Senator Nampijinpa Price talks to Peta Credlin, Sky News

12 May 2026

Subjects: Condolence Motion, Child Protection, Remote Communities, Indigenous Affairs

E&OE……………

PETA CREDLIN:

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has delivered a blistering and emotional address in the Senate today, paying tribute to her niece, little five-year-old Sharon, who was allegedly murdered in Alice Springs last month. It was a powerful call to action.

[CLIP STARTS]

SENATOR JACINTA NAMPIJINPA PRICE:

I don’t want to be here right now, to have to stand in this chamber. To deliver a condolence speech for a little girl from my family, Sharon Napanangka Granites. I read her name into the history books today in her honour... My niece was a little Australian girl, yet there is an ideology in this country that has deliberately encouraged people to treat children like her differently because of their racial heritage... The town camps many people romanticise have become places of entrenched dysfunction, places where alcohol restrictions exist on paper, but they’re routinely ignored. Places where overcrowding, violence and criminal behaviour have become normalised. Places where vulnerable women and children are too often left unprotected. While billions continue to flow through Indigenous programmes, organisations and bureaucracies, Australians are entitled to ask a simple question: where are the outcomes?... We cannot continue pretending that lowering expectations for Aboriginal children is compassion. It’s not compassion, it’s neglect. It’s the racism of low expectations. It’s become deeply embedded in parts of our institutions... And yes, culture matters. But no child should be sacrificed on the altar of culture or political correctness. Sharon was not a statistic. She was a child! She was part of my family, she was part of this nation. She deserved the same safety, dignity and opportunities every Australian child deserves. 

[CLIP ENDS] 

PETA CREDLIN:

Jacinta Price joins me now. I’m sorry to have to play that all again for you, but I’m not sorry for my audience, Jacinta, because as I said, that was one of the most powerful speeches in that place I have ever witnessed. You’ve said you want a Royal Commission into sexual abuse for Aboriginal women and girls rejected by Labor. You want an audit of the $30 billion we spend to do better for girls like Sharon, again rejected. So how can Labor and the Greens say they care when they are not listening to these basic demands?

SENATOR JACINTA NAMPIJINPA PRICE:

They don’t care. It’s that simple, Peta. Labor don’t care. The Greens don’t care. Those crossbenchers that sit with them, they don’t care — because it’s simple. They don’t have to. They don’t have to bury their loved ones. They don’t need to be in a place like Alice Springs. They don’t spend time in town camps or remote communities. They can live their lives elsewhere in this country, completely out of sight and out of mind of what is actually going on and they can continue to ignore the problem and they continue to be complicit in the ongoing sacrificing of our children in this country, Aboriginal kids, because of ideology. Ultimately, it has become very easy for them to do this and that’s what they will continue to do. That is why I call upon the Australian people to call them out, write to your local MP, write to the Prime Minister, and demand action. This has to stop. It can’t keep going. I’m going to keep fighting until there is action, but it’s demoralising, Peta. It is absolutely draining and demoralising.

PETA CREDLIN:

It’s heartbreaking. It’s heartbreaking, and I think what people don’t understand Jacinta is that to really tackle this you’ve got to tackle all of the Aboriginal economy, if I can call it that, these institutions — these Aboriginal corporations that run the town camps — they get plenty of money. The money doesn’t hit the ground. You saw how families are living, you saw how little girls are living, you see how women are living. It’s a lot of big men around the Aboriginal culture who put the money in their pockets, it doesn’t hit the ground. So are Labor and the Greens, I’m not saying whether they’re brave enough — because clearly they’re not — but are they even capable of calling out some of this entrenched corruption? That’s my problem.

SENATOR JACINTA NAMPIJINPA PRICE:

Well, I don’t think they are, because as long as it exists, they can gain power. The thing that I saw at the vigil in my hometown was a blatant promotion of Aboriginal organisations. That’s what it came to, you know, that moment was about my niece. The most, I think, moving part of that whole vigil were the Hermannsburg women singing for that little girl. But you see it over and again, the gatekeepers all lock in with one another, the organisations, the heads of these organisations, they defend their patch. They don’t want to lose their funding. They don’t want to lose their power. They do not want to lose their influence. Ultimately, they would rather point blame elsewhere. And in this situation, there isn’t a white perpetrator to get enraged about and to protest about. So it’s like, now’s not the time to talk, now is not the time to say anything. Everybody, you know, we’ve all got to be just grieving. This is about a continuation of the silencing that we’ve already had and I’m not going to stand for it and I am going to call for transparency and for accountability in these organisations that are fundamentally, well, supposed to be about advocating for children, SNAICC is, but the first concern they have is my family being portrayed in a particular light. Well, that’s not the concern here. The concern here is that Baby Girl was allegedly murdered and sexually assaulted. Like, this should be the utmost first concern of that organisation. But that’s not what we see time and time again, it’s rushing to defence instead.

PETA CREDLIN:

Well, and more than that, you know, I called out some of these organisations and elders in my column on the weekend where they said to even have this debate now, to even debate what we’re debating tonight, the issue of town camps, the treatment of little kids is racist. It’s insensitive. We shouldn’t do any of this around the whole issue of sorry business. But if we are not going to talk about it now, if we don’t talk about it tonight, if you don’t talk about it immediately, then there will be another little Sharon Friday night, Saturday night, next week or next month. That’s the problem.

SENATOR JACINTA NAMPIJINPA PRICE:

Precisely. As I said, there wouldn’t be these calls if there was a white perpetrator involved. There would be outrage, there would be continued protests right around the country. There wouldn’t be a call for silence. But we can’t silence women and we can’t silence children. This is what we see occur over and again. The vulnerable become silenced, you know. Some figureheads come out and become the spokespeople for this situation, but ultimately, you know, this government, the Labor government likes to co-opt families and pretend to become mouthpieces for families and speak on behalf of everybody, and organisations with unelected individuals become mouthpieces, and they want to avoid the really bloody tough questions, and we have to start asking them. I’m so pleased that the media are catching on to the fact that, you know, there’s Tangentyere Council, which is given millions of dollars, $24 million going towards just over 200 staff. I mean, the squalor that Aboriginal people live in, the unsafe environments that they wouldn’t put their own children in. The staff of these organisations wouldn’t have their own children living in these circumstances themselves, and neither would these heads of these organisations that get paid the same sort of salary as the Prime Minister. They wouldn’t place their children in these dire environments and these unsafe situations. So we should not expect that for any child in this country.

PETA CREDLIN:

Well, my dear friend, before we go, I know it’s your birthday today and I know it has been a gruelling, incredibly tough day, but I just want to say on behalf of all of my listeners, you did your little niece proud this afternoon, Jacinta. God bless, happy birthday, and we’ll catch up soon.

[ENDS]