ANDREW CARSWELL: Coalition paying a heavy Price for ‘stunts and sledges’

Delusion in politics is mistaking the loudest voices for the majority view.

It is believing that a chorus of opinion in your tight-knit political circle equals broad consensus. The folly of thinking the supportive rants in your Facebook comments somehow represent the collective will.

The echo-lective.

According to her faithful followers, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price is courage personified. A fearless fighter who isn’t afraid to tear up political correctness in the valiant pursuit of commonsense. A unifying pro-Australia leader unbound by tradition and protocol.

Even a future prime minister.

She could be all those things.

She could also be an author of division. A self-promoter who weaponises political battles to boost her own profile. A ranter whose political smarts have a long way to catch up to her ambition. A thorn in the side of a Coalition still struggling to regain legitimacy in the eyes of a sceptical public.

You be the judge.

A smidge from column A, and a smidge from column B, perhaps.

The truth, as always, may sit somewhere in the middle. Or did.

Because throughout the past week, the warning signs that denote the latter grouping are flashing red.

Her faithful supporters have no doubt only deepened their deification of Senator Price. They watched her stride into the Senate draped in the Australian flag, preaching up a storm in defence of the banner and all things ‘Straya. They watched her front their ABC, calling a spade a shovel on immigration. Cue the Facebook likes and shares.

But her detractors have also hardened in their distaste. They derided the flag stunt as a cheap provocation designed to bait her political rivals and get her on TV, and slammed her immigration rhetoric as racist and deeply problematic for a Coalition that desperately needs to broaden its appeal and embrace minorities.

And those detractors are growing in number. The eyes are being descaled.

Through her own carelessness and self-focus, Senator Price has once again shown the risks of treating politics as merely a stage for stunts and sledges. The past seven days have laid bare the dangers of playing with fire, of constantly wielding division as a weapon, and of mistaking the megaphone of a noisy minority for the voice of a nation.

Perhaps we should have seen it coming. Many did.

In the middle of the 2025 election campaign, Senator Price reached for Donald Trump’s signature slogan and declared her goal was to “Make Australia Great Again”. For some it was a harmless throwaway line to whip up the base. For others it was the politics of division dressed up as patriotism that always proves poisonous for the mainstream.

Perhaps we were lulled into trust by a Senator who claimed to fight division by opposing the Voice. Only for her to prove that division was in fact her true stock-in-trade.

The line between passion and pain-in-the-arse is awfully thin.

And that is the real tragedy here, because Senator Price’s woeful week wasn’t merely an act of self-harm.

Because the Coalition was finally having a decent week in Parliament.

That’s not easy to achieve when your party room could squeeze into the tray of a Ford Ranger. Yet here they were, setting the agenda, forcing the Government to change its plans and agree to an amendment to get 20,000 home care packages for older Australians out the door.

It was an impeccably executed campaign, driven by Senator Anne Ruston. She pushed to get a Senate inquiry, lined up more than 130 submissions, pushed the issue hard through the media, and then leveraged the aged care legislation to secure change.

This victory came on the heels of another success: the Coalition pressing the Albanese Government to once again rewrite legislation to make it easier to lock up dangerous criminals in preparation for deportation.

Genuine outcomes for Australians.

A very good week.

Until Senator Price.

Until the Senate flag stunt that stole the spotlight from material victories. Until the denigration of Indian Australians that turned progress into backlash. Until the refusal to apologise that left colleagues shaking their heads. Backed into a corner by her own actions, but yet ever desperate to push the blame onto others.

Momentum is everything in politics. And in a matter of days, the Coalition wasn’t just back at ground floor. It was in the basement.

Perhaps the reality is clearer now. More column B than column A. It makes more sense when you step back and view the carnage.

If people, inside and outside the Coalition, truly believe Senator Price, with her divisive brand of politics, is the answer to the party’s woes, then they’d better get comfortable. Pull up a chair, settle in, put your feet up and enjoy Opposition.

They’ll be there a while.

If the last election confirmed anything, it’s that Australians are awfully weary of this combative, Trumpian style of politics. Of divisive politicians who use their platform to push their own agenda. Of leaders focussed on the wrong issues. Of warriors who prefer to fight culture wars than deliver genuine outcomes for Australians.

Weary of the deluded.