The meteoric rise and rise of Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has taken much of the country by surprise – even her parents, Dave and Bess, who are now willing to entertain the possibility she may one day live in The Lodge.
“I can see now she had it in there all along,” Mr Price said.
“But I didn’t appreciate what she had. When we went to the National Press Club and listened to her speech I was gobsmacked. I was just so bloody proud. We knew she was good, but I didn’t appreciate she was that good.”
We’re sitting in the couple’s Alice Springs home, where they’ve agreed to a wide-ranging interview about their daughter, her critics and her ambitions.
The former housing commission house, which they share with their grandson, Leiland, and Mr Price’s pet python, was attacked by vandals with paint on Indigenous voice to parliament referendum day, when the senator’s father was also “egged” by a stranger.
“We’re not scared of the bullies, the bullies can go to hell,” Mr Price said. “They can rant and rave as much as they like and threaten us but they’re not going to stop our daughter.”
They know more than anyone the extraordinary journey that has brought their daughter to this point, but say it is her experiences in growing up attached to troubled communities such as Yuendumu that have greatly influenced her.
“Her experience of living within that lifestyle of Aboriginal people who are helpless, hopeless, made her a voice for them,” Mr Price says, recalling the countless relatives who have died due to alcohol abuse.
“They just gave up the will to live, kept drinking until it was all over,” Mr Price says.
For some deaths in the family, Senator Price has been with the paramedics, helping them put a body in the body bag.
“So, Marcia Langton, you can threaten as much as you like, you can insult as much as you like, it’s like water off a duck’s back,” Mr Price says.
Ms Price recalled how Professor Langton
labelled her daughter the “princess of assimilation” on referendum night.
“Well, Marcia wants to be the queen of all the blackfellas,” Mr Price responds with a laugh.
“It’s not working. Princess of assimilation, for god’s sake, because she’s saying we’re one community, we’re one country, we’re all in this together. She’s the princess of assimilation, where do these people come from?” he asks.
“Not the same planet I’m on.”
Ms Price says Professor Langton and Indigenous leader Megan Davis “don’t see any of that”.
“They would not care, because these people are out of mind and out of sight, but I took Jacinta, everyday, we’d go on weekends, we’d go and spend time in town camps, go out bush with them,” Ms Price says.
She claims she doesn’t think about whether her daughter will one day be prime minister.
“We’ll just back her, we’re just here as mum and dad, just to support her, to carry her, wherever she goes,” she says.
Mr Price is a little less restrained.
“As a father, it scares me because I know what that job can do to people, but I know she’s up to it and we’ll do what we can to support her if that’s the way she chooses to go,” he says.
“Watch out, Peter,” he adds, in a warning to Mr Dutton, the Opposition Leader, delivered with a chuckle.
The couple are acutely aware of what the top job would mean: their daughter already has an AFP detail watching over her.
But they say their daughter won’t be deterred by threats.
“Because of her experience … she’s lived through all of that, and she’s tired of seeing it still being played out without anybody trying to help these people get a better life, a safe environment for women and kids,” Ms Price says.
Mr Price adds: “These are women who don’t have megaphones. Their voices are deliberately suppressed by the organisations because they don’t agree with their narrative, and the ABC aren’t going to interview them.”
When the couple look at their daughter they see a little girl fiercely protecting her family in the face of an unspeakable tragedy. Jacinta was just four years old when her 10-year-old brother died of leukaemia.
Her parents believe it was a pivotal moment in making Senator Price the woman she is today.
“I believe that’s had a huge impact on her and made her extraordinarily emotionally tough,” Mr Price says. “She’s always had this huge reservoir of emotional courage, of emotional strength and moral courage.”
The couple remember the time in 1985 vividly. They moved to Adelaide so their son could receive care. Even now, nearly four decades on, they find it too painful to say his name and ask The Australian not to use it.
Ms Price and the young Jacinta stayed by his bedside at hospital while Mr Price worked as an education officer with the commonwealth department of education, working at supporting the schooling of Aboriginal students at all levels.
“It was a pretty bloody awful time – you’ll learn a hell of a lot about courage in a children’s oncology ward,” Mr Price says through tears.
“Kids with cancer are the bravest people in the whole bloody world. The way (Jacinta) said goodbye to him helped me, inspired me, helped me to cope with it, and she was four years old.
“Hugely loving, huge empathy and sympathy with those who are worse off than she is, or suffering, but an absolute grim determination to help them in whatever ways she can.
The Prices met in Yuendumu in 1976, where they were working at the same school. He was teaching in the bilingual program; she was a literacy production worker, producing Warlpiri literature, and later became a teacher’s assistant. In 2012, Ms Price was elected as a member of the NT Legislative Assembly, representing the electorate of Stuart, holding several portfolios including minister for community services in the Giles government. A few years later, her daughter was elected to the Alice Springs Town Council. They were the first Indigenous mother-daughter to be on two levels of government at the same time.
Ms Price is now assistant principal at Yipirinya school, an independent school for Aboriginal children in Alice Springs.
“Because of her experience, Jacinta has taken that role on to be that voice for them, and that’s why she’s so strong,” Ms Price says.
“She’s lived through all of that, and she’s tired of seeing it still being played out without anybody trying to help these people get a better life, a safe environment for women and kids.”
LIAM MENDES REPORTER