Meet the Aboriginal politician leading the charge against Australia’s Voice referendum

Every so often, in the life of nations, there comes a moment when a new political force articulates a sense of frustration at the old orthodoxies, or a yearning for something new. Sometimes, such a force turns into a momentous presence that transforms the national landscape.

Australia has reached such a moment in the person of a 42-year-old Aboriginal mother of four. A conservative legislator for little more than a year, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, the shadow chancellor for indigenous affairs, has challenged the old, failed narratives which argue that systemic racism is responsible for indigenous woes and that a policy of welfarism and separatism is the answer. As a result, she has changed the nature of our national debate surrounding our Aboriginal population.

On 14 October, Australians will vote in a referendum on whether to support a constitutional change that would compel the federal parliament to take advice from an unelected and unaccountable ‘Voice’ comprising a group of indigenous Australians.