Liberal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has put distance between herself and a podcaster who said the country should stop being flooded with “hundreds of thousands of Indians, Chinese, Africans, Middle Easterns, and Gazans” who he did not consider Australians.
The remarks were put to Price by combat veteran Sam Bamford as she sat down for an hour-long interview on his 2 Worlds Collide podcast, published on Thursday, which regularly features outspoken or right-wing guests.
Price’s appearance on the podcast indicates how Angus Taylor’s Coalition leadership is emboldening his MPs to re-engage with sensitive cultural debates on migration despite the backlash it might provoke particularly in multicultural communities.
Bamford raised the idea of a remigration program – an extremist concept for deporting non-white migrants – and later admitted he sounded “heaps racist” as he pushed Price on his complaints that people with Anglo-Celtic and European backgrounds were losing majority status in Australia.
The NT senator, currently opposition spokeswomen for skills and training, disagreed that Australians could be defined by their ethnic heritage, given many people had mixed backgrounds.
But she did not contest Bamford’s complaints about an “influx” of migrant groups from India, the Middle East or Africa. She instead insisted upon the importance of Australian values, while conceding that “mass” migration was dampening Australia’s sense of community as people lived in enclaves.
Price issued a clarifying statement on Thursday evening, saying she had not intended to endorse “every point raised across a lengthy monologue”.
“I was very specific in my remarks that people who come to Australia should adopt Australian values, contribute positively and support social cohesion,” she said.
“I also made clear in the interview that Australian identity should not be defined on ethnic grounds. In no way were my remarks in the podcast endorsing discrimination based on race, ethnicity or religion.”
But the line of questioning reveals the tightrope that the Coalition is walking as it seeks to woo back voters from One Nation by muscling up to the minor party in its language on immigration and cultural values.
Shadow treasurer Tim Wilson on Wednesday refused to join Taylor and other colleagues, including Price, in using the term “mass migration” to describe immigration levels that surged after the pandemic and have plateaued above the average intake last decade.
Taylor started deploying the phrase, used often in right-wing circles, two weeks ago, on the night the Liberals lost the seat of Farrer to One Nation. Last Thursday, he delivered a budget reply speech that promised to tie migration to housing completions, and bar non-citizens from welfare programs.
Multicultural leaders said the plan was making immigrants feel less safe and damaging social cohesion.
In Thursday’s podcast, Price listened and nodded as Bamford described changing demographics in Australia and referenced the controversial idea of a “remigrating program” in a lengthy spiel.
He told Price: “I’m not coming in here and saying I want to deport every single person that isn’t the make-up of you and I, that built this nation.
“But our government isn’t having the discussion of ‘Australia is for Australians’. We can’t keep flooding us with hundreds of thousands of Indians, Chinese, Africans, Middle Easterns, and Gazans, for that matter, with the refugee status. It’s like, we got to stop this, guys.
“What’s your thoughts on all that? I mean that’s a lot of information.”
“Look, absolutely. And I totally agree,” Price replied. “I mean, if people want to come to Australia and become Australians, they have to adopt our values. Full stop. There’s no two ways about it.”
In the statement made afterwards, Price claimed she was agreeing with the podcaster’s statement that it was a “lot of information”.
Further into the Thursday’s interview, Price rejected Bamford’s question about whether Australians could be defined by their ethnicity. “There’s just heaps of Indians, there’s heaps of Africans, there’s heaps of Middle Easterns and we never had that influx before,” he said.
“And then what is an Australian? I think it’s an Anglo-Celtic, European or First Nation[s] person. That’s what I think.”
Price said: “Sure. Look, I will say that I don’t know that you can define it precisely ethnic, ethnically, like that, because I think we’re far more mixed up than that.
“I look at my own family in that my children have got, you know, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, German, Indian, Malay, Chinese, French, you know, they’ve got a grandmother on one side who’s Mauritian to white Australian grandfathers and an Aboriginal grandmother.
“Fundamentally it comes down to our values … Our culture as Australians has always been about: I’ll stick by you. I’ll be your mate if you are going to stick by me, and be my mate, and we do the right thing by one another.”
Price told the podcaster that she thought he was reflecting a feeling that there used to be “far more sense of community and that has broken down”.
“And this is what happens when you import people en masse,” she said.
“You are right, when you bring a hell of a lot more people in here than we can handle, then yeah – I don’t necessarily like the idea that community groups kind of have their own little enclaves, because I suppose it’s not what I grew up with in Australia.”
Multicultural Affairs Minister Anne Aly accused senior Liberals of mimicking One Nation and repetitively targeting migrants.
“These Australians should not have to deal with the Liberal Party constantly punching down and questioning their existence,” she said.
In response, Price said: “That the government is seeking to make this an issue shows how desperate they are to find any distraction from their aspiration-killing budget and the pressures Australians are facing right now.”
Price was pushed off the frontbench by former opposition leader Sussan Ley last year after she refused to apologise for suggesting in an ABC interview that Indian migrants were being brought into the country to win votes.
After being reinstated under Taylor, Price declared “I’m back, baby” and said she was thrown under the bus by colleagues over the saga, for which she refused to apologise.
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Natassia Chrysanthosis Federal Political Correspondent. She has previously reported on immigration, health, social issues and the NDIS from Parliament House in Canberra.Connect viaXoremail.
