Albanese just spent $364 million to make Jacinta Price PM

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When Malcolm Fraser’s granddaughter got out her ouija board this week to tell us that her grandfather, had he still been alive, would have voted yes in the Voice to parliament referendum, the conceit became an instant meme in the chat channels. Henceforth, “they’re really rolling out Malcolm Fraser’s granddaughter on this one” will be shorthand for the desperate and bizarre arguments made by the losing side of a public discussion.

But there is a silver lining: the referendum may be lost, but the process could deliver Australia its first female, Indigenous prime minister.

Jacinta Price delivers her maiden speech in 2022.Credit: James Brickwood

Despite repeated assurances that the real Yes campaign was about to launch, it seemingly never has. The much-vaunted TV ad is a fizzer, which leaves people with the same questions they started asking after Garma last year. Anthony Albanese is showing signs that he’s finally accepted the polling which indicates Yes is in a losing position. This week, the prime minister began rolling out the line that his referendum will have been worthwhile, even if rejected by voters, because the process “has brought Indigenous disadvantage front and centre in the national conversation”.

Bringing the disadvantage in Indigenous communities to the attention of the nation is vital. There was a time when, in combination with a constitutional convention on the structure of a Voice and the words to be inserted in our Constitution, it could have made a powerful case for Yes. In September last year, I pointed out that our annual ritual of debating Australia Day had allowed the comfortable classes to ignore the complexity of the Indigenous condition, in which, as Marcia Langton has argued, intra-community violence is too often excused or confused for Indigenous culture.

Since the prime minister has done nothing to lead or foreground the discussion on Indigenous disadvantage himself, his words have a hollow tone of defeat. But he’s not wrong: the referendum process has created a national forum for newly elected Northern Territory senator Jacinta Yangapi Nampijinpa Price to tell the heartbreaking story of her community.

Price has been travelling the country for the No campaign, telling her story to anyone who will listen. It includes, as she said in her first speech to parliament, that “direct family members have been violently murdered, or died of alcohol abuse, suicide, or alcohol-related accidents” and laments a justice system which is broken because it “serves perpetrators exceptionally better than victims”.

Illustration: Reg Lynch. Credit:

An increasing number of people are listening to the eloquent senator, who couples her focus on the terrible disadvantage in Indigenous communities with a message of empowerment, that Indigenous people can choose their destiny in modern Australia. She made headlines at the National Press Club for her claim that colonisation has been good for Indigenous Australians – a shocking and presumptuous claim to those trapped in the cycle of intergenerational trauma, but a truism in the context in which she put it: running water, readily available food.

Sanitation and nutrition are two fundamental measures of wellbeing that, together with Western-style housing, still dominate conversations over quality of life in remote Indigenous townships. Hearing it said plainly and publicly by an Indigenous woman who is still very much part of her own community as well as part of Canberra is revolutionary. Price is cutting through because her vision of what Australia can and could be for Indigenous people is unashamedly upbeat.

The effect she is having has been widely noted. This masthead recently called her a “conservative rockstar”, but there is evidence she is moving hearts and minds beyond conservative politics.

“The striking increase in the No vote suggests that Price, as campaign figurehead, has played a big part in winning people over,” says Resolve pollster Jim Reed. “Even progressives, who may not welcome her message in the same way conservatives would, cannot deny the authentic views of a black woman with hard-won experience.”

James Baillieu, part of the No campaign’s network of supporters and strategists, calls Price the X-factor of the campaign. He recently wrote that she argues to “give people more agency, opportunities, and legs up”. And “most important of all, she brings a positive message of hope”.

The Yes campaign accuses the No campaign of creating division. But perhaps the most uncomfortable thought for Yes campaigners is that far from dividing the country, Price is unifying it around an aspiration for Australia that Yes doesn’t share.

Her stocks within the Coalition have rocketed, generating serious discussion of Price as prime minister material. Nicolle Flint, the retired member for Boothby who is now being touted as a potential state Liberal leader in South Australia, has outlined the considerations involved.

Flint notes that Price is, from a practical perspective, in the wrong house and the wrong party. But the senator could run for a seat in the House of Representatives, which traditionally furnishes the prime minister and, potentially, shift to the Liberal Party. Price would, realistically, also need to work on the way she delivers her messages. She is already capable of inspiring, but to be prime minister she would need to become more persuasive. These are small things, given the enormous impact she has had in her first year of federal politics. For the time being, she is perfectly positioned to cut her teeth as deputy prime minister. Eventually, though, her fans want more for her.

The government budgeted $364.6 million over three years to deliver the referendum to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait peoples in the Constitution through a Voice to parliament. As the referendum campaign draws into its final days, it is hard to avoid coming to the conclusion that Anthony Albanese has run a $360 million campaign to elect our first female Indigenous prime minister. And she’s not from his side of politics.

No need to ask what Malcolm Fraser would have thought about that.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director strategy and policy at award-winning campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.

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