Lberal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has unleashed on her own party, demanding an end to the damaging leaks tearing the Liberals apart.
In a fiery interview with 2GB’s Ben Fordham, Senator Price threw her full support behind Andrew Hastie following his shock decision to quit the frontbench so he could speak more freely on immigration.
‘I know what it’s like to feel like you don’t have the support of some of your colleagues,’ she said. ‘He is a man of principle – I fully back him.’
Price said she had personally spoken with Mr Hastie and agreed with his concerns about ‘mass migration’, calling for a respectful national debate on the issue.
But the outspoken Northern Territory senator then turned her fury on the Liberal leadership, warning the party risked looking like a ‘clown show’.
She urged colleagues to ‘get their act together’ after an internal review was leaked to the media that said Peter Dutton had blamed Mr Hastie for the Coalition’s election loss.
‘The leaking of a verbal submission to, quite frankly, lazy journalists is ridiculous,’ she said.
‘It’s another attempt at a pile-on on Andrew Hastie and also verballing our former leader, Peter Dutton, and something has to be done.
‘I’ve written to our leader about my concerns about backgrounding and about leaking to the media – it has to stop.’
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (pictured) said her party risked looking like a ‘clown show’ over leak
Price denied there was a plan to bring down Opposition Leader Sussan Ley (pictured)
The senator said the Liberal Party should be focused on ‘serving the Australian people instead of feeding leaks.’
‘Enough is enough. It’s just become juvenile, this kind of conduct, and I’m pretty over it.’
Despite growing speculation about tensions inside the opposition, Price dismissed talk of any move to oust Ley.
‘No, there isn’t a campaign to bring down Sussan Ley,’ she said.
‘There are those of us who want to get on with the job of serving the Australian people, and a campaign to bring down this wretched government, which is driving this country into the ground.’
Price was removed from the Coalition frontbench last month after refusing to apologise for remarks about Indian migration and declining to publicly support Ley.
