price, who served in the Northern Territory Legislative  Assembly, is a Warlpiri woman. Bess Price is a fellow member of the CLP who supported the controversial Northern Territory National Emergency Response, known as "The Intervention", of 2007 that implemented new legislation in response to the crises facing Aboriginal communities. Jacinta Price had a career in the children's television program "Yamba's Playtime", where she played the best friend of the lead character Yamba the Honeyant. Political positions and activism. Aboriginal autonomy. Price generally takes a conservative view towards issues facing Aboriginal communities. Price strongly opposed the creation of the "Indigenous voice to government" body, a work in  progress begun in 2019, stating there is already "enough parliamentary representation of Indigenous people". She also argued that the creation of the body implied that Aboriginal people are a "separate entity to the rest of Australia". Price criticised former Australian Labor Party leader Bill Shorten during his visit to Barunga in 2018. After Shorten condemned the removal of Aboriginal children from their families, Price accused Shorten of paternalism. Crime in Aboriginal communities. Price has criticised public interest in Indigenous deaths as overlooking those deaths perpetrated by other Indigenous people, stating that people only care about Aboriginal deaths "if there's  a white perpetrator". In response to Australian "Black Lives Matter" protests aiming to shed light on police brutality and racial violence against Aboriginal Australians, Price stated "It’s not racism that is killing our people, it is the actions of our own people”. She argued that Black Lives Matter activists have been “ignoring the real crisis” facing Indigenous people. Price has pushed back against claims of systemic racism in the Australian prison system against Aboriginal people, saying that the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1987-1991) found no evidence that proportionately more Aboriginal Australians die in custody than  non-Indigenous Australians. Australia Day debate. In 2018, Price supported the "Save Australia Day" campaign promoted by Mark Latham. In 2021 she criticised the push to change the date of Australia Day, saying that changing the date would not improve the lives of Aboriginal people. The move to change the date is based on the grounds that it commemorates the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, which started the adverse impacts of British settlement on Australia's Indigenous peoples. Price describes Australia Day as a "magical day" and rejects claims that the day commemorates the subjugation of Aboriginal people . 2019 House of Representatives election. In 2019, Price unsuccessfully stood as the candidate of the Country Liberal Party in Lingiari against Labor incumbent Warren Snowdon. Section::::"Coconut" controversy. In 2019, Price was embroiled in a controversy following revelations that she had shared content deemed Islamophobic on her personal Facebook page. In response, George Hanna, her Greens opponent in the Lingiari who is also Aboriginal, referred to her as a "coconut". Widely considered offensive, the term is used to describe individuals deemed "black on the outside, white on the inside". After Price called for Hanna's withdrawal from the race over the  use of the term, she was accused of hypocrisy by Steve Hodder Watt, an Aboriginal activist, who published messages in which Price referred to him as "white". Results. Below are the final results of the 2019 federal election in the Division of Lingiari. Legal proceedings. Price launched defamation proceedings against the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2019 in response to their coverage of her “Mind the Gap” tour; she consequently received a full public apology in April 2021. In 2020, Price was sued for defamation by Nova Peris, former federal government senator for the NT (who is also Aboriginal). Price had  accused Peris of protecting sexual predators while on the television program "Studio 10". According to transcripts provided by the Supreme Court of Victoria, Price stated that Peris had been involved with "powerful men who have made it to powerful positions who have never been condemned". Price later apologised to Peris for these remarks. Other roles. Outside of elected office, Price serves as Indigenous program director for the Centre for Independent Studies, a libertarian think tank based in Sydney. Her January 2021 paper 'Worlds Apart: Remote Indigenous disadvantage in the context of wider Australia' surveyed the statistics on third-world conditions  and extreme levels of violence in remote communities. Price is a regular guest on Sky News Australia. Personal life. Price has three sons from a first marriage. She experienced domestic violence in a later relationship, and is now partnered with Colin Lillie, a cook and musician born in Scotland. Her folk/soul/country album "Dry River" launched in 2013.