The electorally traumatised Liberal Party needs National Party defector Jacinta Nampijinpa Price in its leadership ranks like a far-right hole in its illiberal collective head. Yet that may not be enough to slow her shooting star trajectory through the Milky Way of Australian conservative politics.
Some politicians possess a gravity-defying skill for progressing their agendas, regardless of the chaos around them — even when their handprints are all over some of that chaos. Warlpiri-Celtic woman Price, a former Indigenous children’s television presenter on Yamba’s Playtime, is one such figure.
During the campaign, Price was a standout for missteps to the right. As Peter Dutton tried to crab-walk away from US President Donald Trump and his MAGA world, Price spoke at a media conference about “making Australia great again”. She then claimed not to have realised the quiet bit she’d said out loud. When a photo from social media subsequently emerged of her and her husband in MAGA caps, that was a “joke”.
Culture vulture
Last year, when even Dutton had warned his team off “culture wars” distractions from the cost-of-living main game, Price veered into a US-style push against laws allowing abortion. That may play well with the religious right and a socially conservative base, but not with mainstream Australia. Not that Dutton could complain too much. In January he chased headlines by making Price an opposition spokeswoman for “government efficiency”, on top of her Indigenous affairs gig, clearly mimicking Trump sidekick Elon Musk’s shambolic and infamous DOGE.
Dutton had elevated Price into his senior frontbench two years ago, a rare thing for a first-termer, bringing her to national prominence as the opposition’s anti-Voice to Parliament torchbearer. Her hardline rhetoric was a key factor in the “Vote No” side triumphing, in a progressives-bruising 60%/40% national referendum result that fired a Dutton-led surge against Anthony Albanese’s Labor government.
Right on cue
Post-Voice, Price also leapt into the anti-renewable energy and pro-nuclear power battleground, via far-right rallies and forums. That’s how Price rolls, a darling of the far right, who pulls crowds and political donors with her eloquent extremism. In a fanboy article in the right-wing rag Spectator Australia on May 7 headlined “Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, I salute you!”, Michael de Percy gushed about Price being “all charisma and wisdom” and “the whole package”.
When Price joined propaganda outfit Advance in 2020 as a national spokesperson, the far-right’s riposte to GetUp! hailed the then-deputy mayor of Alice Springs and Sky News regular commentator as a “freedom fighter” and a “prominent critic of virtue signalling, political correctness, woke corporate activism and identity politics”. You get the drift.
Crashing the party
Self-described to ideological fellow traveller Peta Credlin on Sky News after dark as “ultimately a fighter”, circumstances and relentless ambition are propelling Price at political warp speed.
Tomorrow the firebrand senator from the NT’s Country Liberal Party (CLP), a vestige of conservative hybridism, will stand for deputy leader of a party room she joined last week. She spruiks a return to the party’s “roots” and “values”, at least as she sees them. She lauds her shock post-election party room shift as a mission to be more effective for all Australians. Her true believer bandwagon is ecstatic. Her detractors see a grab for more power by an ideological hardliner with flexible allegiances.
Tinkering with Taylor
Elected to the Senate in 2022, she was with the Nationals for her first three years in the federal parliament, consistent with decades of CLP tradition. But hang tradition. In a quirk of Coalition internal procedures — which have to manage across regular Liberals and Nationals, as well as Queensland’s unified Liberal National Party (LNP) and the CLP — it’s up to Price who she sits with in the parliamentary playground.
Now she’s opted to seek bigger fishdom in a much-diminished Liberal pond. Reportedly enticed to switch by hard-right faction Liberal leadership aspirant Angus Taylor, whose ticket she is running on for deputy, and urged on by the master wrecker of Australian conservative politics, Tony Abbott. All of which makes her a Nationals turncoat, which they hate, as well as a Liberals newcomer, which is raising hackles too.
Hurt feelings and new animosities aside, however, there is one big problem for the rise and rise of Price. A broken Liberal Party arguably needs healers and rebuilders, not streetfighters. Pundits say the role of party deputy is as a peace-making intermediary between the leader and the rank and file. Embracing Price is like throwing a nuclear bomb into the party mix and waiting to see who and what survives.
Fame … and fortune
Price has built her fame as a bona fide Indigenous politician taking a stand against not just the Voice, but the Uluru Statement from the Heart agenda of reconciliation through constitutional recognition, truth-telling and treaty-making. Her alternative truth is that Indigenous Australians have benefited from European colonisation; that her people’s violence against each other is a more important challenge than deaths in custody; that symbolic recognition is a cop-out from raising living standards and protecting Indigenous women and children from their habitually violent menfolk.
The ultra-right laps this up. Especially because no-one can question Price’s Indigenous authenticity, including her well-canvassed life backstory: school-age motherhood; alcohol and substance abuse; domestic violence victim. But she’s forged herself as a bitterly divisive figure in the Aboriginal community, and in the wider Australian community. Formidable but flawed.
Black cloud
In a prescient comment piece in The Saturday Paper eight years ago, Aboriginal academic and leader Marcia Langton described her as a “gothic personality” with a “dangerous agenda”. It was headed “The folly of Jacinta Price” (she was known by her Anglo name then, the daughter of NT local Warlpiri woman politician Beth Price) and Langton was uncompromising:
“Jacinta Price is useful to politicians. She legitimises racist views by speaking them against her own people.”
Little if anything has changed since, except that Price has built out her powerbase, including with the conservative media. In a speech to the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) think-tank, she described the media-dominating Murdoch family as “a beacon of light in a sea of woke darkness”, praising without irony their “necessary media platforms that deliver genuine, commonsense and fact-driven news reporting for our benefit”. It’s enough to make Donald “Fake News” Trump blush.
Snake and ladder
Don’t doubt her ambition, either. In a 2023 interview Price insisted she wasn’t seeking the prime ministership. But:
“If that eventuated because of the trajectory I have been on, then so be it.”
We’ll find out tomorrow if she’s moved further along that trajectory. The Taylor-Price ticket is up against Dutton’s former deputy and current acting Liberal leader, the moderate Sussan Ley. Her potential deputy remains unclear, but in a nod to Queensland dominance of today’s conservative ranks, their stylistically Americanised nuclear power frontman Ted O’Brien MP is touted as a contender.
If he’s the answer, the Liberals don’t just have a Price jump-to-the-right challenge ahead.
Not so much the Milky Way of Australian politics but the Murky Way, methinks. Marcia Langton’s assessment is the most incisive.
All Price but no Value! A Taylor-Price win would be another gift to the ALP and Albo who cannot believe his luck, even before the blessing from the new Pope. Read Langton’s latest article in the May ‘The Monthly’ titled ‘Fresh eyes and open minds’ where she states: “Price’s idea of “success” is anathema to most Aboriginal people because it is the epitome of assimilation and the triumphalism of racists.”
All Labor needs is that image of her & her husband with 2 other surly males on the ABC on election night!
Haven’t we seen this shallow display of ambition before, encouraged by the Murdoch clowns? Bronwyn Bishop? Pauline Hanson? Price’s supporters will grow tired of this in due course but the MSM will be incredibly excited by it in the meantime. The rest of us, not so much. Yawn.
Manipulative opportunist plain and simple.
Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaark me.
Hehehe
Angus and Jacinta will be a gift to the labor party. Angus crafted the non policies of the election campaign and Jacinta screeched right wing garbage….They only represent themselves and will be if elected, an embarrassment to the liberal party. If they are the leaders then what kind of members bestow that honour. Guess they will be thrown aside when sanity prevails and Tim Wilson in all his stupidity and arrogance takes over. Guess the media will be all over them in the belief the people are interested in two or three damp squibs.
Price will crash and burn much in the same way Bronwyn Bishop did. She’ll be touted as the next big thing based on no evidence of any talent (culminating in something like Bronny’s leadership press conference where no media showed up) before being brought down by some ‘entitlement’ fuelled scandal (like Bronny’s little publicly funded chopper ride) and when she is forced out of parliament she’ll be like Bronny the talking Gargoyle on Sky After dark (assuming the whole network hasn’t gone belly up by then).
I honestly can’t believe she would even be considered! First Nations Pauline Hanson?
I said it before Marcia Langton but no- one heard when i shouted it at the TV. I also said that she’ll be the next LNP PM but my interlocutors fell about laughing.
“Me too” Saw her on The Drum pre-Covid. Said to the TV, she is looking for a Parliamentary Seat with the conservatives.
Sky News are going to be orgasmic if she and Angus get up.
The other mainstream media will lap it up too. Instead of the endless “Peter Dutton says” it will be “Angus and Jacinta say”.
It’s not a biggie only the US watches sky news..
My siblings all do…
I think its absolutely brilliant. All that could be better would be for her to be a twosome with Tim WIlson. Sort of a Tony Abbott Pauline Hanson one/ two combo.
Something to unite the Liberal power.
I thought it would be a decade in the wilderness. Perhaps we are seeing the quite rapid slide into oblivion.
Price is popular with white people because she tells them what they want to hear. All her electoral support comes from the urban centres of the N.T. If she thinks she is going to be Prime Minister, she needs to be in the House of Representatives but has already failed once to win a seat. She is electoral poison in Aboriginal communities. They were demonstrating against her when she campaigned with Dutton recently.
Check this article by Jon Faine in the Guardian from Sept 2023:
Jacinta Price claims to represent NT’s Indigenous communities but the data suggests otherwise | Jon Faine | The Guardian
The Libs are delusional if they think she is the answer.
Yep.
Did someone ‘ideological’? If she is ideological it is in the same way as Three Blind Mice and The Owl and the Pussycat are ideological.
Did someone say that should have been
Price might think she has some relevance in the Territory but it’s the big smoke where the voters live and her brand of politics was viciously rejected at the election. As for hitching her wagon to Abbot, perhaps she should talk to the voters in Warringah.
She has pretty much zilch relevance here in the NT. Bella (above) has nailed it.
When she says she wants to take the Liberal party back to its roots, I wonder which of the beliefs she espouses align with the views of Menzies, Gorton or even Fraser. Just another ignorant politician spouting lies that they think we can’t see through.
The permanent frown on the face of Jacinta Nampijima Price delete inserted middle name should warn us about the innner cogwheels of mind.
The Liberal Party May as well amalgamate with One Nation if Price is their answer. Abbott destroys everything he touches and is Australia’s Farage, still cavorting with Peta Credlin in league with the Murdoch propaganda machine. If Rice takes the deputy position there is no hope at all for the Liberal Party. Her flow of bile spewing from her dirty mouth on election night when the ABC interviewed her does not auger well for a more intelligent less nasty voice across the nation, even far worse than Dutton. She has never been able to respond to questions regarding the national interest in an intelligent articulate comment. I just hope for the mental well being of Australians, we will not be exposed very much at all to her rants and nastiness and her profile not be pronounced by any kind of promotion.
I agree – her election night performance was graceless, mean spirited and nasty.
You have her to a “T”.
It’s quite an achievement, but Grassgate Gussy (well-done-Angus) Taylor and Jacinta divisive-identity-virtue-signal-middle-name Price, actually make clowns like Ley and O’Brien look vaguely plausible
Jacinta Atany Price!
PASS.
If anyone in the ‘sensible’ part of the Liberal party had any courage, they would select two of the more conservative Teal women to stand as leader and deputy leader of the Party. Not join it, just form part of a coalition and force it’s modernisation. Yes the hard line right-wingers would split off and join the Nats or PHON, but it might give the party a chance in 6 years time.
Sean, you are saying what I have been thinking for three years. The only strategy that would take the Liberal party to a moderate future rather than oblivion with the far right/ neo nazi/ imbecile hard liners.
Yes, but why would any intelligent, principled women want to associate with that bunch of narcissists…?
Power at any cost? I don’t think so.
While she may never yield the ultimate power of being PM, her influence has already told and the risk is that influence will grow.
She is well-versed in media-speak and knows how to handle the press corps barrage, which is more than some ministers can claim. This gives her legitimacy in the eyes of the Conservatives who are searching for their new messiah.
Ultimately, Australians have made election missteps before – Abbott was an abomination and Scomo was a fraud – but we have to hope that this election has shown that we are wising-up to the Murdoch propaganda and won’t be so easily fooled again by an opposition who seeks to divide us.
Buy more popcorn
Jacinta price reminds me so much of Gina Rineharts other finger puppet, Sophie Mirrabella. So the takeover of the liberal and national party continues, no doubt number 1 on Gina’s speed dial. Guess Dutton would be deleted by now. Wonder if the private jet is at her disposal too.
It’s going to be interesting in what maybe a not so enjoyable “party room”. On the Thur or Fri night before the election Taylor was interviewed and couldn’t string three coherent words together. He had three years and no economic policy. Do we face another 3 years of do nothing opposition slagging off labour as Dutton did because There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of brains in the liberal party for anything else.
Ask yourself why the indigenous hate her. Because she has one truth about them: the extreme domestic and mysogenitic violence that pervades the black communities. Indigenous culture has that one huge issue that no-one else is talking about. The left can’t say it as it is, Marcia Langton can’t either, because it’s not just caused by white supremacy. It’s a home grown internal cancer.
Everything else about J N Price is abhorrent, and I can’t stand the performative aspect of her at all. BUT she is riding that idea for all it’s worth, and the right wing lap it up. Pity the rest of us, and black communities, can’t accept a truth in it.
I have to ask, what do you mean by a home grown internal cancer? Are you insinuating all Indigenous men are inherently violent and abusive which could not be further from the truth, by the way, or am I getting my wires crossed
Not all indigenous men. Not at all. Not a majority. But a minority that the rest of the mob can’t or won’t deal with. And a number greater than white society by proportion.
I believe the data shows about 70% of domestic violence offenders against indigenous women are their non-indigenous partners. Perhaps the situation is a little more complex and nuanced than you imply? Hatred for what Price says and does has many sources; some like Marcia Langton because she sees her character, the communities her mother criminalised by egging on the white Right politicians’ intervention and importantly her lack of respect for the cultural norms of the first Australians. She visited Nicholls during the campaign and refused to meet with Yorta Yorta leaders and elders, the traditional owners who gave Australia national heroes such as William Cooper, Doug Nicholls, Deborah Cheetham and too many Briggs to list. In one unhinged display of arrogance and stupidity she lost another group of highly influential Victorians for good.
Despite a catastrophic election loss, and an unprincipled defection to the toxic totalitarian Liberal political mobsters, from the equally toxic totalitarian Nationals political mobsters, it seems to me that Jacinta (Nampijinpa) Price has now emerged as very much a Quisling-type figure, because she happily seems to betray her own people, and, who, incidentally, seems to have been metaphorically caught with her fingers in the till at some stage, and is in danger of placing herself in such ‘illustrious’ company as William Joyce, Pierre Laval, and Philippe Petain. Also, there are sayings by famous people that one is tempted to think that they had Jacinta Price in mind, “Empty vessels make the most noise” (Plato), “It is better to say nothing and be thought a fool, rather than say something and remove all doubt”, Abraham Lincoln), and finally two of my favourite saying from my favourite comedian, Groucho Marx, “S(h)e may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot, but don’t let that fool you, S(h)e really is an idiot”, and “These are my principles, and if you don’t like them I have others”. Also, I remember a rather eccentric old supervisor of mine. When I worked in the Commonwealth Department of Transport (the 1960s and 1970s), Alf Barrett used to say about fools, “If (s)he had a brain, it would die of loneliness”. This may likely apply to Jacinta Price as well.
The Taylor Price combo is an extra term for Labor. The government must be hoping for them to win. Their brand of hard right buffoonery is exactly what Australia has demonstrated it doesn’t want.
Yes Bella, jon faines article tells us all we need toknow about the awful price.
I can’t see how Price can be described as “eloquent”.
Make A & J Great Again – Heaven forbid for the Liberal Party!
The LNP’s bullet train to the right continues apace.
If Ley wins, Sky have vowed to tear her apart. If Price/Taylor win, they will lead the charge down the drain of irrelevance with Sky cheering them on.
In the end Price did not become Deputy leader of the opposition as her running mate Angus Taylor was defeated for the leadership but both will sit in the wings keeping their powder dry waiting for the next Liberal spill when the moderates are forsaken for the hard right