Jacinta Price insists she’s the right Senate choice

A defiant Jacinta Price says she wants to fight for all Northern Territorians as she faces Coalition resistance to her Senate bid.

Alice Springs deputy mayor Jacinta Price, in Darwin, says she wants to fight for all people in the Northern Territory by becoming a senator. Picture: Rebecca Booth

A defiant Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has declared she wants to fight for all Northern Territorians and particularly marginalised ­Aboriginal women and children, as she faces resistance from within the Coalition to her bid to be elected to the Senate.

Ms Price’s nomination as a Country Liberal Party candidate for the prized NT Senate seat has sparked criticism from some government MPs, who insist she should not be contesting a seat that is already held by Nationals senator Sam McMahon.

There are concerns the seat would go to the Liberal Party if Ms Price won the preselection contest this month, which would all but guarantee her election.

Former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce said Ms Price was “an excellent person” and he admired her work but she should run in one of the territory’s marginal lower house Labor-held seats of Lingiari or Solomon.

Sam McMahon. Picture: Katrina Bridgeford.

“For Jacinta to walk into a seat we already have is below her capabilities of what she could achieve,” Mr Joyce said.

“I will be supporting Sam McMahon 100 per cent, absolutely to the hilt. If the Coalition wants to win the next election, they must take out insurance by targeting winnable seats.

“Jacinta Price in the open seat of Lingiari or Solomon has the ­absolute potential to do that.”

Senator McMahon, who was first elected at the 2019 election and is seeking re-election, was “surprised and disappointed” that Ms Price had said she was running for the Senate instead of a lower house seat in part because it was an easier contest.

“That’s a very selfish view. To me it’s actually not easier,” Senator McMahon said. “If you want to be a high-profile person as an individual, then really the lower house is where you want to be. As a senator you’re a team player and you’re like the engine room, not the front-facing person.”

But Ms Price, who is deputy mayor of Alice Springs and unsuccessfully contested the seat of Lingiari at the last federal election, said she was not interested in fighting her own side of politics.

Barnaby Joyce. Picture: AAP

She considered her main battles as ensuring voices like hers were “respected and heard” on the ABC – and that marginalised Indigenous women and children were listened to by Australia’s leaders. “I don’t want to be drawn into a stoush,” Ms Price, 40, said.

“The decision I have made I have not taken lightly, and as an Indigenous Australian, also, it is very important, particularly in the Senate, to have an Indigenous voice that brings common sense.

“We have a democratic process where anybody has the potential to put a nomination up for a seat because they’re passionate about representing their constituents – and I am passionate about representing the whole of the NT and not just an electorate in the lower house.”

Liberal and Nationals MPs in the NT are members of the Country Liberal Party.

CLP senators have for decades sat in the Nationals partyroom but Ms Price has kept her options open, saying she would take direction from the party.

Deputy Prime Minister and Nationals leader Michael McCormack said he was supportive of Senator McMahon and all elected members of his party but refused to say who he would back in the preselection battle.

“Just as the Nationals membership does, the CLP’s grassroots members choose their candidates,” he told The Australian. “Any eligible member of the CLP is afforded the opportunity to contest Senate preselection. I will respect the decision made by the CLP’s grassroots members.”

He also declined to say if he wanted the Coalition’s NT senator to sit in the Nationals partyroom, despite his deputy David Littleproud saying they should.

“Convention for the CLP has been that their senator sits with the Nationals and that convention should continue,” Mr Littleproud said.