Senator launched as electoral weapon to see off Climate 200 threat in seat ’too close to call’

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has been deployed by the Liberals as an electoral weapon in the fight against a Climate-200 backed candidate in Wannon as new research shows the seat is ‘too close to call’.

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The Liberal Party has enlisted Jacinta Nampijinpa Price in the fight against the teals ahead of the next election amid new polling showing the blue-ribbon Liberal seat of Wannon in regional Victoria is “too close to call” given the threat posed by Climate 200-backed candidate Alex Dyson.

Senator Nampijinpa Price, the high-profile NT Country Liberal Party senator who was the face of the Coalition’s No campaign during last year’s voice referendum, has recorded an attack ad against Mr Dyson given his previous comments supporting a change to Australia Day, the reintroduction of a carbon tax and support for a constitutionally enshrined voice to parliament.

The Liberal Party has also questioned Mr Dyson’s social media history, including his send-up of the twerking dance troupe that performed at the commission of HMAS Supply in Sydney in April 2021, with the comedian and former Triple J radio host posting his own version of the performance online using the hashtag #Boatylicious.

Mr Dyson is running for the third time against Liberal frontbench Dan Tehan in the regional seat held by the Liberals for the past 70 years after he picked up 19.3 per cent of the primary vote in the 2022 election – a major lift on the 10.4 per cent he won at the 2019 election.

The Liberals are planning to run a more aggressive strategy against independent candidates going into the next election and are ramping up pressure against the teal MPs in parliament to explain who they would support in the event of a hung parliament.

New polling from the RedBridge Group, to be released on Monday, also shows the nation is firmly in minority government territory although the Coalition is proving competitive in the race to win back from the teal independents the Victorian seat of Goldstein and the Western Australian seat of Curtin.

However, the NSW seat of Cowper along with Wannon are at risk of falling to a second wave of independent challengers. RedBridge director of strategy and analytics Kos Samaras said Wannon was “too close to call” and Mr Tehan had “definitely got a fight on his hands”.

The polling of 5976 voters between July 10 and August 27 suggested the Coalition could win between 61 and 73 seats in the House of Representatives, with 68 seats being the most likely estimated outcome.

Labor was predicted to win a range of between 65 to 75 seats, with a median estimate of 69 seats, with RedBridge concluding the likely composition of the crossbench would make it easier for Labor to form a working majority.

In a short video clip being shared by Liberal MPs on social media, Senator Nampijinpa Price uses the rejection of a constitutionally enshrined voice to parliament to paint Mr Dyson, who supported the Yes campaign, as “really a Green pretending to be an independent”.

She says a vote for Mr Dyson in Wannon would be “risky as he would support a Labor/Greens government”, and that his strong support for the voice to parliament put him at odds with community sentiment in the seat.

On Sunday Mr Dyson said: “It’s flattering that a senator from the NT is taking time away from her own constituents to show some interest in our beautiful electorate of Wannon.

“And while her facts miss the mark entirely, I’m glad that the announcement of my third independent campaign has prompted the Liberal Party to finally pay attention to southwest Victoria after decades of political neglect.

“I hope that an injection of funds for our ailing roads and hospitals is to follow this generous injection of fearmongering.”

Mr Tehan holds Wannon on a narrow margin of 3.9 per cent and Climate 200 organisers have identified the electorate as one of the group’s priority targets at the next federal poll after ploughing $64,375 into Mr Dyson’s campaign in 2022.