Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has partly blamed media "mud slinging" for the Coalition's thumping election loss.
Speaking to the ABC on Saturday evening, Senator Price was asked if her use of the phrase "make Australia great again" and the appearance of a photograph of her wearing a 'MAGA' hat had damaged the Coalition's chances.
The NT Senator said was critical of media trawling through her social media to use a photo taken "in jest" to "smear" her, and noted that Donald Trump "doesn't own those four words".
"Take this seriously. I'm deadly serious about this issue. And what I'm deadly serious about is that here in Lingiari, Aboriginal people are going to continue to be marginalised. The gap is going to get wider because we take an ideological approach to all of these issues," she told the ABC.
"Labor will continue to do that. They will invest money in organisations and not listen to the little people on the ground. But I will continue to fight for those people who actually want to be heard, those forgotten people."
Senator Price suggested untoward behaviour had gone on at remote polling booths this election.
"Send an investigative journalist out and watch what occurs in remote polling booths. The AEC 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," she said.
"If you think things are bad right now in terms of the cost of living, it's only going to get worse going forward."
Senator Price said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had slung "mud" this campaign, but also said the Coalition should have released their policies sooner.
"If you sling enough mud in a campaign, it sticks, and if you mislead the Australian people over and over again, that's what the Prime Minister has done, that's what sticks," she said.
"This doesn't mean we give up or we back down. We'll just go harder and we will learn from the mistakes we've made in terms of our campaign, losing Peter Dutton is a huge loss, and the Liberal Party will determine what the leadership looks like for their party going forward, but we will absolutely learn from what's occurred during this campaign," she said.
"I would have to say that certainly we could have provided our policies sooner to the Australian people to have a better understanding of what we wanted to do to support Australians better than what the Albanese government has done…
"We will learn more as we go forward as to the mistakes we have made, and own those mistakes and make sure that we do not repeat them going forward. Because ultimately, it's how Australia is going to go going forward that's our greatest concern."
The NT Senator said local crime was a major issue across the Territory, and had played a part in the Country Liberals bucking the trend in Solomon, where a 7.1 per cent swing to the CLP sees Labor's sitting member, Luke Gosling, leading 51.3 to 48.7 per cent with a third of the votes counted.
However, in the NT seat of Lingiari, held by Labor's Marion Scrymgour, a 9.4 per cent swing to the ALP saw them retain the seat with 61 per cent of the two-party preferred vote.
The Indigenous MP, who was the first Indigenous Deputy Chief Minister of the NT, was first elected to the federal seat of Lingiari in 2022. She has links to the Tiwi Islands through her mother, and Central Australia through her father.
