‘Denigrate’: Ally breaks with Pauline Hanson over ‘primitive race’ comments

There are ways to push back against “the activist class” without the same “level of extremism”, Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price says while condemning One Nation leader Pauline Hanson for calling First Australians “the most primitive race on Earth”.

A conservative firebrand, the Indigenous senator has agreed with Senator Hanson more than she has disagreed during their time together in parliament.

But she said on Tuesday that Senator Hanson had crossed a line with her “wilful ignorance”, noting “there’s a hell of a lot more to Australia’s First People than what her remarks suggest”.

“And when you say ‘the most primitive race on Earth’ … I don’t care what excuses are being made – it was her tone and inflection throughout those remarks of the interview,” Senator Price told Sydney’s 2GB radio.

She agreed that “we need to teach history appropriately” and education about Indigenous Australians should not be “weaponised politically”.

“It’s right to call out when culture is being reinvented or romanticised and then plugged into our education system,” she said.

“But if we’re supposed to improve our country, we’ve got to do that together and not denigrate one another on the basis of race.”

Senator Price said politicians needed “to bring Australians together … in order to resolve our really tough issues”.

Appearing on a little-known podcast in September 2025, Senator Hanson said teaching First Nations histories to children was a “complete waste of time”.

She claimed a West Australian teacher had written to her claiming the state was “not teaching Australian history about civil rights” and it was “actually all leaning towards teaching about Aboriginal culture and language”.

“What the hell have they done in this country for supposedly 60,000 years?

“They’d never invented the wheel. There was nothing here. What are we actually holding up? A few, you know, rock paintings.

“Sorry, they’re the most primitive race on Earth, and we’re supposed to be holding up and saying what they’ve achieved. They’ve achieved nothing.”

Senator Hanson took to social media to respond to the outrage on Monday, posting a clip of the interview and asking people to “be the judge”.