Jacinta Nampijinpa Price knows her power. Her time may return

There is absolutely nothing surprising about the career trajectory of Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. As a longtime observer of her, I was congratulated the other day because my predictions about her current predicament have been bang on. But Price has made no secrets of her goals. Indeed, she has been incredibly consistent, and perhaps the surprise lies more in who she is — a reactionary right Indigenous figure going for the top positions — than anything she has done.

Right now, her timing is off, but that doesn’t mean her rise will be permanently cut short.

Price is ambitious, and she has cunning. I don’t believe she is the brightest crayon in the box, but Price has, for a very long time, shown an ability to read the play, tap into the section of the community she knows can deliver her power, and use these skills to her benefit.

In short, my predictions were simple: one day, Price would ultimately like to be prime minister. Not an unusual goal for most people who sit in our federal chambers, but perhaps one for someone from the Coalition minor partner, who is also from the Northern Territory, and who is an Aboriginal woman.

In order to move towards this goal, I felt Price would have to change partyrooms and consider running again in a lower house seat. Recently, Sky News confirmed that the latter has indeed been on the cards. Price had been approached to consider re-running in the seat of Lingiari, as well as the other NT seat of Solomon, and had additionally been called on to consider relocating to NSW to contest Cook for the Liberal Party, or the National Party seats of Paterson and Hunter.

I believe that shift for her is inevitable, but the timing now was wrong — the outcome of the recent election did more than confirm this. (Though how many of us predicted just how much of an embarrassing slaughter it would be?) The live cross to Price during the election coverage, where the most unhinged interview followed, complete with pseudo facts and allegations of “mudslinging”, solidified why it was the wrong moment. In a result where the electorate seemingly chose stability (as far as the Labor Party can achieve that, anyway) over reactionary politics, the Price lens was far too reactionary to be of use in a gutted opposition.

Regardless of whether her right faction colleagues were happy or not with her when she elected not to run for deputy leader — when her running mate, Angus Taylor, lost the leadership ballot — I believe it was the right thing to do. Not necessarily for her, but definitely for the good of the party. Simply put, the Liberal Party needs a new face, one that appears more moderate than reactionary. Price cannot provide that.

That Price relies on reactionary politics to grow, then maintain, her power has been her modus operandi all along. So much so that satirical news outlets such as The Betoota Advocate and The Chaser ran articles about Dutton calling up Price a year after she’d ceased being useful (by sowing disinformation and fear during the Voice referendum) in a bid to get her whipping up the hopping-mad electorate again. Gee, did she deliver. Her “MAGA moment” has, indeed, been referred to as one of the stunts that lost the Coalition the government.

What is the Price “modus operandi”? It’s simple, actually. She runs the old argument that you cannot walk and chew gum. For example, if Aboriginal people are talking about Indigenous truth-telling agendas, Price will say we’re neglecting the “real problems” in remote communities. If we talk treaty, we’re ignoring abused Aboriginal women. If we talk land rights, we’re ignoring substance abuse issues. And so forth. None of this is remotely true. Indeed, any of us who regularly engage on matters of the former tend to believe that a more truthful, healed and educated nation will bring equality and cohesion for all, thus solving the latter. But that argument will never grab a Murdoch headline.

Price has been involved in politics for a very long time now. Prior to running for federal politics, she served on the Alice Springs Town Council for six years. Her time on the council overlapped slightly with her mother Bess Price’s time as a Country Liberal Party politician in the Northern Territory government.

The apple does not fall far from the tree; Bess was also a reactionary politician. During her time in NT Parliament, Bess was often the face of outrageous statements that were opportunistically grabbed for Sky News bits. Like Jacinta, the elder Price was positioned by the conservative media as an “authentic Aboriginal voice from the bush, pushing back against clueless city activist Blacks”.

Rarely was it mentioned that Bess lived in suburban Alice Springs and had successfully completed a degree like a lot of us evil city dwellers. Perhaps the best indication of the elder Price’s reactionary politics lies in just how decisively she was deposed. When Bess lost her seat in 2016, it was due to an astounding 26% swing against her as an individual candidate, equating to more than 30% on a two-party-preferred basis. With a good portion of that swing registering in remote booths, it was clear Bess was not speaking for the very people the media so often claimed she was representative of.

Jacinta Price’s star grew when she collaborated with Distinguished Professor Marcia Langton, along with Josephine Cashman, to deliver a National Press Club address on violence against Aboriginal women in 2016. This address, linked with conservative think tank the Centre for Independent Studies, caused some consternation within the Indigenous community. While it did highlight some exceptionally troubling statistics regarding the exorbitant rates Aboriginal women experience violence, it removed the issue of systemic and structural racism as a key component.

This working partnership did not last long. Not even two years down the track, Langton penned an article for The Saturday Paper calling out Price for courting alt-right and neo-Nazi figures to build power. This claim had a lot of truth to it, but was a massive turnaround for Langton, who had previously championed platforming the younger woman’s voice.

Cashman and Price, on the other hand, went their own way for a bit. At one point, they held a very strange press conference at Parliament House via Cashman’s now defunct Big River Impact Foundation, meeting with Pauline Hanson. The entire spectacle was so bizarre that the only person they could get to cover it for them was Joe Hildebrand, and the video from the press conference has long since disappeared from YouTube. Cashman went on to run for One Nation in 2022, before seemingly disappearing down a QAnon rabbit hole on Twitter.

Price appealing to the alt-right, or saying outrageous things, in a bid to build power has a long and established history. When the media is getting a little bit quiet, Price has no qualms about reducing the many things Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people campaign on to simplistic statements about date and flag changes. She had no problem collaborating with Mark Latham on silly videos about sausages and national pride.

Then, when it came to the referendum itself, she had no problem feeding misinformation about the constitution and how a powerless proposal would apparently “divide Australia by race”. Price was not alone in her misinformation campaign. As I have previously written here, the left managed to promise a lot of things that the Voice could never deliver according to the proposal on the table.

Price was, though, a crucial part of the right-wing misinformation that led to the referendum’s defeat, and to a weird public understanding that the Australian constitution is akin to the American Bill of Rights, rather than merely a living document revolving around governance of this country — and one that still contains racist passages.

This past week, with the separation, and then vow renewal, of the Liberal and National parties at a federal level, and Ley’s announcement of the new shadow ministry, we have seen Price demoted to more junior positions, having previously been the shadow minister for Indigenous Australians, as well as for government efficiency — an idea Dutton pinched from the US government. Despite any partyroom changes, or media appearances, she is left with less sway and less power. I’m not sad about that.

But where does this leave Price and her style of power-play? In short, it comes down to two factors: the ALP, and the Coalition. In the wake of its defeat, the Coalition has chosen to at least give the appearance of occupying a more moderate space than it did under Dutton. This tactic will only continue as long as the Labor Party also chooses to maintain a more moderate space. Both major parties are fighting for the perceived votes in the centre — “middle Australia”.

However, as Labor is in power — and as the ALP has already shown it will fail to take strong human rights stances (for example, in relation to Gaza) in preference for maintaining powerful international friends — the Coalition will maintain a moderate face until an alternative position looks like it could win them government. The Coalition could go hard on socially liberal values, rural capacity building and renewable energy as a massive corporate opportunity, but it is more likely it will instead choose reactionary methods again.

If it does, expect Price to be in the thick of it. Price likes that space, she’s good at navigating it, and she knows it’s where her power base lies, because it sure as hell does not lie with most Indigenous voters. There is no doubt in my mind that if the opportunity arises due to a renewed rise of the reactionary right, she will indeed move to a lower house seat, her ministerial portfolio will again increase, and, ultimately, she will bid for leadership.

Watch this space to see if both the government and the opposition can be relied on to ensure there is no space for the reactionary right to flourish, thus starving Price of the opportunity to again be a leadership contender. In the meantime, she’s got Sky News and a book to flog.