Elected member of the Alice Springs Council Jacinta Price at the National Press Club in Canberra. Picture: AAP

It happened in the middle of a family Christmas gathering in front of her and other children.

The man picked up the boy by the hair and held him at arm’s length after being told to leave the party for getting violent and aggressive.

“He flung the toddler about in front of us all, including his three-year-old daughter,” she said.

“He threatened to kill his son if his wife continued to disobey him.

“I remember the blank look in the boy’s eyes. He didn’t cry out. He dangled silently from his hair.”

This vivid image was how the Alice Springs councillor began a gut-wrenching speech to the National Press Council in Canberra on Thursday, joining with University of Melbourne Professor Marcia Langton and Josephine Cashman from the Prime Minister’s indigenous Advisory Council to demand a national task force to combat the epidemic of family violence in Aboriginal communities.

Elected member of the Alice Springs Council Jacinta Price at the National Press Club in Canberra. Picture: AAPSource:AAP

“In remote communities, traditional culture is shrouded in secrecy which allows perpetrators to control their victims,” Ms Price said.

“I call upon the federal government to do what has been done in light of Aboriginal youth in detention and hold a royal commission into the countless homicides, acts of violence and sexual abuse perpetrated against this country’s most marginalised.”

While her own family could suffer a violent backlash to her speaking out, she said it was “a national shame” Aboriginal male perpetrators’ were able to use traditional cultural to excuse their crimes.

Family ties were also used to keep victims silent.

“One is expected to pretend that these perpetrators are decent human beings and ignore the fact that they have committed acts of physical and sexual violence against those you love, because to speak out is to create conflict,” she said.

“It is apparently far more important not to offend than it is to speak honestly about Australian citizens being killed in this country.”

Social activist Josephine Cashman, anthropologist Marcia Langton and Alice Springs Councillor Jacinta Price call for a Royal Commission on Aboriginal family violence. Picture: AAPSource:AAP

Prof Langton hit out at those indigenous and non-indigenous Australians who “drunk the Cool Aid” on claims about Aboriginal culture.

“They are referring in my view to a new version of Aboriginal culture that keeps a few elements of the elder culture and adds a new set of dangerous elements, the worst of which is the rule of women and children by older men, using forced assault, forced detention, capital and corporal punishment and sexual assault of both adults and children,” Prof Langton said.

“If these practices were traditional laws, there would be no Aboriginal society in existence today.”