NT Senator Jacinta Price Calls on Government on Voice, Cashless Debit Cards

“The more I think about the idea of ​​this voice, the more I feel it’s an opportunity for the government to handle difficult Indigenous issues,” Price told Sky News.

“If they (the voices) come back with something we like, we might check it out. Otherwise, we don’t have to take that advice anyway.”

Ms Price said MPs need to be accountable to voters themselves, citing Amanda Richworth’s visit to Cape York as an example of what to do.

Minister Richworth didn’t need a voice. The women have told her what they need,” she said.

“She told me.”

Richworth is discussing the future of cashless debit cards with Cape York’s Family Responsibility Committee

Introduced by the Coalition in 2016, the card works like a regular bank card, but cannot be used to purchase alcohol or gambling products.

Noel Pearson, founder of the Cape York Institute, said scrapping the card would undermine 20 years of progress and reform in Cape York, where alcoholic violence has been a problem for years.

Price agreed, saying cashless debit cards work “very effectively” in the Northern Territory.

She said removing them would “rip the rug” out of vulnerable Australians.

The coalition senator who took office in the last election also accused schools and colleges of “educating” young people on indigenous history after it was discovered that a primary school was teaching 6-year-olds about genocide. .

“A child that age must not even know what the word genocide means,” Ms. Price said.

“When you’re that young, it’s so easy to be manipulated…and being a kid bothers me more.”

Price said it was a “huge disappointment” that schools and colleges “promote this kind of racist indoctrination.”

“We apply racism in the name of trying to eradicate racism,” she said.

It does not create understanding. I feel bad about who I am based on the color of my skin.