Opposition spokesperson for Indigenous Australians, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, says the Labor government has no idea how to improve the lives of First Nations people.
The CLP Senator, who has drawn the ire of many Indigenous groups and Land Councils for her calls to abandon Indigenous-led responses to help close the gap, told 2GB's Ben Fordham the Prime Minister didn't have a plan B to the failed Voice referendum.
"[The] Prime Minister absolutely could not read a room and continued to go down the line that he went down. And now he's all out of ideas," Senator Price said.
"I don't think he had any ideas in the first place on how to improve the lives of marginalised Indigenous Australians."
In February, the Productivity Commission said governments continue to waste the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, and urged all governments to align themselves with Indigenous-led responses rather than a business as usual response.
Pointing to Remote Laundries, which operates large laundromats to wash people's clothes in remote communities, which can reduce Scabies and therefore lower the rate of Rheumatic Heart Disease, Senator Price argued it is a program that is not having renewed funding, or not run by an Aboriginal organisation, and therefore aren't part of the Closing the Gap framework.
"We've got to look outside the box, and unfortunately, there's very narrow scope in order to actually effectively support (Indigenous) Australian people," she said.
Organisations like SNAICC - Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care, Children's Ground and NACCHO have long championed self-determination, renewing calls last week for more funding to Aboriginal Community-Controlled Organisations when the latest Closing the Gap data revealed several key metrics were going backwards.
Despite this, Senator Price said: "We need to actually listen to people who are prepared to take practical steps and measures going forward."
Newly appointed Minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy, said she is determined to work in partnership with First Nations Australians and all members of Parliament after the release of the Closing the Gap data last month.
In an opinion piece in The West Australian on Saturday, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said it was clear that to close the gap, "self-determined, locally-led approaches" worked best.
"Now more than ever, we must listen and invest in what works," he said.
Senator Price has largely disagreed with the idea of self-determination as the key to closing the gap, telling Sky News after the report in February that "we should stop treating Australians on the basis of race and start treating the need…supporting those programs that are actually providing outcomes".
She has regularly espoused the need for more economic independence for Indigenous people in order to move away from welfare reliance in remote communities.
This was a key element of Anthony Albanese's commitment at Garma, where he upped the stakes on Indigenous economic development, with new climate and industry policies designed to leverage benefits for remote communities during Australia's clean energy transition.
Senator Price said that whilst the Prime Minister was talking a "big game," he is "tying his economic empowerment model to wind farms and renewables, so a very narrow scope".
She was also critical of the decision not to renew the Jabiluka Uranium Mine lease, which hasn't mined uranium since 1991, and whose former leaseholders - Energy Resources Australia - said wouldn't be mined unless the Mirarr Traditional Owners, who oppose it, changed their mind.
The Senator argued the decision was "shutting down opportunities for more jobs for locals, for more resources, more royalties to go into things like education for the local people there".
"Narrowing his vision down doesn't allow for more, broader economic empowerment through partnership with the private sector - simple things like utilising traditional owners' land for economic purposes," she said.
"That requires reform of native title and the land rights act, but that's all too hard for the Prime Minister to do. So he's just going to push his own ideology onto Aboriginal people – as opposed to listening to what they want."
