When I read that Jacinta Nampijinpa Price had launched a crowdfunding campaign to help cover her potential personal bankruptcy, I thought that the article was satire.

Here is a politician who has built her brand on hard social rhetoric, telling First Nations communities to stop asking for handouts. In Senator Price's worldview, everyone is equally able to take responsibility without 'leaning on government' or society.

Is it not then hypocritical that, when faced with the consequences of her own decisions, Price has turned to the very thing she condemns among others: collective support?

For years, Price has insisted that any unaddressed struggle stems from 'dependence on welfare'. Now we are asked to donate our hard-earned money, even though she's salaried from our income tax? If her presence in the senate was in society's interests, I might be more sympathetic. However, all she wants is to get in to cut more social support. That is her voting record, and that is a mere summary of her consistent rhetoric. Her political career has been defined by the hardline rejection of communal obligation.

Now, when the financial pressures are hers, the script flips. Price is asking everyday Australians to donate to keep her afloat. The act itself exposes a truth she has long denied: no one survives alone.

Everyone, whether a senator or a struggling family in Alice Springs, relies at some point on the support of others. Solidarity is not weakness; it is how communities endure. But Price cannot have it both ways. She cannot berate vulnerable First Nations families for seeking help, then pass the hat around when her own mismanagement catches up. To do so is to reveal that her political ideology was never about self-reliance, but about policing who is allowed to access compassion.

Crowdfunding may soften the sting of bankruptcy for Price, but it sharpens the question for the rest of us: what kind of society do we want? One where help is conditional — doled out only to those who echo her politics — or one where dignity means recognising that mutual aid is essential for social progress?

Whatever anyone thinks about her politics, Jacinta Price has benefited from the very community spirit she once scorned. In doing so, she has betrayed her own ideology.

If there is a lesson here, it is that hypocrisy collapses under the weight of reality, and that none of us — not even Senator Price — can thrive without the support of others. After all, it is only through others that she got elected, and those same people can take that privilege away.

Jesse J. Fleay is a Noongar writer and research specialist across major policy areas. His doctoral thesis explores a model for an Australian republic, along with calls to enact a Voice to Parliament for First Nations Australians.