Article published under the heading ‘MAGA-lite Hopes Dashed by the Rise, Fall, and Flailing of Price, The Australian Financial Review, 13 September 2025, p. 43.
It was not long ago that Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price was the hope of the Trump-admiring, MAGA-lite faction of the Liberal Party. Her campaign against the Voice referendum, her earthy wisdom and admirable life story, enthused the “after dark” crowd.
That’s the moniker the Liberal moderates give her and her right-wing allies. “You never hear from them until after dark when they blast their opinions on Sky News programs,” they say, much to the delight of the Labor Party. The more these Liberals appear as overinflated balloons, unchecked, blowing themselves across the landscape to red-faced exhaustion, the easier Prime Minister Anthony Albanese can sleep at night.
What was she thinking, tearing into the integrity of the biggest migrant community in modern Australia: those of South Asian heritage?
Every rock she hurled landed like a penny in her enemies’ wishing well. It is some accomplishment to manage to offend just about everybody.
No longer does Senator Price appear savvy, with a cheeky taste for mischief, formidable intelligence and a marksman’s eye for sacred cows.
Undoubtedly, the sacking of Senator Price from the Liberal frontbench of the Coalition is a tragedy for her and her party. I do not believe she is as bad as she sounds. Never write off anyone, is a useful guide to politics. The interesting question is whether she and her side of politics will learn the right lessons.
The obvious comparison is Howard in the 1980s, and his loose comments on Asian immigration, which ultimately cost him the party leadership. Price’s trifecta of errors included besmirching Australians of Indian heritage as Labor-voting automata, followed by her refusal to back her leader, Sussan Ley, and the senator’s refusal to utter a word of contrition for her mistake.
In Howard’s case, he recovered, partly due to stumbles by others: Peacock, Hewson, and Downer. In politics, stubbornness and single-minded determination are celebrated as great characteristics, usually in retrospect. Thatcher’s zeal to change Britain’s economic sclerosis and Churchill’s warnings about Nazi Germany are sometimes given as examples.
Howard, “Lazarus with a triple bypass”, succeeded as Liberal leader because he moderated his views and their articulation. He was never going to be an Enoch “rivers of blood” Powell-type leader. He also learnt from the Fraser era. He realised, with Hawke’s example before him, that good policy can be good politics. He escaped from the reputation of the Fraser era.
The problem for the “after dark” crowd in the Liberal party, who definitely speak for a sizeable portion of Liberal opinion, is that they are too stubbornly ideological.
Their admiration for Trump invites a paradoxical assessment. This does not seem a sure-fire way to success. In Australia, Trump is political poison, as Peter Dutton discovered. So is any whiff of fealty to the man’s wrecking-ball crusade on relative free trade underpinned by global alliances.
Internationally, Trump is unpopular unlike any president before him. He is deeply unpopular in Australia, as the Lowy poll earlier this year shows.
For many Liberal moderates – and Labor supporters – they see the Australian MAGA crowd as velociraptors testing the electric fence and the limits of civilised opinion. The charring, however, looks one-sided.
Good political decision-making is usually marked by a deep understanding of national interests. Decisions are like an archipelago of dots. You try to draw lines between them and incrementally get one right decision after another. Policy is rarely creative and useful if driven by wild “neuron flashes”.
In the Australian electorate, a largely pragmatic, non-ideological world, perhaps more complacent than it should be, politics and policy acceptance requires homework, not unreflective, echo-chamber sloganising.
Here’s an awful paradox: Australia’s MAGA right, as represented by Senator Price, is like the old Labor left – obsessed with internal fights, purity contests. The more they lose, the more they think they are right.
What an irony, too, that a previously representative member of the old left, a protégé of Tom Uren – I speak of Prime Minister Albanese – has seemingly cast that old-left style from his leadership. Whatever you think of the PM, he must be praying the lessons he learnt are never considered by Senator Price and her ilk. But for Australia’s sake, I hope she does heed some lessons, including the humility and bravery to change.
Australia needs more, not fewer, able and articulate First Nations leaders. You do not need to spurn conviction and values, or surrender to the Zeitgeist. Senator Price can come back. But you fear the direction in which she is treading.
