Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has resigned from the shadow ministry at the request of the opposition leader, who said the Liberal senator “failed the test of high standards” after refusing to apologise for comments she made about Indian Australians and failing to publicly back the opposition leader.
Price had hours earlier failed to publicly back her party leader, saying only that “those matters are for our party room” when asked if she had confidence in Sussan Ley’s leadership.
Price, who only joined the Liberal party room from the Nationals after the May federal election, had walked back last week’s “incorrect” statement that the federal government was allowing more migrants in from India to skew votes towards Labor.
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But she continued to ignore calls to apologise for the remarks, including at a short press conference called this afternoon to address the saga.
Price has since spoken with Ley, who asked her to step down from the shadow ministry to the backbench this evening.
“I have accepted the leader’s decision. And I reiterated my regret in not being clearer in my comments on the ABC last Wednesday,” Price said in a statement.
“This has been a disappointing episode for the Liberal Party. I will learn from it. I’m sure others will too.
“No individual is bigger than a party. And I’m sure events of the past week will ultimately make our party stronger.
“Although my time as the shadow minister for defence industry and defence personnel has been cut short, it has been an honour to serve in the shadow defence portfolio.”
Price was elevated to the shadow ministry after she defected from the Nationals to sit with the Liberal Party after the opposition’s historic loss at the federal election
She planned to run on the ticket with former shadow treasurer Angus Taylor, in his bid to contest the party leadership, but failed to submit herself after he lost.
She was handed the defence industry and defence personnel portfolio after Ley was elected as Liberal leader.
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Ley said it was a “privilege” to serve in her shadow ministry and a “requirement” to have confidence in her leadership.
“Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has failed the test of high standards that I have set for members of my shadow ministry,” she said.
Ley added that Price’s refusal to apologise for her “deeply hurtful” comments about Indian Australians contributed to her decision.
“The comments were wrong and should not have been made,” she said.
“Since that time, my team and I have been out listening to Australians of Indian heritage, and we have heard their response and the pain and hurt that these remarks provided for them.
“And despite being given the time and space to apologise, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price did not offer an apology.”
Ley did not say whether she had considered dumping Price from the Liberals.
“She’s warmly welcomed into the Liberal Party party room and we warmly welcome her membership of the Liberal Party,” she said.
Earlier today, Price had called a press conference to address the fallout from her comments about Indian migrants.
”My comments were certainly clumsy,” she said.
“The issue that’s of great concern, which I won’t be silenced on, is the issue of mass migration in our country, and that was the prime issue that I was talking about and continue to talk about.
“We should all be focused on that.”
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Price’s refusal to apologise has spurred infighting — as her colleagues and the prime minister called on her to say sorry — while Liberal MP Julian Leeser publicly apologised on her behalf.
It has also put pressure on Ley, who promised to rebuild the party’s relationships with multicultural communities and women and tried to minimise damage by touring Little India in Sydney and meeting with members of the community.
Price declined to explain how she would repair the party divide caused by her comments, instead saying, “Those matters in terms of our party are for our leadership.”
“I would love to be able to move forward from this, because there are issues we’ve been elected by the Australian people to stand up as the opposition to address the failures of the Albanese government, and that’s what I would love to encourage, certainly my colleagues, to be focused on moving forward,” she said.
Last week during an interview with the ABC, Price accused the federal government of allowing more migrants in from “particular countries over others” to skew votes and singled out the Indian community.
She later walked back her statement and said: “Australia maintains a longstanding and bipartisan non-discriminatory migration policy. Suggestions otherwise are a mistake.”
Her remark came days after anti-immigration rallies, some of which targeted Indian Australians, were held across the country on August 31.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, as well as Price’s colleagues including Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie and senior Liberal MP Alex Hawke, urged her to apologise for the harm caused by her incorrect remark.
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Leeser apologised to the Indian community on Price’s behalf during an event at a Hindi language school in his north-west Sydney electorate of Berowra over the weekend.
“I wanted just to say something, and it pains me to say it, but I feel I have to say it,” he said in a video posted to social media on Monday.
“My colleague, Jacinta Price, said something this week that I want to apologise unreservedly for.
“As my leader, Sussan Ley, said, she was wrong to say it, and she has walked back those remarks, and I am pleased that she has.”
Price also accused Hawke of “cowardly and inappropriate conduct” when he called her office to advise her to apologise, by berating her staff and threatening her position within the Liberal Party.
”If people want to talk about a so-called ‘woman problem’ in the Liberal Party, then it’s this: we don’t stand up for women when they are mistreated by our own colleagues,” she wrote in a fiery statement on Sunday.
Hawke denied the claims.
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