Senator Nampijinpa Price talks to Ben Fordham on 2GB Radio Sydney

30 November 2023 7:15AM AEDT

Subjects: Northern Areas Council scrapping the Welcome to Country, Welcome to Country ‘boo-ing,’ Indigenous Child Welfare and adoption.

Ben Fordham
A regional council in South Australia has made a big call. They have asked the welcome to country. The Northern Areas Council, located about 200 kilometers north of Adelaide has decided to no longer read out the Welcome to Country acknowledgement before every council meeting, they've been doing it for years, but they've decided to dump it, making them the first council to do so since the voice referendum defeat. The welcome to country will also be scrapped from official correspondence. Two councilors initiated the motion. It was passed with the support of the majority of Council. They say the move was made “because Australia is one country”. Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price is the Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs and she's on the line. Senator, good morning to you.

Senator Nampijinpa Price
Good morning, Ben. Thanks for having me.

Ben Fordham
We haven't heard from you in a while, you’re probably getting back to life as normal after the voice campaign?

Senator Nampijinpa Price
Slowing things down ever so slightly, but also looking toward the future as well. And so certainly what that means for my portfolio, and you know, looking at how we can apply some practical measures into the future. But, yeah, looking forward to the Christmas break also, it's been huge year.

Ben Fordham
I'm here to get your take on the Northern Areas Council deciding to get rid of the Welcome to Country. What's your take?

Senator Nampijinpa Price
Yeah look, I think it's sort of demonstrates how Australians have felt, probably I think they've felt the act of doing that has become a little bit contrived in some circumstances. It's actually been really highly politicized. And, the sense of that, you know, we all belong, I think some people feel like ‘well, I belong too, I was born here in Australia,’ and so on and so forth. I think councils can certainly find other ways to reflect the history of their communities in terms of the historical context of the first people that come from those communities. But I just think, you know, the welcome to country in many ways, probably for special events or that sort of thing, but I think people are a little bit sort of over it being utilized as often as it has been.

Ben Fordham
I reckon one of the reasons people are over hearing it all the time is because they don't think that it helps anyone.

Senator Nampijinpa Price
There is that as well. I think if you know, you could save a single life on the ground, if it actually impacted somebody's life in a significant way, then yeah go for it. But I think Australians are now at the point where they want to feel like everybody should be included. You know, and for me growing up, a lot of my elders would teach that if you were born in this country, you know you too belong to the dreaming, you have part of the spiritual essence of the creative ancestor inside of you. And you belong here, just as anybody else does. And I think this practice has probably gone a little bit too far in focusing on one group of Australians.

Ben Fordham 
There was an incident over the weekend. It was at a Liberal Party gathering over the weekend, and when the acknowledgement came up, there were people booing Have a listen to this.

Ben Fordham
We don’t want to head down that path do we Jacinta Price? Where you’ve got people booing when they're hearing it, and they're probably doing that because they feel like it's being shoved down their throats?

Senator Nampijinpa Price
Yeah, look, I don't agree with taking steps – I think that's a step too far. Doing that in response to that sort of thing, and we don't want to go that far. But I think a lot of these issues have been shoved down Australia's throats and I think this sense of for every action, there's reaction. I think we've got to get back to a sense of everybody belonging to this country since that we're all in this together, and we should be supporting one another no matter what our background.

Ben Fordham
During the Voice campaign, one of the Voice architect’s Professor Marcia Langton said, “if the voice is defeated, how are they ever going to be able to ask me to come and speak at their next conference? And how will we expect to do a welcome to country?” So is there a chance that we're going to see more decisions like this one being made by the council in South Australia where organizations, sporting groups, other bodies just think ‘All right, well, we don't need to be doing this all the time?’

Senator Nampijinpa Price
You know, that's very possible. And I think it's up to each and every organization, the way in which they sort of conduct themselves going forward. As I said, I think there's many other practical ways that we can – I've always thought that we need to learn about our country's history in its entirety. The good, the bad, what it was the brought us together, more about our Indigenous history, certainly. And we should be making steps in those sorts of directions in more practical terms. That's what I believe.

Ben Fordham
And on those practical issues, you've always been concerned about the safety of children and women and we learned this week that Indigenous kids are more than 10 times more likely to be taken from their parents than non-Indigenous children. And there is a real debate going on isn't there and we heard from Warren Mundine on this the other day to say well look at children who are in trouble, they need to be removed from that situation, regardless of the color of their skin.

Senator Nampijinpa Price
Yeah, that's exactly right. And the lives of Indigenous children have been politicized in that way, I believe for some time. They've been allowed to be left in dysfunction because of their racial heritage, as opposed to being removed for the benefit of upholding their human rights to ensure that they growing up in an environment that's caring for them. And there's been a couple of court cases where the judge has ruled in favor of children being able to be adopted in those circumstances where the children made very, very clear that they wanted to be adopted. And I think there were the ruling was correct in favor of upholding those children's human rights and what it was they needed. I think that's a positive step forward. I think every single child in those circumstances, it should be about what is in the best interest of those children, and as I said, upholding their human rights.

Ben Fordham
Thank you for making yourself available regularly for us in 2023. We look forward to talking in 2024. Thank you so much.

Senator Nampijinpa Price
Thanks for having me again.