Jacinta Nampijinpa Price made headlines on Saturday night when she clashed with Sarah Ferguson after the ABC host asked her if she was the reason the Coalition lost.

The Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians grew so frustrated with the line of questioning after the Opposition’s electoral drubbing she even exclaimed at one point: ‘Oh, my goodness!’

But it was a little-noticed allegation she made towards the end of the interview which has raised eyebrows. 

Senator Price spoke passionately about how in Lingiari in the Northern Territory ‘Aboriginal people are going to continue to be marginalised’.

She claimed the gap between Indigenous Australians and the rest of the population would widen under Labor, before she laid down a gauntlet to the ABC about investigating alleged electoral interference.

‘If you want to take things seriously, perhaps send an investigative journalist out and watch what occurs in remote polling booths,’ she said. 

‘The AEC (Australian Electoral Commission) has been alerted to this over and over and do very little to deal with that situation.

‘I urge the ABC as a taxpayer-funded organisation, to go out to remote communities and see for yourself exactly what occurs because I’m deadly serious about the situation.’

A spokeswoman for the AEC said ‘no complaint’ had been made.

‘We cannot speak to allegations without any detail,’ the spokeswoman added. 

This publication also approached Senator Price’s office to ask for more details regarding her claim.

As Crikey pointed out, her comments echo similar claims she made after the Voice to Parliament was defeated in October 2023.  

‘I think we probably need to look at the way the AEC, the (Northern Territory Electoral Commission), conduct themselves when it comes to remote polling at elections, at referendums,’ Senator Price said at the time.

‘There is a lot that goes on in remote communities that the rest of Australia doesn’t get to see. 

‘If we had cameras in those remote communities, at those polling booths, Australia would see what goes on within those communities. There’s a lot of manipulation.’

The AEC rejected these claims at the time.

Infamously, claims of election interference were also made by Donald Trump following his loss to Joe Biden in 2020.

That’s ironic – as that was what Senator Price was being asked about on Saturday night. 

‘With your embrace of Donald Trump, Make Australia Great Again, are you part of that loss?’, ABC host Sarah Ferguson asked her, rather bluntly.

A seething Senator Price, who was surrounded by four stern-looking men including her husband, Colin Lillie, immediately blamed Labor for capitalising on her mistake.

‘If you swing enough mud in an election, it sticks,’ she responded. 

‘We did see a Prime Minister who absolutely mislead the Australian people all the way through and was rarely called out for his conduct. I think it is deceitful.’

Ferguson and Senator Price then proceeded to talk over one another in a heated exchange, before the ABC host pleaded: ‘Let’s just talk about this sensibly, Jacinta.’

Price insisted Trump did not own the copyright on making things great again.   

‘Can I just say, in terms of wanting this country to be great: Donald Trump doesn’t own those four words,’ Price said.

‘The media can go through your personal Facebook photos, and find a picture that was taken, in jest, at Christmas time, and then smear you with it, that is the problem.’

She is, of course, referring to a picture of her wearing a MAGA hat alongside a man in a MAGA Santa hat, which emerged after her ‘Make Australia Great Again’ gaffe.

She made the gaffe at a bowling club in Perth on April 12, just as the Coalition was trying to distance itself from the American leader in the wake of his imposition of tariffs on Australia.