By Kishor Napier-Raman and Stephen Brook
What a time to be alive it has been for Country Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.
Widely adored by conservatives after leading the successful campaign to defeat the Indigenous Voice to parliament, the Northern Territory senator’s flirtation with US President Donald Trump’s “make America great again” slogan went down like a 1000-megaton bomb during an election campaign that ended with devastation for Peter Dutton’s Liberals.
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has been spruiking the success of right-wing lobby group Advance in the federal election.Credit: James Brickwood
Price claimed that concerns about her MAGA moment amounted to journalistic mudslinging before promptly defecting from the Nationals party room to have a crack at the deputy Liberal leadership, enraging many of her former colleagues in the process. Price then enraged many of her new colleagues after chickening out of the deputy leader contest once the ticket’s No.1, Angus Taylor, lost to Sussan Ley by just four votes.
Then the Coalition spectacularly fell apart this week, leaving Australian conservatives facing a very long winter.
Price remains optimistic. She responded to criticism of her deputy leadership tilt by telling Sky News that lots of Australians wanted her to be prime minister. And on Wednesday, Price was out telling supporters about a silver lining for conservatives: the tremendous success of right-wing lobby group Advance, who is claiming credit for the Greens’ election slump.
“For me, as a member of the Coalition, this election was a gut punch, and I know so many of you feel the same way,” Price’s fundraising email to Advance supporters, sent several hours after the Coalition ceased to exist, began.
“But there was one positive. The success of the ADVANCE campaign, smashing the Greens.”
The conservative pressure group, with whom Price joined forces during the Voice referendum, spent the election campaign attacking the Greens, rather than helping Liberals, and have claimed responsibility for the party losing three seats. To Labor.
After the effectiveness of Advance’s election role was questioned by some in the party, its boss Matthew Sheahan called out critics as “bedwetting anonymous Liberals”.
How do those anonymous bedwetters, many of whom now share a party room with Price and are already unhappy about both the Trump stuff and her short-lived pitch for deputy leader, feel about her shilling for Advance?
Well, the Liberals are a broad church, after all, and right now, they can’t afford to be banishing anyone from the pews.
Feeling Hawke-ish
One Liberal not pissed off at Price? Former minister and centre-right factional powerbroker Alex Hawke, best known for doing Scott Morrison’s numbers during the 2018 leadership spill.
Hawke has, relatively recently, changed his WhatsApp profile photo from an obscure character from the Star Wars extended universe to a picture of him and Price in frame.
Hawke told us he supported her coming into the Liberal Party room, and recently singled her out as a “talented new addition to the Liberal cause” in a recent post-election social media update.
We note that Hawke’s faction backed Sussan Ley over the Taylor-Price ticket in last week’s leadership vote. Many tea leaves to read.
Guardianistas reunited
Plenty of ink has been spilt in this column, and elsewhere, documenting the trials and tribulations of the Guardian Australia’s Canberra press gallery bureau, which faced a mass exodus of talent and the departure of political editor Karen Middleton right before the federal election campaign.
Now it seems like a couple of those Guardian refugees have found a new home at digital publication The New Daily. That includes reader favourite and former Guardian Australia live-blogger Amy Remeikis, who left The Guardian to take a job at progressive think tank the Australia Institute last year and is now side-hustling as TND’s contributing editor, where she’ll write a weekly column.
She’ll also be reuniting with the veteran press gallery photographer and host of the Talking Pictures segment on the ABC’s Insiders Mike Bowers, who left The Guardian last year, as this column first reported. As for the process of rebuilding the press gallery bureau, CBD hears the search for a new political editor has been put on the backburner for now, with the publication’s overlord Lenore Taylor overseas. The West Australian’s Canberra bureau chief Katina Curtis, previously of this masthead, is one name that has been through the rumour mill, but so far, the outlet is not even close to finalising things.
Middleton, meanwhile, who left the Guardian after months on the sideline following a turbulent 2024, has been filing for university-backed online publication Inside Story during the election campaign and aftermath.
Doctor Vic
Vic Alhadeff.Credit:
A big shout-out to advocate, community leader and journalist Vic Alhadeff, who received an honorary doctorate from the University of Sydney this week.
“Vic Alhadeff has dedicated his career to championing human rights, combating hate speech and fostering community cohesion,” the uni’s chancellor David Thodey said.
Alhadeff, who began his media career with the Cape Times in South Africa, was previously editor of the Australian Jewish News, long-serving chief executive at the Jewish Board of Deputies, and is a non-executive director on the SBS board.
At a graduation ceremony on Tuesday, Alhadeff spoke eloquently about his experiences in apartheid-era South Africa and the troubling rise of antisemitism and bigotry in contemporary Australia.
“There will be moments in your careers when a situation demands leadership, impels you to summon the courage to speak for the minority, to choose leadership over popularity, to demonstrate strength of character,” he said.
“When the alternative is indifference. Leadership is not primarily about the leader. It is about keeping faith with those who look to you to lead. Do it with courage. Believe in yourself. Own yourself. Write your own story.”
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