Jacinta Price and Peter Dutton
Jacinta Price and Peter Dutton (Images: AAP)

Flanked by Country Liberal Party Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton put boots on the ground in Alice Springs this week to declare the town crime-ridden, unsafe and ripe for an immediate federal law-and-order response.

His comments stirred angry backlash, but Arrernte Traditional Owner and CEO of Lhere Artepe Graeme Smith points to Price, not Dutton, as the real problem for the town.  

“I thought it was a disgusting effort by our so-called representative downplaying the beautiful town and Arrernte country of Alice Springs when she’s a Warlpiri lady herself,” Smith told Crikey.

“Don’t talk about another person’s country.”

Price told reporters at a press conference in Alice Springs that although locals love their community, they do not feel safe and that the town therefore qualifies as a “failed state”.

“Us locals are here for a reason. We love this community, we love the landscape, we love the people in our hometown,” the senator said before calling upon territory and federal government to “listen to the locals” and recognise “needs are not being met”.

Price, a former Alice Springs councillor and deputy mayor, is a Warlpiri/Celtic woman from Yuendumu country, about 290km northwest of Alice Springs. Smith says this gives her no right to be talking for or about the Arrernte people of Mparntwe, Alice Springs.

“She’s not Arrernte, she’s not from Alice Springs. She’s from Yuendumu. She’s a Warlpiri woman getting on TV discrediting the Arrernte country of Alice Springs. We do not like that,” he said, adding that this is why they want an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

“We don’t want to be the Voice in Canberra, like Jacinta wants to be. We want a Voice in Canberra and they’re distinctly different things. Jacinta does not represent us.”

Price was elected senator for the Northern Territory in 2022 following an unsuccessful bid at the federal seat of Lingiari in 2019. Following the resignation of former opposition minister for Indigenous affairs Julian Leeser, speculation from conservative ranks has swirled about Price joining the Liberal Party and assuming the role. 

Price has taken a strong stance on a No vote for a Voice, maintaining that Canberra chat is detracting from real issues on the ground. When pressed for detail on how better to draw on regional and local voices on Radio National this week, Price said, “I’m providing my perspective as somebody who comes from Alice Springs, as somebody who comes from those areas …”

Asked for more detail, Price said, “The detail is about empowering regional voices … drawing from the structures that already exist. People in regional and remote Australia have hardly had the opportunity to effectively be listened to … maybe it’s because of language barriers.”

Alice Springs community leaders were among those to call out the Dutton-Price entourage for its performance. Meanwhile, Alice Springs Mayor Matt Paterson told ABC Radio that politicians needed to cease using the town as their campaign headquarters for the upcoming referendum. NT Police Minister Kate Worden slammed Dutton’s claims that Indigenous kids in Alice Springs “are being sexually assaulted on a regular basis”, calling it a “dog act”.

Dutton said he was there in Alice Springs to listen to local grievances. When pressed by an ABC reporter on Wednesday why he hadn’t bothered meeting with Smith as head of the registered and recognised body representing Native Title holders of Alice Springs, Dutton said he’d let those organisations “speak for themselves”. 

“I’ve been out speaking to people on the ground. Shoppers in shopping centres,” he said.

Dutton again took aim at an ABC reporter yesterday when asked about his stance on a royal commission into rates of child sexual abuse in central Australia. Calling it “such an ABC question”, Dutton probed the reporter as to whether they lived locally and spoke to people on the streets.

“They’re the people who are on the front line. I don’t know what the academics are saying. I don’t know what the bureaucrats are saying. I can tell you though what the human experience is on the frontline and if the ABC doesn’t see fit to report that then frankly I think it reflects more on the ABC than it does on the locals here,” he said.

For Smith, “enough’s enough”. He described the “poor performing” political parade as a disrespectful free-for-all and a total breakdown of cultural protocols.

“There used to be rules around entering Arrernte country. Now we’ve got all these other tribes just coming into Alice Springs like it’s no man’s land,” he said.

“We’re going to pull our cultural protocol and cultural authority on every bastard in this town now, because we’ve had enough. Arrernte people have had enough.”