Three cheers for Jacinta! Her promotion is good for Dutton, good for the Coalition, and good for the country.
The rise and rise of Jacinta Nampijinpa Price from deputy mayor of Alice Springs to Country Liberal Senator for the Northern Territory, and from there to Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians is one of those rare rapid ascents in political life that promises to be good for the Liberal party, good for Opposition leader Peter Dutton, and good for the country.
Prime Minister Albanese’s brazen request for a blank cheque to create a disembodied Indigenous Voice to Parliament is disingenuous, dangerous, and many would add racist. Price’s opposition to Albanese’s half-baked plan is deeply personal. She is the living incarnation of reconciliation with a Warlpiri mum and an Anglo-Celtic dad. She went on create her own ‘blended family’ with her musician husband who is not Indigenous. As she says in the ‘No’ campaign ad, which is being run by Fair Australia, it was love that brought her parents together and love that brought she and her partner together and none of them want to see the family divided along the lines of race.
Price is a gifted speaker. At the CPAC conference in Sydney last year she and Warren Mundine provided a hilarious double act, brimming with good humour and incisive commentary. They plan to go on tour across the country reminding Australians that there is more to unite us than divide us. The pair will provide ‘Yes’ campaigners with a formidable challenge.
Labor has turned smearing Liberals as racist and sexist into an art form, but the promotion Price makes that task a whole lot harder. Leftists looked stupid, vicious, and paternalistic when they tried to claim that she was providing cover for racists.
Price has been a godsend for Dutton. His new Clark Kent-style black glasses have helped him shed the Voldemort look and with Price at his side, Labor has been put on the back foot in its campaign of character assassination that it perfected in relentless attacks on Scott Morrison. And to Labor’s chagrin Price has been joined at the hip to Dutton on his frequent trips to Alice Springs.
Price has been equally helpful to Dutton within his party. He has been faced with the same rancorous divisions that poisoned the prime ministerial tenure of the last three Liberal leaders. The Voice threatened the usual tectonic divide between the Woke, wet left, and the dry right. After the dismal drubbing in the Aston by-election, Price is the inspirational figure the Coalition needs to bring its warring tribes together. Perhaps not Julian Leeser, who quit the shadow front bench to campaign for the Voice, but Price, a Country National, was backed by the majority of Liberals even though it meant the Nationals have exceeded their quota on the front bench.
Leeser’s departure has also allowed Dutton to promote the very capable Kerrynne Liddle to Shadow Assistant Minister for Child Protection and the Prevention of Family Violence and make the battle-hardened former attorney-general Michaelia Cash the new shadow attorney-general.
And just like that, Dutton has added three impressive women to the ministry making Labor’s stereotypical attacks that much harder.
The announcement by Karen Andrews, the former and then Shadow Minister for Home Affairs, that she will quit the front bench and not contest the next election opened the way for Dutton to promote talented China hawk Senator James Paterson to Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Minister for Home Affairs and cyber security.
Paterson did an impressive job when he was chair of the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security. He scored a major hit on the government in February when he raised the alarm about the threat posed by almost a thousand Chinese-made cameras in Commonwealth buildings.
He joins Andrew Hastie, Shadow Minister for Defence, who gets kudos for being attacked by the overtly pro-China Premier of Western Australia, Mark McGowan, this week. McGowan, either accidentally or on purpose, announced over a hot microphone at a China-Australia Chamber of Commerce lunch during his first trip to China since the pandemic that Hastie had ‘swallowed some sort of Cold War pills back … when he was born, and he couldn’t get his mindset out of that’. Who knows what was going on. What is certain is that most Australians share Hastie’s concerns about the CCP and would see McGowan’s comments in an unimpressed light within the context of his visit to China.
Price, Liddle, Paterson, and Hastie are all part of a younger generation that will eventually carry the Liberals back onto the government benches. A successful campaign against the Voice is a critical first battle and Price is the best person to lead them to victory in that campaign.
