Andrew Bolt: Jacinta Price is perfect as the Coalition’s spokesman for Indigenous Australians.

Jacinta Price is the Liberals’ most exciting recruit in years – articulate, fearless, smart, and yet the party has just left her twisting in the wind.

What the Liberals are doing to Jacinta Nampijinpa Price explains why so many conservatives have had it.

Where’s the party that will fight – for them, for itself?

The Morrison government’s defeat is the chance for the Liberals to re-find their soul.

The conservative Peter Dutton is now in charge.

Many left-wing Liberals were voted out and Price was voted in.

Price is a Celtic and Warlpiri woman and the Coalition’s most exciting recruit in years – articulate, fearless, smart and deeply committed to freedom, including freedom from tribalism.

Yet the Coalition has just left Price twisting in the wind.

She is a fierce opponent of Labor’s plan for an Aboriginal-only parliament, which Labor gives the fluffy name of “Voice” and wants written forever into our constitution.

She’s against it on principle because it divides us by race, and puts our race above our individuality.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price

Instead of treating us each as individuals, Labor’s plan treats us differently, depending on whether we had an Aboriginal great-grandparent or two, as if that should matter.

This is fundamentally against Liberal principles, which put the individual first, regardless of their relatives, race, gender or class.

So Price is perfect as the Coalition’s spokesman for Indigenous Australians.

She is the voice Labor claims to be looking for, and the fighter for principles Liberals should revere.

Instead the Coalition gave that job of representing Aboriginal Australians not to this Aboriginal conservative, but to a white, Julian Leeser, who actually supports Labor’s “Voice”.

Worse is Dutton says he’s waiting for Labor to detail its plan before deciding if he’s against.

But he must oppose this in principle.

This is not an argument about details, even though the details will confirm this is an attack on democracy.

No more will Australia be one person, one vote.

There’s a cost to Dutton waiting.

It makes Price seem as if she speaks for no one but herself.

Some in the white left media have pounced, attacking her personally to scare off other opponents of Labor’s plan. Sydney Morning Herald columnist Peter FitzSimons suggested she gives cover to racists, while his mate Mike Carlton, a former SMH columnist, called her “whiny” and “publicity hungry”.

Some of Price’s colleagues have defended her against those attacks, but no frontbencher has publicly backed her arguments.

By their silence they weaken her and delegitimise her case.

They also seem like Liberals who still don’t know what to fight for.