By Stephen Gibbs for Daily Mail Australia
04:36 12 Jun 2023, updated 04:41 12 Jun 2023
- Lisa Wilkinson has been slammed by Jacinta Price
- Husband Peter FitzSimons is not talking to Stan Grant
- Wilkinson has been accused of virtue signalling
- FitzSimons has been accused of white privilege
Media power couple Lisa Wilkinson and Peter FitzSimons might yearn to unite black and white Australians – but they are not even on speaking terms with two of the nation’s most significant Indigenous figures.
Stan Grant and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price are prominent and polarising Indigenous voices with contrasting views on how to improve the lives of First Nations people.
Grant, who stood down last month as host of Q+A amid a torrent of racist abuse, supports the Voice to Parliament. Price, the shadow Indigenous affairs minister, is against it.
What they have in common is that neither will be enjoying the hospitality of Wilkinson and FitzSimons at their multimillion-dollar home overlooking Sydney Harbour anytime soon.
The former The Project host and her author husband have long positioned themselves as champions of racial reconciliation, famously shifting their exclusive Australia Day barbecue from January 26.
But while comfortably ensconced in their Cremorne mansion with its pool and tennis court, Wilkinson has been accused of virtue signalling and FitzSimons of embodying white privilege.
FitzSimons and Grant fell out two years ago when the ABC journalist mocked the Sydney Morning Herald columnist and his wife for their Australia Day gatherings, which he called a ‘woke leftie love-in’.
FitzSimons and Price had a public feud last August after he claimed she held positions ‘completely at odds’ with much of the Indigenous community.
Now Wilkinson has earned Price’s ire after the one-time magazine editor compared her preselection as an Aboriginal candidate for the Senate to a white family ‘hiring a black cleaner’.
Wilkinson was recorded struggling to pronounce Price’s full name during a five-hour pre-record for The Project with Brittany Higgins, her partner David Sharaz and Channel Ten producer Angus Llewellyn in January 2021.
That meeting occurred weeks before Higgins claimed in an interview with Wilkinson that she had been raped in Parliament House by fellow political staffer Bruce Lehrmann in 2019.
Lehrmann, who has always denied that allegation, faced a trial which was aborted due to juror misconduct in October last year.
During the January 2021 meeting, Wilkinson and Sharaz named politicians who might add weight to Higgins’s accusations and highlight a perceived culture of misogyny within the federal Coalition.
‘[The Liberal Party] has preselected over 20 new and wonderfully diverse and strong female candidates like, and what’s her name, Nam… Nampinjumba?’ Wilkinson said in the audio clip obtained by Daily Mail Australia.
‘She’s an Indigenous woman.’
Sharaz then laughed and said: ‘She clearly got in. Clearly it was a safe seat.’
Wilkinson: ‘That’s the thing, it was – as soon as I looked at it I thought, “Oh, you’re joking”.’
Sharaz: ‘They’ve been preselected in unwinnable seats.’
Llewellyn then joked about the Coalition preselecting Price, saying ‘See, we know brown people’, before Sharaz joined in.
‘It’s like, “I’m not racist, I have a black friend,”‘ he said. ‘It’s that argument.’
Llewellyn: ‘I don’t have his number, though.’
Wilkinson: ‘And our cleaner’s black.’
Llewellyn: ‘I don’t have his number, but he knows me.’
Price told 2GB presenter Ben Fordham on Friday she deserved an apology for the ‘derogatory’ comments from Wilkinson, who she accused of virtue signalling.
‘What would you expect from individuals that belong to the woke class?’ she said.
‘I mean, Channel Ten – The Project – haver never been in interested in certainly the view of a conservative indigenous woman from outback Australia.
‘You only have to virtue signal to appear as though you care for Indigenous Australians.’
Late on Friday, Wilkinson apologised to Price in a statement issued by Channel Ten.
‘I sincerely apologise to Senator Price for any offence I may have caused. The conversation was private and not intended to appear as it has out of context and in the public arena,’ Wilkinson said.
‘The tenor of our conversation was about the need for real, genuine change within the Liberal Party, and that too many of their female pre-selections were in unwinnable positions.’
The local executive vice president of Ten’s owner Paramount, Beverley McGarvey, also called Price to apologise.
Price had told Fordham she was concerned about the ‘real issues’ that confront Aboriginal Australians ‘who live in the remote communities that individuals like Lisa Wilkinson in her ivory tower are far, far removed from’.
Asked which section of the recorded chat she found most offensive, Price said ‘I think the part where it was suggested that I’m some sort of diversity pick’.
‘We’ve got a pretty bloody good track record on preselecting individuals on merit who so happen to be Indigenous people and people of mixed background,’ she said.
‘It is the woke who believe in the diversity pick and quotas, certainly not those of us on the other side of politics.’
Price said she was not surprised by Wilkinson’s remarks, ‘especially after the interview I had with Lisa’s husband last year, the contempt he had for me during that interview’.
FitzSimons interviewed Price for the Sun-Herald last August when she was a newly elected Country Liberal Party senator for the Northern Territory.
In the resultant piece published in question-and-answer format FitzSimons told Price he was gobsmacked she did not support changing Australia Day from the date the First Fleet arrived in 1788.
FitzSimons and Price could hardly come from more disparate backgrounds.
He was raised at Peats Ridge on the New South Wales Central Coast, boarded in Sydney at Knox College and attended Sydney University.
She was born in Darwin to a Warlpiri mother and Anglo-Celtic father, grew up in Alice Springs and had her first child at 17.
Price is a survivor of domestic violence and politically conservative. Fitzsimons is an avowed leftie who has been happily married to Wilkinson for more than 30 years.
In their interview FitzSimons told Price she held positions ‘completely at odds with much of the Indigenous community – and Indigenous supporters in wider Australia like my white self’.
Price responded that many Aboriginal people were proud to be part of broader Australia and did not view themselves as victims of history.
‘My whole goal throughout is to show alternative narratives exist because I think it’s become a racial stereotype that Indigenous Australians are somehow homogeneous,’ she said.
Later, FitzSimons – who described himself as ‘about as white as they come’ – asked Price if she was ‘misusing the platform you have and are actually hurting Indigenous causes’.
Price subsequently alleged in a Facebook post FitzSimons was ‘aggressive… condescending and rude’ and that he shouted at her during their conversation.
She also claimed FitzSimons accused her of ‘giving racists a voice’ in the interview but that was not printed in the Sun-Herald piece.
FitzSimons strenuously denied all Price’s claims, saying they had a ‘friendly’ conversation and insisting he did not raise his voice at any point.
Price later revealed FitzSimons sent her a series of late night texts demanding she withdraw ‘nonsense’ claims he was ‘aggressive’ to her when they spoke.
In the texts FitzSimons reminded Price he had recorded their conversation and Price urged him to publicly release the tape which he did not do.
During the pair’s spat, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson defended Price and described FitzSimons as like other ‘white, privileged males’.
Price said at the time commentators should not assume all Aboriginal people think the same way, or be surprised that some did not support the Voice to Parliament.
‘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.
‘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.’