Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has rejected comparisons to Donald Trump after announcing she wanted to “make Australia great again” at a campaign rally in Perth.
The outspoken Northern Territory senator joined Peter Dutton in the seat of Tangney in Perth’s inner suburbs as the Coalition looks to win back Labor’s “red wall” in the western state.
Standing next to the opposition leader during a speech to party supporters gathered at a bowling club on Saturday morning, Price said she wanted to “make Australia great again” – a political war cry popularised by the controversial US president.
“We have incredible candidates right around the country that I’m so proud to be able to stand beside and to ensure that we can make Australia great again, that we can bring Australia back to its former glory, that we can get Australia back on track,” she said.
Moments later, in a press conference, Price said she hadn’t “even realised” she made the comments, before adding she wanted to ensure Australia got “back on track”.
Price was appointed to lead a government efficiency unit if the Coalition government is elected after 3 May. The unit, which would sit within the prime minister’s department, has been compared to one led by US tech billionaire Elon Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, is taking a razor to US government departments.
The shadow Indigenous affairs minister said the unit was “not an ode to Donald Trump”.
“Let’s be very, very clear, media, you’re obsessed with Donald Trump. We’re not obsessed with Donald Trump. We’re actually obsessed with ensuring that we can improve the circumstances for Australians,” she said.
“I have always said that I would want to conduct an audit, which is what we have promised, which is a first port of call should [we] move in government now.”
While Dutton had already called last question at the press conference, Price continued to answers questions on how the Coalition would cut red and green tape and “reset the curriculum”.
“We’re not providing funds for ridiculous grants, like colonising breastfeeding, like treating oral care as a form of colonisation in this country,” Price said.
“I mean, this is ridiculous, and we want to sort this out, and we want to reset the curriculum, which is what our wonderful colleague Sarah Henderson will do in the education portfolio so that we’re not coming up with silly ideas around ideological things … and start actually focusing on real life.”
Dutton said Price would sit within cabinet under an elected Coalition government.
Asked what Price would change in school curriculums, she said she had heard from students who were “learning indoctrination as opposed to education”.
“They’re being forced to have to provide a welcome to country within their essays for crying out loud, and that if they don’t provide the appropriate form of welcome to country, acknowledgment of country, that they will be marked down,” she said.
“I mean, this is all ideological driven.”
During Dutton’s first week of the campaign, he was asked to clarify under which circumstances he would put conditions on federal education funding.
At a Sky News forum in his electorate of Dickson, Dutton was asked what the Coalition would do to combat “the woke agenda” in education.
“We do provide funding to the state governments and we can condition that funding,” Dutton said.
“We should be saying to the states … that we want our kids to be taught the curriculum … not be guided into some sort of an agenda that’s come out of universities.
“That’s a debate that we need to hear more from parents on. I think there is a silent majority on this issue right across the community.”
The education minister, Jason Clare, said of Price’s remarks: “The wheels are coming off Peter Dutton’s campaign and so is the mask.
“It’s now pretty clear that Peter Dutton’s campaign to be prime minister is just a cut and paste from the United States. First, he cut and paste their policies. Now he’s cutting and pasting their slogan.”
