Jacinta’s five year old niece allegedly was murdered by a local man at Alice Springs
By NT Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price
I want to tell you about my niece.
Her name is Kumanjayi Little Baby. She was five years old.
On Anzac Day this year, she went missing from the Old Timers town camp in Alice Springs.
Five days later, she was found dead.
The night she vanished, Kumanjayi had been put to bed on a mattress on the living room floor. Surrounded by empty Jim Beam bottles. In a house where the doors didn’t lock.
That is what her grandfather showed the country last week.
He said it was “a really nasty place for her to live”.
He’s not wrong.
And here’s what makes it worse.
Tangentyere – the Aboriginal corporation paid to look after that town camp – has received more than $70 million in federal grants since 2022.
That figure came out at Senate estimates this week. I read it into the record. Grant after grant after grant:
- $11.2 million for the Central Australian Youth Link-Up Service
- $9.4 million for capital works
- $8.6 million under the Access to Education program
- $2.9 million for Youth Employment Pathways
- $1.6 million for playgroups
- $842,000 for afterhours youth services
- $55,000 for “play therapy”
There’s more. A lot more.
And on March 16 this year – six weeks before Kumanjayi went missing – the National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA) wrote another cheque for $841,500.
For “Afterhours Town Camp Youth Services”.
Six weeks before she vanished.
After hours.
From the town camp.
So where did the money go?
When I asked NIAA how much Tangentyere actually receives from the Commonwealth all up, the chief executive told me it would be “very difficult” to collate.
I was told to direct my questions to other departments. They could give me a “fulsome account”.
A fulsome account.
A little girl is dead on a mattress, and Canberra can’t even add up what it’s spent.
This is what the Indigenous affairs industry looks like from up close.
Tens of millions of taxpayer dollars flowing year after year. Programs with grand names. Bureaucrats who insist child protection is largely a Territory issue and head home for the night.
You and I both know this isn’t working.
It hasn’t worked for years. It hasn’t worked despite billions of dollars poured into it. And it won’t ever work as long as Canberra keeps measuring dollars paid in grants instead of keeping children safe.
The truth is plain.
Race-based programs don’t keep children safe. Houses with doors that lock do.
I am not going to stop asking the questions until we have answers.
Until every grant is accounted for.
Until the children in those camps have what your kids and mine have always had – a roof, a lock, a safe place to sleep.
That is what REAL solutions look like.
I’ll keep fighting for them. From the floor of the Senate. From Alice Springs. From every camp I can walk into.
Thank you for standing with me.#
It’s time for federal auditors to start looking into every land council member’s bank accounts across Australia. Editor