豪議員、インド系移民にヘイト発言で大炎上！同僚議員からの脅迫も発覚し騒然

Alex Hawke has initially denied making reference to Liberal senator Jane Hume in a heated phone conversation with one of Price’s staffers.

In a lengthy statement on social media yesterday, Price yesterday accused Hawke of “cowardly and inappropriate” behaviour.

The shadow defence industry minister accused him of saying that if she did not comply with “his requests”, she would “end up like another female member of the Coalition — who I won’t name”.

We now understand he was reportedly referring to Liberal senator Jane Hume, who said during the election campaign “Chinese spies” were volunteering for the Labor Party.

Hume was subsequently dumped from the frontbench in a post-election shadow cabinet reshuffle.

Speaking to Sky News, Hawke initially denied making those comments and has rejected the suggestion that they were gendered.

“No, I haven’t raised any gender issue in relation to this. I’ve raised the immigration issue and I’ve raised the race issue, and I can’t see how it has a gender perspective,” he says.

“Jane isn’t involved in this and I wouldn’t drag her into it. I’ve spoken to her this morning so she’s not involved with it.”

But when pressed on whether he brought up or inferred to Hume, Hawke says he won’t go into what he discussed.

“I’m not going to go into what I discussed back and forth. I’m not going to say,” he says.

“She said a lot of things and I said a lot of things and they’re not for publication.”

Shadow Industry Minister Alex Hawke has publicly called for Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price to apologise for comments she made about Indian migration to Australia.

On the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing last week, Price said the government was running a migration program targeting “Labor-leaning” Indian migrants.

Speaking to Sky News, Hawke says there is “real damage” in the community because of Price’s comments.

“The damage is ongoing. I think if an apology was offered early on and just a quick walk back, that would have helped. But there’s still time, and I think the community should hear from her,” Hawke says.

“I’ve heard from her, and I believe her. She didn’t mean these comments; she wasn’t being racist, but it came out that way.”

This week, Pacific leaders — as well as hundreds of officials, diplomats and journalists — will gather in the capital of Solomon Islands, Honiara, for the region’s most important political meeting.

It comes amid a flurry of gift-giving between China and Australia that has highlighted — on what one expert labelled an almost “comical” level — the tit-for-tat efforts by both countries to exert influence on the ground in Honiara ahead of the meeting.

Meanwhile, before the meeting, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will on Tuesday wing his way to another Pacific Island nation — Vanuatu — where he is widely expected to sign a landmark new pact between the two countries.

Read the full story from foreign affairs reporter Stephen Dziedzic in the link below.

The prime minister is expected to raise the prospect of corporate tax changes in future budgets at an annual address to big business this evening.

Off the back of the federal government’s economic reform roundtable, Anthony Albanese will tell a Business Council of Australia dinner that the summit made “valuable progress” on the issue of tax.

“We want to keep that dialogue going, leading into future budgets … looking at fair and affordable ways to incentivise greater business investment and capital deepening,” he is expected to say.

At the conclusion of last month’s roundtable, Treasurer Jim Chalmers also raised the need to improve “capital deepening” — increasing business investment in productivity-improving technologies — saying one option was amending the tax system.

But he said any changes would have to be affordable, in line with the government’s request at that summit for reform proposals to have a neutral or better impact on the budget.

Indigenous Australians Minister Malarndirri McCarthy has described an attack on a First Nations camp in Melbourne as “incredibly disturbing and reprehensible”.

A group of black-clad men allegedly attacked Camp Sovereignty last week following an anti-immigration rally in the CBD. Neo-Nazi leader Thomas Sewell and six others have been charged over the incident.

McCarthy told ABC News Breakfast she visited the site on Sunday.

“There was a lot of deep emotion, and there continues to be. But it was important to get a sense of spiritual peacefulness, and what people were really looking for in amidst what has been an absolutely horrific time for those people who were part of that whole event last week,” she said.

The minister said Australia is not a country “where we allow hate and division to really take over to the point where there is such extreme attacks on Australians”.

“This is not the Australia we want.”

The opposition has sought to repair relations with the Indian Australian community after Jacinta Nampijinpa Price claimed the government’s migration program was favouring Labor-leaning Indian migrants to boost its vote.

Price has since conceded the comments were a mistake but insists she has nothing to apologise for.

Liberal senator Maria Kovacic was with leader Sussan Ley yesterday as she met with community leaders in a bid to rebuild trust after the remarks.

“They were upset and they were hurt by the comments, and they didn’t consider the comments to be true,” Kovacic told ABC Radio National Breakfast. 

She said she had a “very open discussion” with the community.

“I think the most important thing is to be honest in your interactions and tell people that you acknowledge the commentary was hurtful, but also acknowledge that it was untrue,” she says.

“So I think that that is one of the most important things that we can do in order to repair, you know, the damage that has been done there.”

But asked if an apology was offered, Kovacic said she didn’t give one.

“It didn’t come up in a direct conversation with anyone that I spoke to,” she says, and stressed the ongoing message was that the remarks were “entirely inaccurate”.

There is open despair inside the Liberal Party about how to rebuild its standing in multicultural communities after Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s inflammatory comments about Indian migrants put the brakes on that already monumental task.

But the party’s fear goes beyond those comments alone. One Liberal MP told this column that some wanted the party to emulate One Nation, and that strategy would further drive them “off the cliff”.

The car is already hanging off on two wheels, and the final push is coming if the immigration debate continues to go off the rails.

Liberal senator Jane Hume says she was left in shock after her name was invoked in a threat from a senior colleague to Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.

In a lengthy statement on social media on Sunday, Price accused Alex Hawke of berating her staff and threatened if she did not comply with “his requests”, she would “end up like another female member of the Coalition — who I won’t name”.

Hume, who made an off-hand remark during the campaign claiming “Chinese spies” were volunteering for the Labor Party and was later demoted to the backbench, was the member Hawke referred to.

Speaking with Sky News, the now-backbencher said it was a “bit of a shock” to be named in the reports.

“I am still reeling a little bit … I am not sure entirely what this is all about and why my name needs to be included,” she said.

“I have just been focusing on the committee work that I need to do, and the policy work I’ve done.

“I think the most important thing here is that we move on from this. Jacinta has stepped back from her words that she said last week. She said that she was wrong, and that we move on.”

Hawke and Opposition Leader Sussan Ley haven’t been in touch with Hume, she said.

Hume sent a message to Price yesterday to ask if everything is alright. She also noted that if she had concerns, there had been a breach of parliamentary standards, Price could refer it to the new standards commission.

Barnaby Joyce says an apology would help the opposition “move on” from the remarks Jacinta Nampijinpa Price made that angered many Indian Australians.

The NT senator has been under pressure since she told the ABC last week that the government was favouring Labor-leaning Indian migrants to boost its vote.

Speaking with Seven this morning, Joyce said while he didn’t think Price “has it in for Indians,” she should “apologise and move on”.

“Look, you make mistakes all the time in politics. The best thing to do is apologise and move on. Get off it. Get on to another topic. It’s the nature of politics, you’re not going to be perfect on every statement you make. You make mistakes,” he says.

The Nationals backbencher said Price was trying to convey that migration was “out-of-control” and that wasn’t because of the people coming into the country but because Australia didn’t have the housing or infrastructure to “absorb them”.

Labor frontbencher Tanya Plibersek, who was also on the morning TV panel, said that if Price doesn’t apologise, then Opposition Leader Sussan Ley should make her.

Hello, and welcome to our federal politics live blog! I’m Courtney Gould and I’ll be guiding you through the morning.

The opposition remains in damage control with Australia’s Indian community after comments Jacinta Nampijinpa Price made during an interview with the ABC last week. Adding to the saga is the accusation that Price’s colleague, Alex Hawke, made a threat to her.

Elsewhere, the prime minister is gearing up for a trip to Solomon Islands for the beginning of the Pacific Islands Forum.

So grab a coffee (or five) and settle in.

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