The tragic alleged murder of a five-year-old girl in Alice Springs hits painfully close to home for Senator Jacinta Price.
The firebrand Indigenous politician, who is the aunt of the young girl, lost her own brother to leukaemia when she was just three years old in the very same town camp.
In an emotional interview with news.com.au, Senator Price questioned whether things would have been different had her brother – the girl’s biological uncle – still been alive today.
“I feel like if he was still alive, things could have been different,” she said through tears.
The young girl’s death has stunned Australia, but Senator Price is no stranger to the violence that life in town camps brings.
“I grew up in and out of town camps because family lived in [them],” Senator Price told news.com.au.
“A hell of a lot of my family have died in town camps.”
You can listen to the audio in the player above.
The Coalition backbencher has spent much of her political career fighting for change to improve the systemic issues plaguing remote Aboriginal communities.
“I’ve seen a woman stab herself in the leg in a town camp. I remember, as a young teenager, probably 13, 14, having to go and pick up my baby cousin, because alcohol related violence kicked off,” she recalled.
“His parents had been drunk and I remember holding him in my arms all night, just trying to comfort him. He lost his dad when he was a boy to kidney failure because of alcohol – my mother’s brother – then his mother was stabbed to death in a town camp.”
Old Timers camp, also known as Ilyperenye, is a small grouping of nine homes roughly six kilometres south of Alice Springs.
It’s also the scene where the little girl was allegedly snatched last Saturday night before her body was found on the banks of a nearby creek five days later.
Jefferson Lewis, 47, has since been charged with the alleged abduction and murder of the girl, now referred to as Kumanjayi Little Babe in line with cultural traditions.
“In Old Timers town camp my niece was stabbed and she drowned in her own blood,” Senator Price revealed.
“She was killed by her ex-partner because she wanted to leave Alice Springs and take her boys and raise them in Newcastle with our other family and he didn’t want her to do that.
“I remember going there because we got a phone call. My aunt just dropped [the phone] and we got there, the family surrounding her body wailing, children were about and we had to lift her into her body bag and put her in the back of the ambulance.”
Rattling off her own harrowing experiences with town camps, Senator Price described the incidents as “never-ending”.
“My cousin, who’s only a couple years older than me, died two Christmases ago because her health failed her and I truly believe it’s just living in conditions in town camp that would kill anybody and that’s what it did to her.
“She wasn’t a drinker. She raised other people’s kids because all their parents were either drunk or dead or locked up. And this is just … it’s hell on earth. It’s hell on earth in town camps.”
It’s led Senator Price to call for an independent inquiry into conditions in town camps.
“These things happen over and over again, but this, you know, her (Little Baby) circumstances have caught the attention of the country,
“I’m, you know, never gonna… I can’t back down from this fight. I cannot back down from this fight.
“I need this country to get realistic about this issue and stop treating Aboriginal people differently.
“We’re all Australian and we need to face our issues this way. You know, we maintain the same standard for every child in this country, regardless of race, regardless of background. And that’s what we should be fighting for.”
Separately Senator Price was vocal against the Voice referendum.
“We’ve [already] got mechanisms in our parliament to provide an opportunity for people to be heard,” she said.
“We didn’t need to destroy our constitution and create segregation. All we need to do is use tools that we do have, which this government is reluctant to do because what this government does is it likes to handball or delegate the difficult issues elsewhere and appear as though they’re doing the right thing when they’re not.
“When you have the power to give these people a voice right this instant, whether it’s through a select inquiry straight into town camps – we can do that in the Senate, we can do that right now – or in a more wholesome way through a royal commission … Then why wouldn’t you do that?”
