September 11, 2025 • 19 mins
Controversial Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price was sacked from the Coalition frontbench this week. Price left Opposition Leader Sussan Ley with little choice, after she refused to apologise for comments she made about the Indian community, and then refused to publicly affirm her faith in Ley’s leadership.
Chief political correspondent Paul Sakkal and federal political correspondent Natassia Chrysanthos discuss the inside story of the sacking with host Jacqueline Maley, and they also check in on the climate debate, before a key climate policy measure to be decided next week.
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S1 (00:01):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is inside politics. I'm Jacqueline Maley, it's Friday, September 12th.
Controversial Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa price was sacked from the
coalition frontbench this week. Price left opposition leader Sussan Ley
with very little choice after she refused to apologise for
comments that she made about the Indian community, and then
(00:24):
refused to publicly affirm her faith in Lee's leadership. Joining
me to discuss, we have our chief political correspondent, Paul Satchell,
as usual, and federal political correspondent Natassia Chrysanthos. We'll also
check in on the climate debate that is about to
hot up. Pun intended. Welcome, guys.
S2 (00:42):
Hey, Jack. Morning.
S1 (00:50):
Paul, we're now into our second week of talking about
the fallout from Senator Price's comments on Indian migrants. And
then on Wednesday evening this week, opposition leader Sussan Ley
finally acted and she sacked price from the coalition frontbench.
So what was the final straw? Why? What sort of
pushed her to act this week?
S3 (01:07):
Well, this has bubbled along. It didn't turn into a
kind of full blown crisis until Wednesday, a week before Wednesday.
Jacinta price gave an interview on the ABC, where she
raised the issue of Indian migrants in Australia.
S4 (01:22):
That there is a concern with the Indian community and
only because there's been large numbers and we can see
that reflected in the way that the community votes for
labor at the same time.
S3 (01:32):
She copped a lot of criticism for these comments. She
had to backtrack and make clear that Australia has a
non-discriminatory migration program. Sussan Ley and other senior liberals asked
her privately, and some said publicly that she must apologise.
She declined to do so. She dug in and said
that we need to have a debate about immigration and
she wouldn't be silenced. And then on Wednesday, she was
(01:53):
in Perth for a Liberal Party event and held an
impromptu press conference, a very short one, where she said
that she appreciated all the support she'd received from people
who are concerned about migration, and that she would not
be silenced on the issue. And a journalist who was
there asked her repeatedly as she was about to wrap
up the press conference, do you have confidence in your leader,
(02:15):
Sussan Ley? He asked her three times and each time
she said.
S4 (02:19):
Look again, those matters are for our party room.
S5 (02:23):
Full confidence in her leadership.
S4 (02:24):
Those matters are for our party room. My focus is
to go forward and to ensure that we're doing the
right thing by the Australian people, which is what we're
elected to do.
S5 (02:37):
Do you fully back her leadership?
S4 (02:38):
That is that is what my concerns are.
S3 (02:41):
This turned into quite a personal feud over the last
few days between Leigh and Price. Price's supporters insist she
wasn't actually trying to create a leadership crisis. She wasn't
trying to blow apart the party. There is no leadership
contest in the offing, but she felt personally offended by
the way Susan Leigh's key ally, Alex Hawke spoke to
(03:02):
her staff earlier in the week, and even though some
of her supporters believed she was getting closer to an apology,
that feud with Hawke, and by extension Leigh, caused her
to dig in and have a public argument, which led
to her effectively not endorsing her own leader, which for
Susan Lee's hand.
S6 (03:19):
Coalition Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa price has been sacked from the
shadow ministry after a week long storm over her Indian
migrant comments.
S7 (03:28):
Today, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa price critically failed to provide confidence
in my leadership of the Liberal Party. Confidence in the
leader is a requirement for serving in the shadow ministry.
A couple of hours ago, I spoke to the senator
(03:50):
and I advised her of my decision.
S1 (03:55):
Did Senator Price have any sort of strategy here? Task
do you think, when she called this press conference that
she didn't have to call and refused to apologize repeatedly.
Was she sort of directly issuing a challenge, do you think,
to Susan Lee's leadership?
S2 (04:09):
I think the particular position of Jacinta Price in the
Parliament and in the Liberal Party is very interesting. I
think she was under an immense amount of pressure from
her colleagues last week. But the unique thing about Senator
Price is that unlike almost all of her colleagues, her
kind of support and power doesn't come from within the
Parliamentary Liberal Party. Her support and power comes from this
(04:32):
huge social media following. She has this huge conservative base,
the kind of fundraising money she draws for the liberals,
and there were competing demands from those two groups of people.
She's also backed by people like Tony Abbott. Her colleagues
wanted her to back down and apologise. Her entire brand
and how she's built herself up to the point that
(04:52):
she has, is based on being unapologetic, is being outspoken,
is being defiant. So I it feels like it kind
of came to this sticking point where, you know, coalescing
to Lee and other liberal demands would would have compromised
her standing amongst her followers this whole time. While Liberal
MPs are on the television saying Senator Price should apologize,
(05:13):
Senate price should apologize, her supporters are flooding her social
media with support. They're emailing people like Alex Hawke, telling
him that he needs to, you know, butt out of
it and leave Jacinta to speak her truth. So I
think at the end of the day, she stuck with
the kind of political persona that speaks to that base
(05:34):
and that for her, she was never going to back
down and apologize. That's not what her political brand is
built upon.
S1 (05:41):
Yeah. Okay, Paul, this was obviously super messy for the liberals.
As we've just said, it went on for way too long.
Even Barnaby Joyce, who's not known for his public discretion,
said last week, I think, you know, you make mistakes
in politics, but you've just got to tidy them up
and square them away as quickly as possible. This was
kind of the opposite of that. It exposed a major
division in their ranks. That task has just alluded to.
(06:03):
Can you just tell our listeners what the sort of
who's on which side in along this fault line?
S3 (06:08):
Jacinta price has lost a lot of friends in the
last week on her side of the Liberal Party. Yeah.
S1 (06:12):
And her side being the sort of more conservative side.
S3 (06:15):
Her side being the right who see her as kind
of emblematic of the new direction of right wing populism. She, she, she,
more than any other liberal, speaks to, uh, a new
and emerging bloc of voters who prefer a more forthright
conservatism rather than a more stale, old school liberal version
of conservatism. This gets her into trouble in in various forums,
(06:39):
but this is what her base seeks. And they see
her as the icon of that movement. And so because
of that, you see people like Sarah Henderson, for example,
who's a right faction liberal senator who was ousted by
Sussan Ley in a reshuffle earlier this year, come out
and tie herself to Jacinta Price earlier this week, even
though that's, uh, going to get her into trouble in
(06:59):
the parliamentary party. Sarah Henderson sees political value in aligning
herself with price, even when price is feeling the heat.
Because even though it's quite clear that price made a
mistake when she made her first comments, and price admitted
that even though she didn't say sorry to the Indian community,
what this did was bring to life the issue of migration,
(07:20):
and it shifted the debate away from the actual facts
of what Jacinta Price said about who Indian Australians vote for,
and turned it into a broader debate on the values
around whether, as a movement, the liberals should support the
current migration program, or whether they should be more sharp
in their criticism of it and more forthright in their
(07:43):
emphasising of, you know, Western values and the supposed deterioration
in Australian society that what they call mass migration has caused.
And so, even though on the facts of what Jacinta
Price said, she was clearly incorrect. She brings to life
this kind of cleavage. And you see right wingers in
the party either reluctant to call out the argument she
(08:07):
made and merely criticizing her for her failure to back Lee,
but still pretty soft on calling out the substance of
what Jacinta Price was getting to.
S1 (08:19):
So for some people, even though the whole incident might
have been unfortunate, it did give license, I suppose, to
the coalition or to the Liberal Party to start talking
about so-called mass migration as an issue that voters might
be concerned about.
S3 (08:30):
Yeah. And, um, as we talked about last week, this
is a this is a fundamental part of conservative politics
across the globe now. Yeah. And you see centre right
parties being eaten apart by populist parties to their right. Yeah.
And so this threat is not going away. One nation
just increased their support at the last election and now
have four senators. If they get one more, they'll be
(08:51):
bigger than the National Party. And you saw Tony Abbott
on Wednesday come out with a long Substack post, backing
in Jacinta Price and saying we need to find a
way as a country to talk about this. So migration
is not going away as an issue. But this saga
has has exposed the need for the Liberal Party to
try and find palatable language to speak to the public
(09:13):
about this issue, because there is an underlying sentiment that's
that's not going away.
S2 (09:17):
And I think they've also like the, um, lines coming
from like Lee and people like Alex Hawke, especially this week,
toned down the debate. Like I think you had people
buying into it more last week in the immediate aftermath
of the rallies. And then as this became a really
difficult problem for the liberals, and they were doing all
this proactive outreach with the Indian community, you had Susan
(09:38):
Lee and opposition immigration spokesman Paul Scarr and Julian Liza
go to Harris Park in Sydney to speak and get
photos with Indian leaders. And all their rhetoric was focused
on the benefits of migration. And you had Alex Hawke
come out earlier this week and give a very measured, um,
the most measured take I've seen a liberal politician give
(09:58):
on migration, where he kind of just tried to to
make that debate go to the side while they focused
on their reputation.
S8 (10:06):
Repairing my colleagues, party members, people across the country understand
that if we're going to have a debate about migration numbers,
that's fine. But we don't single out communities, and we
certainly don't target the Australian Indian community because they're excellent migrants.
They're our number one source country for migrants for the
last 20 years of all governments. And they've been really
great at integrating into Australia. So I think we've come
(10:28):
to that view that this is just.
S1 (10:30):
I don't think you can underplay really the reputational damage
that the Liberal Party has taken amongst Indian Australians, particularly
in Sydney. I would say, Paul, we've talked before on
this podcast about Susan Lee's authority and her authority over
the party. Basically, she won the leadership over Angus Taylor,
but only by a very slim majority. Jacinta price, of course,
(10:50):
sort of defected from the Nats to the libs in
order to back Angus Taylor. And that didn't work out.
But has this week sort of helped to cement Lee's
authority over the party? or has it had the opposite effect,
do you think?
S3 (11:03):
Yeah. To answer that, I'm going to contradict something I
wrote in Thursday's paper. So. And a bunch of other.
S1 (11:08):
Such is your prerogative as a as a journalist.
S3 (11:11):
Yeah. It's only it's a slight contradiction. I'm adding to
my argument.
S1 (11:15):
You're developing it. It's evolving.
S3 (11:17):
Exactly. Um, a bunch of people wrote and said overnight
that Susan Lee had no choice but to sack Jacinta Price. Um.
And I think that's right to some extent. Like, there
is a political convention that if you're in a shadow
cabinet and you, you don't support the leader or you're
not able to full throatedly say that you can no
longer serve in that shadow ministry. And so for Susan
Lee to maintain the air of authority and to create
(11:39):
a sense that there are standards in her new party post, Dutton,
who really ruled with an iron fist in some way,
she had to take that step. But having said that,
even among Jacinta Price's colleagues and other shadow cabinet ministers
on Wednesday afternoon, hours after the Jacinta Price press conference,
which they all watched, not many of them were expecting.
(12:00):
In fact, very few of them were expecting Susan Lee
to take this action. At 6:00, when we learned there
was a press conference happening half an hour later in Tasmania,
where Susan Lee made the call to sack her. I
spoke to probably 5 or 6 shadow cabinet members, some
of them very close to Lee. None of them were
aware of the decision, and two of them said, oh,
I don't think that's I don't think that's happening.
S2 (12:21):
But is that because Lee had waited so long that
it just looked like she wasn't going to act, and
she was going to let it slide, because I was
talking to other people who thought, and this is on
the conservative side as well, who thought that she should
have sacked her or given an ultimatum last Friday when
it happened. So I think once that didn't happen. Yeah,
it looked like nothing was going to move her. But
then it just became so increasingly embarrassing, I guess, to
(12:44):
have to have your frontbencher stand there.
S1 (12:47):
At a certain point as leader, it's sort of about
your self-respect as well, you know. Are you going to
take these, are you going to take these slings and
arrows from someone who's supposed to be basically an ally
on the frontbench? But I want to ask you guys,
isn't this just going to make these problems worse if
she's having trouble sort of asserting her authority as it is.
And we already know that there's like a rump of people.
Maybe it's bigger than a rump who, um, aren't particularly
(13:09):
loyal to her on the conservative side of the party.
Now that Jacinta Price has liberated from frontbench solidarity, she
can say whatever she wants on whatever she wants, can't she?
And she nobody can sanction her for anything.
S3 (13:21):
And this is the point I was going to make
in terms of having a second option. So the, the
obvious route was to let her go because she's breached
a clear convention. But Astar says there's been a week
of Jacinta Price defiance that didn't lead to her sacking.
If this kept going for a few more days, there
would have been some embarrassing media coverage for Leigh about
(13:42):
not taking the decisive step, but it could have blown over.
Over time, it would have been tricky to continue to
deal with Jacinta Price, but Sussan Ley doesn't deal with
Jacinta Price much anyway, even though she's in the shadow ministry.
And what what allowing her to stay in would have
avoided is this sense now that there is chaos in
Susan Leigh's ranks? Yes, she looks decisive. Yes, she's put
(14:02):
her foot down. But this will fuel grievance among Jacinta
Price's right wing supporters in the branches. It will fuel
frustration in the conservative press. Tony Abbott and his supporters,
including Peta Credlin and others, will frame this as Sussan
Ley taking action against a kind of brave, uh, you know.
S2 (14:25):
It makes her martyr.
S3 (14:26):
Yeah, she turns into a martyr, which is something we
wrote today. And so, yes, it would have been slightly
embarrassing for Sussan Ley to keep Jacinta Price on, but
the flow on consequences of this are unpredictable. And if
there is a leadership coup down the track, I think
Wednesday night will be seen as kind of the first domino.
S1 (14:44):
Yes. I just want to quickly flash forward to next week,
when we're probably going to have a significant debate about
climate policy, emissions reduction policy that no doubt certain members
of the coalition will have a lot to say on,
even though the coalition position on climate policy isn't settled. Paul,
what are we expecting next week?
S3 (15:01):
Well, I think this might. The coalition hopes that this
will be a moment where they can actually turn attention
back onto the government's policies, because all we've spoken about
for two months is the coalition's quite esoteric debate about
net zero. Given they will not be in government any
time soon and will not need to implement their net
zero policy.
S1 (15:17):
And just to be clear, they are not officially signed
on to net zero by 2050. At this point in time,
they might be in a future point.
S3 (15:24):
They're doing a very thorough and, uh, fact based review,
which might take 9 to 12 months. So we'll we'll
learn late next year whether they're signed on to net zero. No,
I think we'll.
S1 (15:35):
Because we've got plenty of time to to clear all
this stuff up. Yeah.
S3 (15:38):
Uh, the government has its own very significant problems with
its green transition, and they they will be heavily debated
next week when Chris Bowen and the Prime Minister announce
their updated 2035 emissions targets. We currently have a 2030 target,
which the government is not on track to meet. There's
huge resistance in the regions towards the solar and wind
(16:00):
farms and transmission lines required to get this transition going.
Capital is drying up in the renewables sector, and we're
not building anywhere near as much as we need to
to hit these targets. There is still significant progress being
made and the government deserves credit for that. But electricity
bills are going up. We're not meeting emissions targets. State
governments are keeping coal plants online because there is a
(16:21):
view that we need more. And there are gas shortages.
There's a debate next week about whether the new target
should be at 60, 65, 70, 75% mark. We're likely
to see a range one figure at the lower end
of ambition, one at the higher end. But importantly, we're
also going to see six what they're describing as sector plans,
(16:42):
which will outline what for example um, the electricity sector.
So gas and coal companies need to do what the
farming sector will need to do and what households in
terms of electrification and the uptake of EVs, what all
the different groups of Australian society will need to do
at a, at an individual level to help hit these targets.
S1 (17:01):
Yeah. So we could see a bit of, um, political
argument about which sector needs to sort of bear the
load of emissions reduction for other parts of society. And
we're also going to have probably, we think the release
of this climate risk assessment by the Department of Climate Change,
energy and the environment and the water. So that's meant
to be pretty dire. You're hearing.
S3 (17:19):
Yeah. The word on that is that it's a very
grim report that the government's been sitting on for months,
which they're going to release the day or the day
two days before the 2035 target to kind of condition
the public to understand how serious the risk of not
doing anything about climate change is and how those those
climate risks will actually affect people at an individual level
(17:42):
and will also affect the government's budget through the requirement
to spend billions of dollars on emergency management. So we'll
see that in the middle of the week. And then
the 2035 target shortly after that. And then the Prime
Minister will fly off to, uh, a ten day trip, uh,
at the United Nations. And he's probably heading over to
London as well.
S1 (18:00):
Yeah. Where he may or may not get a meeting
with President Trump. And if he does, he'll probably know
about it five minutes before. Um, it seems to be
the case with President Trump. Guys, that's been a very
interesting discussion. And thank you very much for joining me.
S3 (18:16):
Thanks, Jack.
S2 (18:16):
Thanks.
S1 (18:23):
Today's episode was produced by Kai Wong with technical assistance
from Debbie Harrington. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills, and
Tom McKendrick is our head of audio. To listen to
our episodes as soon as they drop, follow Inside Politics
on Apple, Spotify or anywhere else you listen to your podcasts.
And to stay up to date with all the politics,
news and exclusives, visit The Age or The Sydney Morning
(18:45):
Herald website to support our journalism. Subscribe to us by
visiting the page or. Subscribe. I'm Jacqueline Maley. Thank you
for listening.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is inside politics. I'm Jacqueline Maley, it's Friday, September 12th.
Controversial Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa price was sacked from the
coalition frontbench this week. Price left opposition leader Sussan Ley
with very little choice after she refused to apologise for
comments that she made about the Indian community, and then
(00:24):
refused to publicly affirm her faith in Lee's leadership. Joining
me to discuss, we have our chief political correspondent, Paul Satchell,
as usual, and federal political correspondent Natassia Chrysanthos. We'll also
check in on the climate debate that is about to
hot up. Pun intended. Welcome, guys.
S2 (00:42):
Hey, Jack. Morning.
S1 (00:50):
Paul, we're now into our second week of talking about
the fallout from Senator Price's comments on Indian migrants. And
then on Wednesday evening this week, opposition leader Sussan Ley
finally acted and she sacked price from the coalition frontbench.
So what was the final straw? Why? What sort of
pushed her to act this week?
S3 (01:07):
Well, this has bubbled along. It didn't turn into a
kind of full blown crisis until Wednesday, a week before Wednesday.
Jacinta price gave an interview on the ABC, where she
raised the issue of Indian migrants in Australia.
S4 (01:22):
That there is a concern with the Indian community and
only because there's been large numbers and we can see
that reflected in the way that the community votes for
labor at the same time.
S3 (01:32):
She copped a lot of criticism for these comments. She
had to backtrack and make clear that Australia has a
non-discriminatory migration program. Sussan Ley and other senior liberals asked
her privately, and some said publicly that she must apologise.
She declined to do so. She dug in and said
that we need to have a debate about immigration and
she wouldn't be silenced. And then on Wednesday, she was
(01:53):
in Perth for a Liberal Party event and held an
impromptu press conference, a very short one, where she said
that she appreciated all the support she'd received from people
who are concerned about migration, and that she would not
be silenced on the issue. And a journalist who was
there asked her repeatedly as she was about to wrap
up the press conference, do you have confidence in your leader,
(02:15):
Sussan Ley? He asked her three times and each time
she said.
S4 (02:19):
Look again, those matters are for our party room.
S5 (02:23):
Full confidence in her leadership.
S4 (02:24):
Those matters are for our party room. My focus is
to go forward and to ensure that we're doing the
right thing by the Australian people, which is what we're
elected to do.
S5 (02:37):
Do you fully back her leadership?
S4 (02:38):
That is that is what my concerns are.
S3 (02:41):
This turned into quite a personal feud over the last
few days between Leigh and Price. Price's supporters insist she
wasn't actually trying to create a leadership crisis. She wasn't
trying to blow apart the party. There is no leadership
contest in the offing, but she felt personally offended by
the way Susan Leigh's key ally, Alex Hawke spoke to
(03:02):
her staff earlier in the week, and even though some
of her supporters believed she was getting closer to an apology,
that feud with Hawke, and by extension Leigh, caused her
to dig in and have a public argument, which led
to her effectively not endorsing her own leader, which for
Susan Lee's hand.
S6 (03:19):
Coalition Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa price has been sacked from the
shadow ministry after a week long storm over her Indian
migrant comments.
S7 (03:28):
Today, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa price critically failed to provide confidence
in my leadership of the Liberal Party. Confidence in the
leader is a requirement for serving in the shadow ministry.
A couple of hours ago, I spoke to the senator
(03:50):
and I advised her of my decision.
S1 (03:55):
Did Senator Price have any sort of strategy here? Task
do you think, when she called this press conference that
she didn't have to call and refused to apologize repeatedly.
Was she sort of directly issuing a challenge, do you think,
to Susan Lee's leadership?
S2 (04:09):
I think the particular position of Jacinta Price in the
Parliament and in the Liberal Party is very interesting. I
think she was under an immense amount of pressure from
her colleagues last week. But the unique thing about Senator
Price is that unlike almost all of her colleagues, her
kind of support and power doesn't come from within the
Parliamentary Liberal Party. Her support and power comes from this
(04:32):
huge social media following. She has this huge conservative base,
the kind of fundraising money she draws for the liberals,
and there were competing demands from those two groups of people.
She's also backed by people like Tony Abbott. Her colleagues
wanted her to back down and apologise. Her entire brand
and how she's built herself up to the point that
(04:52):
she has, is based on being unapologetic, is being outspoken,
is being defiant. So I it feels like it kind
of came to this sticking point where, you know, coalescing
to Lee and other liberal demands would would have compromised
her standing amongst her followers this whole time. While Liberal
MPs are on the television saying Senator Price should apologize,
(05:13):
Senate price should apologize, her supporters are flooding her social
media with support. They're emailing people like Alex Hawke, telling
him that he needs to, you know, butt out of
it and leave Jacinta to speak her truth. So I
think at the end of the day, she stuck with
the kind of political persona that speaks to that base
(05:34):
and that for her, she was never going to back
down and apologize. That's not what her political brand is
built upon.
S1 (05:41):
Yeah. Okay, Paul, this was obviously super messy for the liberals.
As we've just said, it went on for way too long.
Even Barnaby Joyce, who's not known for his public discretion,
said last week, I think, you know, you make mistakes
in politics, but you've just got to tidy them up
and square them away as quickly as possible. This was
kind of the opposite of that. It exposed a major
division in their ranks. That task has just alluded to.
(06:03):
Can you just tell our listeners what the sort of
who's on which side in along this fault line?
S3 (06:08):
Jacinta price has lost a lot of friends in the
last week on her side of the Liberal Party. Yeah.
S1 (06:12):
And her side being the sort of more conservative side.
S3 (06:15):
Her side being the right who see her as kind
of emblematic of the new direction of right wing populism. She, she, she,
more than any other liberal, speaks to, uh, a new
and emerging bloc of voters who prefer a more forthright
conservatism rather than a more stale, old school liberal version
of conservatism. This gets her into trouble in in various forums,
(06:39):
but this is what her base seeks. And they see
her as the icon of that movement. And so because
of that, you see people like Sarah Henderson, for example,
who's a right faction liberal senator who was ousted by
Sussan Ley in a reshuffle earlier this year, come out
and tie herself to Jacinta Price earlier this week, even
though that's, uh, going to get her into trouble in
(06:59):
the parliamentary party. Sarah Henderson sees political value in aligning
herself with price, even when price is feeling the heat.
Because even though it's quite clear that price made a
mistake when she made her first comments, and price admitted
that even though she didn't say sorry to the Indian community,
what this did was bring to life the issue of migration,
(07:20):
and it shifted the debate away from the actual facts
of what Jacinta Price said about who Indian Australians vote for,
and turned it into a broader debate on the values
around whether, as a movement, the liberals should support the
current migration program, or whether they should be more sharp
in their criticism of it and more forthright in their
(07:43):
emphasising of, you know, Western values and the supposed deterioration
in Australian society that what they call mass migration has caused.
And so, even though on the facts of what Jacinta
Price said, she was clearly incorrect. She brings to life
this kind of cleavage. And you see right wingers in
the party either reluctant to call out the argument she
(08:07):
made and merely criticizing her for her failure to back Lee,
but still pretty soft on calling out the substance of
what Jacinta Price was getting to.
S1 (08:19):
So for some people, even though the whole incident might
have been unfortunate, it did give license, I suppose, to
the coalition or to the Liberal Party to start talking
about so-called mass migration as an issue that voters might
be concerned about.
S3 (08:30):
Yeah. And, um, as we talked about last week, this
is a this is a fundamental part of conservative politics
across the globe now. Yeah. And you see centre right
parties being eaten apart by populist parties to their right. Yeah.
And so this threat is not going away. One nation
just increased their support at the last election and now
have four senators. If they get one more, they'll be
(08:51):
bigger than the National Party. And you saw Tony Abbott
on Wednesday come out with a long Substack post, backing
in Jacinta Price and saying we need to find a
way as a country to talk about this. So migration
is not going away as an issue. But this saga
has has exposed the need for the Liberal Party to
try and find palatable language to speak to the public
(09:13):
about this issue, because there is an underlying sentiment that's
that's not going away.
S2 (09:17):
And I think they've also like the, um, lines coming
from like Lee and people like Alex Hawke, especially this week,
toned down the debate. Like I think you had people
buying into it more last week in the immediate aftermath
of the rallies. And then as this became a really
difficult problem for the liberals, and they were doing all
this proactive outreach with the Indian community, you had Susan
(09:38):
Lee and opposition immigration spokesman Paul Scarr and Julian Liza
go to Harris Park in Sydney to speak and get
photos with Indian leaders. And all their rhetoric was focused
on the benefits of migration. And you had Alex Hawke
come out earlier this week and give a very measured, um,
the most measured take I've seen a liberal politician give
(09:58):
on migration, where he kind of just tried to to
make that debate go to the side while they focused
on their reputation.
S8 (10:06):
Repairing my colleagues, party members, people across the country understand
that if we're going to have a debate about migration numbers,
that's fine. But we don't single out communities, and we
certainly don't target the Australian Indian community because they're excellent migrants.
They're our number one source country for migrants for the
last 20 years of all governments. And they've been really
great at integrating into Australia. So I think we've come
(10:28):
to that view that this is just.
S1 (10:30):
I don't think you can underplay really the reputational damage
that the Liberal Party has taken amongst Indian Australians, particularly
in Sydney. I would say, Paul, we've talked before on
this podcast about Susan Lee's authority and her authority over
the party. Basically, she won the leadership over Angus Taylor,
but only by a very slim majority. Jacinta price, of course,
(10:50):
sort of defected from the Nats to the libs in
order to back Angus Taylor. And that didn't work out.
But has this week sort of helped to cement Lee's
authority over the party? or has it had the opposite effect,
do you think?
S3 (11:03):
Yeah. To answer that, I'm going to contradict something I
wrote in Thursday's paper. So. And a bunch of other.
S1 (11:08):
Such is your prerogative as a as a journalist.
S3 (11:11):
Yeah. It's only it's a slight contradiction. I'm adding to
my argument.
S1 (11:15):
You're developing it. It's evolving.
S3 (11:17):
Exactly. Um, a bunch of people wrote and said overnight
that Susan Lee had no choice but to sack Jacinta Price. Um.
And I think that's right to some extent. Like, there
is a political convention that if you're in a shadow
cabinet and you, you don't support the leader or you're
not able to full throatedly say that you can no
longer serve in that shadow ministry. And so for Susan
Lee to maintain the air of authority and to create
(11:39):
a sense that there are standards in her new party post, Dutton,
who really ruled with an iron fist in some way,
she had to take that step. But having said that,
even among Jacinta Price's colleagues and other shadow cabinet ministers
on Wednesday afternoon, hours after the Jacinta Price press conference,
which they all watched, not many of them were expecting.
(12:00):
In fact, very few of them were expecting Susan Lee
to take this action. At 6:00, when we learned there
was a press conference happening half an hour later in Tasmania,
where Susan Lee made the call to sack her. I
spoke to probably 5 or 6 shadow cabinet members, some
of them very close to Lee. None of them were
aware of the decision, and two of them said, oh,
I don't think that's I don't think that's happening.
S2 (12:21):
But is that because Lee had waited so long that
it just looked like she wasn't going to act, and
she was going to let it slide, because I was
talking to other people who thought, and this is on
the conservative side as well, who thought that she should
have sacked her or given an ultimatum last Friday when
it happened. So I think once that didn't happen. Yeah,
it looked like nothing was going to move her. But
then it just became so increasingly embarrassing, I guess, to
(12:44):
have to have your frontbencher stand there.
S1 (12:47):
At a certain point as leader, it's sort of about
your self-respect as well, you know. Are you going to
take these, are you going to take these slings and
arrows from someone who's supposed to be basically an ally
on the frontbench? But I want to ask you guys,
isn't this just going to make these problems worse if
she's having trouble sort of asserting her authority as it is.
And we already know that there's like a rump of people.
Maybe it's bigger than a rump who, um, aren't particularly
(13:09):
loyal to her on the conservative side of the party.
Now that Jacinta Price has liberated from frontbench solidarity, she
can say whatever she wants on whatever she wants, can't she?
And she nobody can sanction her for anything.
S3 (13:21):
And this is the point I was going to make
in terms of having a second option. So the, the
obvious route was to let her go because she's breached
a clear convention. But Astar says there's been a week
of Jacinta Price defiance that didn't lead to her sacking.
If this kept going for a few more days, there
would have been some embarrassing media coverage for Leigh about
(13:42):
not taking the decisive step, but it could have blown over.
Over time, it would have been tricky to continue to
deal with Jacinta Price, but Sussan Ley doesn't deal with
Jacinta Price much anyway, even though she's in the shadow ministry.
And what what allowing her to stay in would have
avoided is this sense now that there is chaos in
Susan Leigh's ranks? Yes, she looks decisive. Yes, she's put
(14:02):
her foot down. But this will fuel grievance among Jacinta
Price's right wing supporters in the branches. It will fuel
frustration in the conservative press. Tony Abbott and his supporters,
including Peta Credlin and others, will frame this as Sussan
Ley taking action against a kind of brave, uh, you know.
S2 (14:25):
It makes her martyr.
S3 (14:26):
Yeah, she turns into a martyr, which is something we
wrote today. And so, yes, it would have been slightly
embarrassing for Sussan Ley to keep Jacinta Price on, but
the flow on consequences of this are unpredictable. And if
there is a leadership coup down the track, I think
Wednesday night will be seen as kind of the first domino.
S1 (14:44):
Yes. I just want to quickly flash forward to next week,
when we're probably going to have a significant debate about
climate policy, emissions reduction policy that no doubt certain members
of the coalition will have a lot to say on,
even though the coalition position on climate policy isn't settled. Paul,
what are we expecting next week?
S3 (15:01):
Well, I think this might. The coalition hopes that this
will be a moment where they can actually turn attention
back onto the government's policies, because all we've spoken about
for two months is the coalition's quite esoteric debate about
net zero. Given they will not be in government any
time soon and will not need to implement their net
zero policy.
S1 (15:17):
And just to be clear, they are not officially signed
on to net zero by 2050. At this point in time,
they might be in a future point.
S3 (15:24):
They're doing a very thorough and, uh, fact based review,
which might take 9 to 12 months. So we'll we'll
learn late next year whether they're signed on to net zero. No,
I think we'll.
S1 (15:35):
Because we've got plenty of time to to clear all
this stuff up. Yeah.
S3 (15:38):
Uh, the government has its own very significant problems with
its green transition, and they they will be heavily debated
next week when Chris Bowen and the Prime Minister announce
their updated 2035 emissions targets. We currently have a 2030 target,
which the government is not on track to meet. There's
huge resistance in the regions towards the solar and wind
(16:00):
farms and transmission lines required to get this transition going.
Capital is drying up in the renewables sector, and we're
not building anywhere near as much as we need to
to hit these targets. There is still significant progress being
made and the government deserves credit for that. But electricity
bills are going up. We're not meeting emissions targets. State
governments are keeping coal plants online because there is a
(16:21):
view that we need more. And there are gas shortages.
There's a debate next week about whether the new target
should be at 60, 65, 70, 75% mark. We're likely
to see a range one figure at the lower end
of ambition, one at the higher end. But importantly, we're
also going to see six what they're describing as sector plans,
(16:42):
which will outline what for example um, the electricity sector.
So gas and coal companies need to do what the
farming sector will need to do and what households in
terms of electrification and the uptake of EVs, what all
the different groups of Australian society will need to do
at a, at an individual level to help hit these targets.
S1 (17:01):
Yeah. So we could see a bit of, um, political
argument about which sector needs to sort of bear the
load of emissions reduction for other parts of society. And
we're also going to have probably, we think the release
of this climate risk assessment by the Department of Climate Change,
energy and the environment and the water. So that's meant
to be pretty dire. You're hearing.
S3 (17:19):
Yeah. The word on that is that it's a very
grim report that the government's been sitting on for months,
which they're going to release the day or the day
two days before the 2035 target to kind of condition
the public to understand how serious the risk of not
doing anything about climate change is and how those those
climate risks will actually affect people at an individual level
(17:42):
and will also affect the government's budget through the requirement
to spend billions of dollars on emergency management. So we'll
see that in the middle of the week. And then
the 2035 target shortly after that. And then the Prime
Minister will fly off to, uh, a ten day trip, uh,
at the United Nations. And he's probably heading over to
London as well.
S1 (18:00):
Yeah. Where he may or may not get a meeting
with President Trump. And if he does, he'll probably know
about it five minutes before. Um, it seems to be
the case with President Trump. Guys, that's been a very
interesting discussion. And thank you very much for joining me.
S3 (18:16):
Thanks, Jack.
S2 (18:16):
Thanks.
S1 (18:23):
Today's episode was produced by Kai Wong with technical assistance
from Debbie Harrington. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills, and
Tom McKendrick is our head of audio. To listen to
our episodes as soon as they drop, follow Inside Politics
on Apple, Spotify or anywhere else you listen to your podcasts.
And to stay up to date with all the politics,
news and exclusives, visit The Age or The Sydney Morning
(18:45):
Herald website to support our journalism. Subscribe to us by
visiting the page or. Subscribe. I'm Jacqueline Maley. Thank you
for listening.
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