Then, in comments at a Liberal Party fundraiser in Sydney last Friday, leaked to The Sunday Telegraph, Price excoriated the media for being obsessed with Trump and his tariffs, rather than focusing on the “authoritarian regime” in China.
She admitted to “regrets” about her comments to Karvelas while also claiming an “agenda-driven” media had taken her comments out of context.
Pull the other one, Jacinta. That is strike three.
In March, I reported that Price had had to repay expenses she improperly claimed from the taxpayer 13 times, totalling almost $11,000, and that other expense claims were being examined.
In a statement on her Facebook page on March 7, Price claimed the story – which relied on publicly available information published on the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority website – was false and “nothing more than a smear campaign on the eve of an election”. She did not specify which part of the story was in error.
A month later, at an election campaign event in Perth with Dutton, Price told a rally that “we can make Australia great again” during a firebrand speech.
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The comment forced the former opposition leader to distance himself from the US president, while Price claimed not to remember borrowing Trump’s “Make America Great Again” signature slogan and – you guessed it – criticised the media for being obsessed with Trump.
Price has a binary view of Australia’s media landscape. Either you’re on her side or you’re her enemy. It’s not surprising, given an entire TV station tells her – night after night, after dark – how great she is.
As if to prove the point, she appeared on Sky to discuss the controversy with Peta Credlin, one of the big champion of conservative Victorian MP Moira Deeming – and demanded an apology from Hawke, rather than proffering one.
But Australia is not America. We have compulsory voting and a world-leading electoral commission. The political contest is settled in the centre, not on the fringes of the left or the right, nor in a televised Liberal Party branch meeting watched by 50,000 viewers.
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The contest of ideas must be won in the centre, and thankfully, Australians’ trust in an agreed set of facts has not declined to the extent that it has in the United States.
In 1988, then opposition leader John Howard questioned the rate of Asian immigration to Australia. The comments were hugely controversial and weakened Howard’s leadership considerably, splitting the party.
It took six years, but in 1994, as he was preparing to return to the leadership, Howard admitted to a “serious error of judgment back in 1988”.
After Price helped to lead the successful “No” campaign in the Voice to parliament referendum, some of her colleagues suggested, at least half seriously, that she could be deputy prime minister one day.
Price joined the Liberals after the election to further her ambitions, but she burnt her bridges with former Nationals colleagues whom she claimed to have the “utmost respect and appreciation for” on the day she quit the party.
Now she has torched her relationships with some of her Liberal colleagues, attacking shadow ministry colleague Hawke in public and causing party leader Ley serious strife. When your leader’s numbers man is on television calling for you to pull your head in, you know you’re in strife.
Howard had the courage to admit when he was wrong (though he never managed to say “sorry”).
This is the third time the cock has crowed for Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. If she truly has leadership ambitions, she will learn the lesson of Peter. Dissembling is not the way.
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