Updated May 21, 2026 — 4:30pm,first published 4:28pmLiberal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price told a podcaster she agreed that the country should stop being flooded with “hundreds of thousands of Indians, Chinese, Africans, Middle Easterns, and Gazans”, but said Australians could not be defined based on their ethnic background.The senator appeared in an hour-long interview on the 2 Worlds Collide podcast, published on Thursday, which is hosted by combat veteran Sam Bamford and regularly features outspoken or right-wing guests.Bamford raised the idea of a remigration program – an extremist concept for deporting non-white migrants – and later admitted he sounded “heaps racist” as he pushed Price on his complaints that people with Anglo-Celtic and European backgrounds were losing majority status in Australia.Price’s podcast interview is another indication of how Angus Taylor’s Coalition leadership is emboldening his MPs to re-engage with sensitive cultural debates on migration despite the backlash it might provoke in multicultural communities.The line of questioning revealed the tightrope that the Coalition is walking as it seeks to woo back voters from One Nation by muscling up to the minor party in its language on immigration and cultural values.The NT Senator, currently opposition spokeswomen for skills and training, disagreed that Australians could be defined by their ethnic heritage, given many people had mixed backgrounds.But she did not push back on Bamford’s complaints about an “influx” of migrant groups from India, the Middle East or Africa. She instead insisted upon the importance of Australian values, while conceding that “mass” migration was dampening Australia’s sense of community as people lived in enclaves.Shadow treasurer Tim Wilson on Wednesday refused to join Taylor and other colleagues, including Price, in using the term “mass migration” to describe immigration levels that surged after the pandemic and have plateaued above average.Taylor started deploying the phrase, used often in right-wing circles, two weeks ago, on the night the Liberals lost the seat of Farrer to One Nation. Last Thursday, he delivered a budget reply speech that promised to tie migration to housing completions, and bar non-citizens from welfare programs.Multicultural leaders said the plan was making immigrants feel less safe and damaging social cohesion.In Thursday’s podcast, Bamford described changing demographics in Australia and referenced the controversial idea of a “remigrating program”.He told Price: “I’m not coming in here and saying I want to deport every single person that isn’t the makeup of you and I, that built this nation.“But our government isn’t having the discussion of ‘Australia is for Australians’. We can’t keep flooding us with hundreds of thousands of Indians, Chinese, Africans, Middle Easterns, and Gazans, for that matter, with the refugee status It’s like, we got to stop this guys,” he said to Price.“What’s your thoughts on all that?”“Look, absolutely. And I totally agree,” Price replied. “I mean, if people want to come to Australia and become Australians, they have to adopt our values. Full stop. There’s no two ways about it.”Further into the Thursday’s interview, however, Price rejected Bamford’s question about whether Australians could be defined by their ethnicity. “There’s just heaps of Indians, there’s heaps of Africans, there’s heaps of Middle Easterns and we never had that influx before,” he said.“And then what is an Australian? I think it’s an Anglo-Celtic, European or First Nation person. That’s what I think.”Price said: “Sure. Look, I will say that I don’t know that you can define it precisely ethnic, ethnically, like that, because I think we’re far more mixed up than that.“I look at my own family in that my children have got, you know, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, German, Indian, Malay, Chinese, French, you know, they’ve got a grandmother on one side who’s Mauritian to white Australian grandfathers and an Aboriginal grandmother.“Fundamentally it comes down to our values… Our culture as Australians has always been about: I’ll stick by you. I’ll be your mate if you are going to stick by me, and be my mate, and we do the right thing by one another.”Price told the podcaster that she thought he was reflecting a feeling that there used to be “far more sense of community and that has broken down”.“And this is what happens when you import people on mass,” she said.“You are right, when you bring a hell of a lot more people in here than we can handle, then yeah – I don’t necessarily like the idea that community groups kind of have their own little enclaves, because I suppose it’s not what I grew up with in Australia.“I grew up with us all being part of one another’s lives, you know, regardless of ethnicity... I think it’s about striking that balance and getting that back ultimately.”Price was pushed off the frontbench by former opposition leader Sussan Ley last year after suggesting in an ABC interview that Indian migrants were being brought into the country to win votes.After being reinstated under Taylor, Price declared “I’m back baby” and said she was thrown under the bus by colleagues over the saga, for which she refused to apologise.Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.From our partners