Who is Jacinta Price, and how did she become a central player in the voice referendum?
The meteoric rise of Jacinta Nampijinpa Price from small-town deputy mayor to central player in Australia’s first referendum in a generation has continued with her elevation into the shadow cabinet after less than a year as a senator.
The Northern Territory senator will steer the no campaign against the Indigenous voice from inside and outside the federal parliament, combining her role as leader of the Advance conservative lobby group’s campaign with her new title as shadow minister for Indigenous Australians.
She now holds both positions and has been cited as the key factor behind the National party taking an early hard no stance on the voice, making her one of the most influential figures in the referendum.
But she is also known for making controversial comments. On her first day on the job, Price claimed that Aboriginal communities would be “exploited” through the referendum, and said there were some people who falsely “claim to be Indigenous”.
So who is Price, and how did she vault into shadow cabinet within months of joining federal parliament?
Who is Jacinta Nampijinpa Price?
She was born in Darwin in 1981 to parents who met while working as teachers in the Tiwi Islands. Speaking to the former deputy prime minister John Anderson in a video interview in 2018, Price said of her parents: “Mum’s Warlpiri, Dad’s a white fella from Newcastle.”
Price has often described herself as a “Warlpiri-Celtic woman”.
Her mother, Bess, was also a politician. Bess Price was elected to the NT assembly between 2012 and 2016 as a member of the Country Liberal party, holding positions as minister for community services, local government and housing.
Jacinta Price said her family moved to Alice Springs when she was a toddler, where she went to school and had children – her first arriving while she was in year 12.
“The sorts of things I grew up with, understanding my culture, my family are very traditional,” told Anderson in 2018. “I performed in ceremony as a child, but also understood the parts of culture that aren’t so lovely.
“I’ve grown up knowing you have to be tough, you have to be physically tough. Women are quite ready to act out violently if need be, when you’re an Aboriginal woman. I’ve grown up seeing a lot of violence in my own family.”
She said her family members had “perpetrated violence and sexual violence”.
Price’s LinkedIn profile states she has worked as a “cross cultural consultant” with her family business, Jajirdi Consultants, offering cultural awareness training. She also worked as an executive director of a production company making “Indigenous themed PreSchool Television Shows, Stage Musicals and other projects” and as director of the Indigenous research program at the Centre for Independent Studies, a conservative thinktank, according to the profile.
Her bio also lists her as a contributor to the Australian newspaper from 2016 and a political commentator for Sky News since 2018.
In 2012 and 2014 Price uploaded songs to Triple J Unearthed, a publishing platform for independent Australian musicians. The website states that in 2013 she planned to launch her debut album, Dry River, which she described as “a mix of folk, soul and country music that pays tribute to her life growing up in Central Australia”.
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“Being part of two cultures Warlpiri and Anglo-Celtic has always influenced the way in which her music has been created,” the website says. “As a youngster she played the violin before her focus switched to voice as part of local hip-hop outfits ‘Flava 4’ and ‘CMobs’.”
In one of the few disclosures on her parliamentary register of interests, Price declared “writer and performance royalties” from Apra, the performers’ rights association.
From local councillor to senator
In 2015 Price was elected to the Alice Springs local council before becoming deputy mayor in 2020. She became a regular guest on Sky News and was quoted in News Corp tabloids, drawing attention to violence and alcohol in the NT.
On her website, Price writes: “I’ve been turning the tables on the left for years.
“Almost two decades ago, I started working in the NT to bridge the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. I’ve been unafraid to call it like it is ever since.”
In 2019 she ran unsuccessfully as the CLP candidate for the NT seat of Lingiari, defeated by the veteran Labor MP Warren Snowdon 55%-45% on a two-party-preferred basis. But in 2021 she successfully beat the incumbent CLP senator Sam McMahon in a preselection battle and all but assured her election as the NT’s conservative senator.
This came after McMahon was accused of being drunk in the Senate chamber, just a week before the preselection vote. McMahon denied the allegations, claiming she was unwell, and later quit the CLP to sit as an independent until the 2022 election.
Price appeared alongside the former prime minister Scott Morrison several times during the election campaign, drawing attention when she described him as “an elder of our country” after protesters attempted to disrupt a Darwin press conference with loudspeakers and sirens.
She was comfortably elected at the poll and entered parliament in mid-2022.
In her first speech to parliament she spoke of wanting to support jobs and business in the NT, rather than “the shackles of welfare dependency”.
Price also criticised what she called “opportunistic Indigenous community politics” and “Indigenousindustry gravy-train consumers”. She described symbolic welcome to country or acknowledgments of country at public events as a “reinvention of culture”, and strongly rejected the proposed Indigenous voice, which she claimed was a “virtue-signalling agenda”.
“I personally have had more than my fill of being symbolically recognised,” she said.
“I am an empowered Warlpiri Celtic Australian woman who did not need and has never needed a paternalistic government to bestow my own empowerment upon me. We’ve proven for decades now that we do not need a chief protector of Aborigines.”
A key anti-voice campaigner
Since entering parliament, Price’s public comments have strongly focused on the referendum, and she has emerged as potentially the most prominent anti-voice campaigner.
Price was a headline attraction at the 2022 CPAC conference in Sydney, where opposing the voice was a major focus. She described the voice as “racial separatism”. She has been on record since at least 2019 opposing the voice concept, appearing in an Institute of Public Affairs advertisement.
She was central at the press conference where the National party announced its opposition to the voice in November 2022, a year before the vote is expected to be held. In a statement at the time, the Nationals leader, David Littleproud, claimed the voice “devalues the 11 elected Indigenous MPs, including Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price”.
The decision led to strong criticism from various Nationals state branches that backed the voice.
Price has become a constant travel companion of the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, as he made numerous trips to the NT to campaign against the voice.
Her profile has ballooned since the election, now operating one of the most followed and popular Facebook pages of any Australian politician. Her 186,000 Facebook followers is equivalent to three-quarters of the entire NT population, and her posts often rank as among the most popular of any politician in the country.
Price also assumed positions with Fair Australia, the anti-voice campaign from Advance, where she has also operated as a spokesperson. Fair’s website says the campaign is “led by Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price”.
Previously, Price had been on the committee of Recognise a Better Way, a separate anti-voice organisation led by the Indigenous businessman and former political candidate Warren Mundine. Shortly after the announcement she was joining the body Price quit and said her efforts were better directed to the “grassroots” campaign being run by Fair.
Mundine and Price have appeared together at press conferences and public events opposing the referendum. Guardian Australia understands the pair intend to tour the country, holding campaign events for the no vote.
Price, in her first comments after being named shadow minister for Indigenous Australians, claimed the voice is “run by those who have had long-held positions within the Aboriginal industry” and that communities “will be exploited” in the referendum.
Asked about the South Australian parliament’s newly legislated voice, Price also alluded to flashpoint claims of people falsely claiming Indigenous heritage.
“I think it is utterly ridiculous that it is being left open for individuals to declare their Aboriginality,” she said.
“Another matter that is of great concern, which has been talked about by a lot of Indigenous people around the country, are those who claim to be Indigenous who aren’t necessarily Indigenous. You will see in South Australia a dramatic increase in the number of Indigenous people within its population.”