>
Coalition senator Jacinta Price has urged Peter FitzSimons to release the tape of their phone interview in which she claims he was aggressive towards her.
The new senator for the Northern Territory wants the public to make up their own minds about her phone call with the left-wing author for a Sun-Herald article at the weekend.
In a Facebook post after the article about the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, Senator Price alleged FitzSimons ‘accused me of giving racists a voice but that wasn’t printed.’
Coalition senator Jacinta Price (left) has accused author Peter FitzSimons of being rude and aggressive to her. He denies the claims
FitzSimons (right with wife Lisa Wilkinson) is a prominent left-wing commentator and a leading figure in the campaign to ditch the monarchy
FitzSimons vehemently denies this.
Senator Price later deleted the post after receiving text messages from FitzSimons claiming her post was defamatory – but later told The Australian she felt FitzSimons was ‘aggressive… condescending and rude’ during their chat.
‘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 told the newspaper.
‘He loses the point completely.’
The Walpiri woman is opposed to the Voice, a group of Aboriginal people that would advise parliament.
She believes it ‘peddles racial stereotypes of Indigenous Australians being an homogenous separate entity’.
FitzSimons strongly denied being aggressive and told Senator Price in one text ‘every word [was] recorded, as I advised you’.
Speaking to Daily Mail Australia on Tuesday, Senator Price urged FitzSimons to release the recording of their converation.
‘I’m quite happy for him to release the recordings if that will just settle things,’ she said.
‘It’s been a bit of a drain and there’s obviously a lot of more important issues that I want to focus on and get to work on as a new senator. It’s been a not-so-welcome distraction.
‘My idea of more respectful and effective journalism is to have conversations about issues without having the opinions of a journalist imposed upon you and being made to feel as though you’re somehow wrong or incorrect.
Jacinta Price (pictured), a first term NT Senator, is against an Indigenous Voice to Parliament and changing the date of Australia Day from January 26
Senator Price said it is wrong for journalists or commentators to be surprised when an Aboriginal person speaks out against the Voice to Parliament.
‘There has been a racial stereotype created around how Aboriginal Australians think and act and behave and we don’t generalise in that way about white Australians, or Italian Australians or Asia Australians,’ she said.
‘So why should we continually have that way of thinking imposed upon us as Indigenous Australians? Again it is a racial stereotype and I won’t have a bar of it.’
Senator Price said people need to be more accepting of diverse views within the Aboriginal community.
‘The narrative that we are a country of oppressed people and oppressors – we’ve got to get away from that. It’s not helpful, it’s not constructive,’ she said.
‘It provides for a very narrow view of how we are as a diverse bunch of Australians and we’ve got to take it back to basics of what it means to be human.’
Senator Price said the Voice the Parliament is a bad idea because it will entrench the idea that Aboriginal people are all victims.
‘Enshrining it in the Constitution suggests that as a race we’re forever going to be in need of special measures and as a race what somehow defines us is being marginalised,’ she said.
Senator Price alleged author Peter FitzSimons (pictured with wife and The Project host Lisa Wilkinson) was ‘aggressive… condescending and rude’. He denied the claims
‘But it’s not race that determines our marginalisation – there are those of us of Indigenous heritage who are doing really well, we’re fine and have managed to take advantage of the modern world to live successful lives.’
In his text message to Senator Price, FitzSimons reportedly wrote: ‘You have told The Australian we shouted at each other?
‘Every word recorded, as I advised you. I urge you to withdraw these defamatory accusations, as you know it is nonsense…
‘Not a single raised voice on either side, let alone shouting. This is a serious matter and you have defamed me.’
Senator Price later deleted her Facebook post.
FitzSimons said he only confronted Senator Price over ‘mistruths’ and that he gave her views a fair airing his column.
‘What I sought to do was have her correct the record on the nature of our interview, which she partially did by deleting the post, and acknowledging to me I was not shouting…
‘As to suggestions of bullying… simply not true. The senator posted a complete and demonstrable untruth. I called her out on it, and she took down the post,’ he said.
FitzSimons has not responded to Price’s challenge.