Senator Nampijinpa Price talks to Chris Kenny, Sky News

7 May 2026

Subjects: Alice Springs; child protection failures; Indigenous community safety

E&OE……………

CHRIS KENNY:

Let's bring in Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, the little girl's auntie. Jacinta's about to attend the vigil in Alice. Thanks for joining us, Jacinta, and we're so sorry for your loss. You must be feeling an incredible amount of sorrow and personal grief, of course, but on top of that, anger, because as long as I've known you, this has been your prime focus, how to protect young children in families in the town camps around places like Alice Springs and in remote communities, it shows that as a nation we're completely failing, doesn't it?

SENATOR JACINTA NAMPIJINPA PRICE:

Yeah, absolutely. Chris, I've been on your program. You and I have had conversations about this issue for years now. It's been a really difficult week, this last week. It's just been very consuming, and just spending time with my family and the women in my family in particular who are, I suppose, really feeling it. There's always just been an underlying sense of the voices of women, the voices of children, are never as important as the voices of men, especially when it comes to these circumstances. The frustration is, I've been really, really quite angry at heads of organisations who are turning this issue away from the safety of children and making sure that we uphold their human rights, and instead making it about how the public perceives my family. As far as I'm concerned, we all need to be having very difficult conversations about the reality of the circumstances that led up to this horrible event. Ultimately, the safety of children and women and the protection of their lives should be what is most important. So at the same time, you hear these heads of organisations wanting to put their points forward. Well, they're funded federally, aren't they? So they have got a patch to protect. But for me personally, I don't want to bury any more children in my family for the wrong reasons. I don't want to lose another woman to violence. That's what I want to stop and that's what I have always wanted to stop. So we need to stop covering it up and deflecting from having the honest and painful conversations that need to be had.

CHRIS KENNY:

Now, there are criminal charges pending, of course. A man has been charged with murder and will allow that criminal process to play out. But disturbing revelations have told us that there were warning signs that the Department of Children's Services had been notified of concerns about the living circumstances of this little girl, and here's the Northern Territory's children's minister yesterday.

[CLIP STARTS:]

ROBYN CAHILL OAM:

As a result of the initial investigation that had occurred, there's been three staff who've been stood down from the roles that they were occupying. Now is absolutely the time to look at how we can do things differently.

[CLIP ENDS:]

CHRIS KENNY:

Jacinta, the fact people were stood down. That's an obvious admission that mistakes were made. This is the dilemma, isn't it? When they're alerted to children at risk, why is there not enough action?

SENATOR JACINTA NAMPIJINPA PRICE:

Precisely, and this is another issue that I have raised repeatedly over the years. The former Labor government, I raised this issue with their Child Protection minister many years ago about the ongoing concerns of foster parents who take care of children, who raise them from when they're babies to about the age of five or six, and because of the kinship principle, they then decide to hand those children over to family members in communities who are effectively strangers to these children, where they've grown up in the suburbs of Alice Springs and known only that environment and the people that have raised them, but rip them from their hands, re-traumatise them, even against the advice from professionals, such as paediatricians, specialists in their fields dealing with children. They go against all that advice and they put those children back in those horrific circumstances, where I've known many cases where they've been re-traumatised, only to be taken back out of those circumstances and put back into the homes they should have stayed in the entire time. That only happens because they're Aboriginal, and that is the racism of lower expectations in this country. And I'm pleased to see that Robyn Cahill has taken first steps toward sorting out this department. The lives of children depend on it to do the right thing by them. I will acknowledge that they are, like many frontline services, under the absolute pump, and very few people have a desire to go and work for such organisations. I know that there is an attitude that needs to change, and it's come about because of woke bloody culture, because of political correctness, because of those in power who think there should be a hands-off approach to Aboriginal people — treating them differently because of the stolen generation. No, no, no. Let's treat them like Australian kids and uphold their human rights. That's what we need to do. Enough of the hands-off culture, the mindset that says that culture and country are more important to these kids, when ultimately that is a fantasy because it's dysfunction that you're sending these kids back to, not this concept of connection to land and culture. That's not what's going on here in the Northern Territory anyway. There are so many examples, and we can't continue down this path. I don't want to see more little babies lose their lives.

CHRIS KENNY:

Spot on Jacinta. Thanks for joining us. Our hearts are with you now as you join others in Alice Springs at that vigil. Jacinta Nampijinpa Price there, Liberal Senator for the Northern Territory.

[ENDS]