Senator Nampijinpa Price talks with Paul Murray, News24

4 August 2026

Subjects: Housing affordability, negative equity, small business.

E&OE……………

PAUL MURRAY:

Somebody who we absolutely love here, equally strong, fearless, independent, the wonderful Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who's in the man cave at News24. Lovely to see you, mate. 

SENATOR JACINTA NAMPIJINPA PRICE:

It's great to be here, it’s been a while. 

PAUL MURRAY:

It's been way too long. Way too long. Lots of busy stuff happening here, there and everywhere. Now, let's talk about the housing stuff, right? I was doing a bit of research today. About two million homes have been bought and sold in the past five years, so those are the people who got in when interest rates were down there, now they're 15 up, right. There's an awful lot of people who will get divorced, lose their job, a whole bunch of reasons why you have to sell up. Not within 10 years, not within 20 years, but within the next couple of years. Those are the people who are going to get absolutely smashed by the shrinking market right now. Yet Labor thinks, just like, you know, the globalisation stuff of the 90s, oh, look, there's a few people along the way who sort of get screwed over. But there's two million people sitting right now, right on that line, who may well at any time have to sell up. 

SENATOR JACINTA NAMPIJINPA PRICE:

Absolutely. And the circumstances that Labor have created for them, I mean, it means that they're running a huge risk. At the moment, we've got, as we've found, 34,000 Australians now who've taken up this first homebuyer scheme that the government have convinced them to participate in with a deposit of as low as 5%. And now they're at risk of going into negative equity. This government just thinks that the situation will be such that people just, you know, they'll sit and they'll live in their homes and no one wants to go and create a property portfolio and negative gear or anything like that anymore. But no, it's about just people buying homes, living in those homes and paying them off over a long period of time. And nothing could possibly go wrong, particularly when there's a cost-of-living crisis going on and this government is just spending like a drunken sailor. 

PAUL MURRAY:

But also, there's this, you know, governments make choices and this government is absolutely ideological about the choices that they are making, right? Now, yes, OK, out on the extremes of populism, while the future of the left is they don't want you to own anything, OK, I don't think we're there yet, right. I think what we are about is the triangle of dependency where either you work for the government, there is the welfare, or if you're in business, the biggest client is the government as a way not to rock the boat. We've seen that playing out in Victoria for 30 years, in Queensland for the best part of 30 years. But the thing that I don't understand here is that, OK, if they wanted to rearrange the housing thing where, OK, we're going to bring prices as low as possible, well what are they doing to bring aged care down? Because the way that people pay for their aged care is the house that they bought for this ends up being worth that, which pays for this, which means there's something left over for the kid to get the deposit to go again and again, and this is what I find enraging about what they're doing is that it's not part of some holistic approach, it's just about trying really, through taxation, to fiddle with the budget and to do something societally for people who might think about voting for the greens. 

SENATOR JACINTA NAMPIJINPA PRICE:

Well, that's precisely right. I mean, everything that they do, they don't look at the big picture in terms of the policies that they put forward. And it's across the board, in terms of hurtling towards net zero at a rate of knots, increasing the cost of everything in our country from their spending, the home-grown inflation that we're experiencing, the cost of power increases the cost of everything, the costs to do business. These are all the things that Australians are confronted with at the moment right across the board. And, you know, I've been here speaking with those at the COSBOA Conference today and small businesses that are doing it really bloody tough. And the assets that they hold are there for their future. The properties they hold are there for the future so they can either ensure that their children are OK or they can take care of their elderly parents in those circumstances and have to pay for aged care through utilising those assets, through selling those assets. And now they're just making it fundamentally harder for everybody to get ahead right now. And it just blows my mind the way this government is conducting their business. 

PAUL MURRAY:

Yeah, I think I saw the fill-in Prime Minister was around in part of this stuff today as well, right? I mean, the balls on these people to even try to interact with the small business community. OK, let's imagine, put all the industrial stuff to one side, the cost of power to whatever business you do — up, up, up, right — let alone all the other things that they have done. It is extraordinary that they turn around and think that they have any story to sell to these people. 

SENATOR JACINTA NAMPIJINPA PRICE:

Well, the interesting thing was that the small business minister, she's been out of sight, out of mind. She wasn't in attendance today. I don't know where she is. I haven't heard boo from her, you know, unless she wants to attack me on the migrant issue. That's what she has to go at. But look, aspiration. I mean, small business is aspiration in action in this country. You know, there are those on the left who think profit is a dirty word, but profit is what allows a business to employ another person, give an apprentice that first opportunity, you know, invest in their business, to grow their business, to employ more people in the private sector. I mean, heaven forbid should we not allow the private sector to grow because these are people that pour their heart and soul, their entire lives, into their small businesses. And, Paul, I've been speaking to them, and I look them dead in the eye and they are... their hearts are breaking right now. And this government just sees them as another opportunity. If they hear profit, they're like, right, we're coming after what you're making. That's for us. Give it over so we can keep building our bureaucracies and sending this country broke. 

PAUL MURRAY:

Well, they keep coming up with rubbish like turnover, but we can do calculations based off turnover. It's small business, OK, right, a dollar that passes over, not much of it is left and often it just goes straight back out. You are, as always, a rock star. So good to see you in the man cave. Can we make more time the next time you're in town? 

SENATOR JACINTA NAMPIJINPA PRICE:

Yeah, look, I promise, you know, I'll get here more often. 

PAUL MURRAY:

No, no, we'll come to Alice. We'll just come and hang out at your joint. 

SENATOR JACINTA NAMPIJINPA PRICE:

All right. Come to Alice. That sounds like a good idea. Thank you. 

PAUL MURRAY: 

I appreciate it, Senator. Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. She is a rock star, such a great person to be having in our Australian political discussion. She is fearless and we love her with all we've got. 

[ENDS]