Jacinta Price, Peter FitzSimons: Feud erupts over Sun-Herald interview

Aboriginal senator Jacinta Price has accused author and journalist Peter FitzSimons of being ‘rude and aggressive’ to her during an interview.  

In a piece published on Sunday, Senator Price spoke to FitzSimons about her staunch opposition to the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament, which he strongly supports. 

In a social media post on Sunday, the Country Liberal Party senator wrote: ‘I don’t know if I’d do another interview with the bloke again. He accused me of giving racists a voice but that wasn’t printed.’ 

FitzSimons denied Senator Price’s characterisation of how the interview went and said her claims were ‘complete and utter … nonsense’. 

In the since-deleted post on Facebook, Senator Price claimed the interview with FitzSimons last Thursday started out well, but claimed that he became ‘aggressive… condescending and rude’ to her.

She said it ‘was like talking to a brick wall’ and that she felt ‘insulted’.

‘I’m not a wilting violet but he’s a very aggressive bloke, his interview style is very bloody aggressive, he doesn’t need to launch in,’ she said.

‘Accusing me of somehow giving power to racists because the issues I raise are confronting – he loses the point completely.

‘I said to him, “Get down from the bloody ivory tower and come out to one of my communities”.’

FitzSimons strongly refuted Senator Price’s claims. The interview was a ‘professional exchange’, he said. 

‘Every single word recorded, as I told her,’ FitzSimons told The Australian‘s Media Diary.

He said the interview was conducted without a raised voice and that Senator Price approved the final story.

‘This is not remotely a matter of interpretation. Friendly interview, nice text exchange at its conclusion,’ he said. 

Peter FitzSimons (right) is pictured with his wife, television presenter Lisa Wilkinson, in 2016

Senator Price said she was shocked by FitzSimons’ stance on Indigenous issues.

‘I was really taken aback and I was exhausted by the energy it took having to defend myself,’ she said. 

‘I was made to feel as though what I was trying to do is wrong and my voice is not as legitimate as those who purport to suffer from 250 years of colonisation.’

Daily Mail Australia contacted both Senator Price and FitzSimons for comment. 

In the interview published in Nine newspapers, Senator Price has accused supporters of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament of buying into ‘racial stereotypes’.

She had also used her maiden speech to parliament on July 27 to rail against the concept of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament and a proposed referendum to enshrine it in the constitution. 

Senator Price told FitzSimons the broad bipartisan support for the Voice is a result of too many Australians ‘drinking the Kool-Aid’ and not listening to a silent majority of Aboriginals. 

Instead of being a unifying voice to promote Indigenous issues, she claimed it would be just another layer of bureaucracy that would divide her people from white Australia and assume they would always be ‘victims’.

Senator Price also defended another bitter critic of the Voice, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, as someone who ‘cares deeply for Indigenous Australians’.

This came after Senator Hanson stormed out of the upper house rather than sit through an acknowledgement to country. 

Senator Price said travelling around the world with her teacher parents  – an Indigenous mother and white father – when she was 13 opened her eyes ‘to how we’re all human’.

Senator Price said she became politically active when she observed ‘narratives about indigenous Australians’ she didn’t agree with

She said she was too busy for politics when she was young as she had her first baby when she 17 and two more by the time she was 21.

But she later became politically active when she observed ‘narratives about Indigenous Australians’ she didn’t agree with.

Though she acknowledged the difficulties faced by many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, she believed an Indigenous Voice to Parliament was not needed.

‘Colonisation and subsequent laws had a lot to do with some of the critical issues. I’m not denying that,’ she told FitzSimons.

‘But I know full well, that another part of it is we accept violence within our culture. It’s a patriarchal culture and meantime, the Voice to Parliament like this one, it doesn’t actually detail how it’s supposed to help.’

Senator Price defended One Nation leader Pauline Hanson (pictured) saying she is not racist and in fact ‘cares deeply for Indigenous Australians’

The former deputy mayor of Alice Springs said it ‘feels like just another bureaucracy’ and she didn’t know why it needed to be enshrined in Australia’s Constitution.

In her maiden speech to Parliament on July 27, she outlined her opposition to an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. 

‘Perhaps a word of advice, since that is what you are seeking: listen to everyone, not just those who support your virtue-signalling agenda but also those you contradict,’ she said. 

‘I personally have had more than my fill of being symbolically recognised.’ 

FitzSimons said he was astonished she supported keeping Australia Day on January 26, the anniversary of white settlement. 

Senator Price replied that for her, ‘it’s not about the impact of colonisation on us black fellas. It’s about how we’ve since come together as people from all different backgrounds’.

She said that you could pick any day of the year where you’d find that something horrible happened on that day in Australian history. 

FitzSimons also put it to Senator Price that in many people’s view it is ‘time to recognise the shocking past… and do everything possible to fix the future’, but she has been ‘a very prominent voice howling us down’.

Senator Price said that view was just a narrative created to suggest most Aboriginal people felt that way. 

She said many indigenous people didn’t view themselves as victims of history on Australia Day, instead seeing themselves ‘as proud Australians’. 

FitzSimons asked Senator Price if it ever bothered her that among her supporters were ‘people with little to no respect for the Aboriginal people’ such as Pauline Hanson. 

She replied that she didn’t think Senator Hanson was racist and in fact ‘cares deeply for Indigenous Australians’ and her concern was about ‘taking more practical approaches towards solving some of our problems’. 

Senator Price added that it was a pity that more concerned Indigenous Australians didn’t speak up about domestic violence, child sexual abuse, and alcoholism in their communities. 

‘They’re more concerned about how the wider public view them as opposed to actually solving some of these issues, so they remain silent,’ she said. 

Senator Price, who is one of 11 Indigenous parliamentarians, said the the reason First Nations people ‘have failed so much’ was because they were always regarded as a separate entity. 

She said she ‘can’t support this idea… We are all just Australian citizens, and we should be treated as such’.

A Voice to Parliament, if it was enshrined in the constitution would mean indigenous people would be see as victims forever when they should instead stand on their ‘own two bloody feet’, Senator Price said. 

She claimed having a ‘bureaucracy based on race’ placed into the constitution would drive a wedge between black and white Australia and that she has no desire for the constitution to treat her differently.

Peter FitzSimons (pictured right, with his wife Lisa Wilkinson) had a fiery debate with Aboriginal senator Jacinta Price over an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, which he supports and she opposes