Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (NT, Country Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This morning I was disgusted to view footage of a 16-year-old girl being beaten very harshly on the main street of my home town of Alice Springs by a group of women. Those women, I could hear in the video, were Walpiri women. I am a Walpiri woman. I am utterly disturbed when I see this kind of conduct and behaviour. It has been brought to my attention that this may be cultural payback. I want this chamber and the Australian people to know that traditional cultural payback—otherwise known as vigilantism—has no place in our society in 2024.

We have a situation of crime in our streets in the Northern Territory and we ignore the fact that traditional culture plays into this because we are all too scared. It is romanticised and this romanticism needs to stop if we are to support our most marginalised in our communities. I call on the Warlpiri elders to condemn this action and this behaviour and to condemn traditional cultural payback so it does not occur, escalating the crime on our streets over and over again. I ask the Territory government to pull your socks up and do better, to provide protection for our most vulnerable.

This was a 16-year-old girl. Imagine if that were the daughter of someone in the streets of Sydney—her clothes ripped from her body and being stomped on. There is no place for this violence on our streets in Australia in 2024. We should not be treating Indigenous Australians any differently to anybody else and we should not lower our standards or accept this kind of behaviour. Those responsible—with the millions of dollars going to services in my community—need to do their part to stop this kind of behaviour in our community. Enough is enough.