If Price continues to follow Trump’s playbook, she’ll be sorry, even if she won’t say it

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s attempt to blame the media for her comments about Indian migrants voting Labor is the latest and most laughable attempt by the Northern Territory senator to blame someone else for her own mistakes.

It’s the third time this year that Price, who rails at the media for being obsessed with US President Donald Trump, has used Trumpian tactics to avoid taking responsibility.

This is a massive headache for Opposition Leader Sussan Ley, who was still in damage control mode on Sunday when obliged to say that Price’s comments were “wrong, they were not correct, they should not have taken place, and corrections have been made”.

Ley stopped short of “sorry” but visited members of the Indian community in Sydney on Sunday. Alienating migrant communities already put offside by Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton and Jane Hume’s “Chinese spies” gaffe is the last thing she needs.

The brouhaha began last Wednesday, when Price told the ABC’s Patricia Karvelas that Indian migrants were coming to Australia in large numbers “and we can see that reflected in the way the community votes for Labor at the same time”.

With some gentle encouragement from Ley’s office, Price put out a clarifying statement an hour after the disastrous interview, but the damage had been done.

The next day, Price said she didn’t believe she had anything to apologise for, and further insulted the Indian-Australian community, saying she was simply “highlighting the fact that there is huge concern for Labor’s mass migration agenda”.

The NT senator’s refusal to apologise comes from another page of the Trump playbook. Such is the frustration with Price within the Liberals that by Monday morning, Alex Hawke – Ley’s chief factional head kicker and consigliere – was on Sky News, practically ordering the NT senator to say sorry.

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.

The comment forced the then 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.

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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