By MICHAEL SLOVANOS
COALITION Leader Sussan Ley did at least two of the things the “progressive” media at the National Press Club approved of – a brief “acknowledgement of country” and a commitment to “reducing emissions”.
But the two obligatory statements sounded so fake one might be led to wonder whether she was actually mocking all the media representatives gathered there. Is there more to Sussan Ley than we know? Or is it just more political gaming?
Ley does deserve credit for her work record. She is not just another woke Liberal feminist out of university. She worked out of Thargominda as a bush pilot and also did some time in the woolsheds, cooking and rouseabouting. She also had to shoot hundreds of sheep in a serious downturn. She knows about hard work and the trials of Australian agriculture.
Ley also raised three children and from age 30 completed university degrees in tax law, economics and accounting. Like her British father she also worked as an intelligence officer. We might ask how much this makes her an “intelligence asset” and for whom, today?
In her speech Ley made her politically expedient “sensible centre”, Teal-tainted message clear: “As we seek to regain trust with voters across our great country, the task before me and my team is to lead a Liberal Party that respects modern Australia, reflects modern Australia and respects modern Australia,” said Ley as one of the leftie NSW Libs Julian Leeser, the outspoken Voice supporter, looked on with a hint of approval.
Did the media get the “modern Australia” message? Sure they did. “Modern” means progressive, left and centre-left, perhaps even “moderate” and certainly “Tealy”. But have Leeser, George Brandis and the backroom Liberal “wets” forgotten that more than 60% of Australians voted against the Voice that Leeser vocally supported?
Former Liberal MP Craig Kelly posted on X “We are doomed. We are a de-facto one party state with Labor and Labor-Lite, with no opposition in the Parliament.”
Former Attorney General (and senator) Brandis would not be impressed. Brandis is “pure” political establishment, which is probably why the powers-that-be rewarded him with the British High Commissioner job and probably why Rennick got dumped by the Queensland Liberal hatchet men.
Brandis is a political power player who hates people with opinions who rock the boat, like Rennick, who dared upset the Liberals’ big pharma pocket liners. Brandis also reacted very strangely when former Senator Rob Culleton started asking probing questions about the legality of High Court rules.
Brandis defended the High Court to the hilt, denying there was unconstitutional behaviour as alleged by Culleton, and saying it was simply a matter of a discrepancy in the rules.
So Kelly’s sumnation is accurate. Australian politics and media demands that a major party hold “respectable views”, which is any opinion to the left of “centre left” (their term, not ours). Conservative is barely tolerable in the mainsteam political and media mindset. Anything else is considered “extremism” except left wing extremism.
In this media/political mindset, right wing is noxious and “far right” is noxious and extremist. “Far right” is also another word for taboo in the mindset of dominant European media and politics. The European Union actively wages lawfare and dirty tricks against the nationalist parties of the so-called far right.
So now, if Ley and certain influential Liberal Party figures have their way, the Coalition will simply play the game of “Opposition”, making sure they play the school team debating game with “gotcha” questions in the gallery about quarterly GDP, unemployment figures or some minister’s expense card discrepancy.
The aim of the game is to “win back trust” of the public, they say. But did the 60% of Australians who rejected the Voice, the great project of the progressive left, all vote Labor just because Peter Dutton wasn’t “warm enough”?
Maybe the Liberals and Nationals might think a little deeper about how Labor wins control of a large majority of Lower House seats with just over a third of the vote. Did the word “gerrymandering” enter their minds? Or, God forbid, election rigging with migrant votes and dirty electoral rolls?
The new “Opposition” won’t argue the need for renewables, they will only argue why the government couldn’t keep electricity prices under control or why their latest power subsidy was “so inadequate”.
Matt Canavan’s calls to drop net-zero will be ignored or sidelined, despite rank and file members at party branches wanting it ended. To Brandis and other Liberal “heavies”, these sorts of “right wing” debates are “beneath the party’s dignity”.
Ley and company might be accused of cynically touting “progressive” imagery. “Look media, we have a woman running the party. Labor doesn’t! Look media, we’re also fighting the climate crisis! Look media, we’re the Teals now!”
Ley is even prepared to countenance the stupid and bizarre New Left ideology of gender quotas for political parties. She told the National Press Club she would consider quotas if the party’s state divisions saw them as the “solution to gender equity”. This is opposed by would-be party leader Angus Taylor who narrowly lost to Ley in the party room leadership vote.
The “Tealy Libs” trend will be galling for the small number of real LNP conservatives like Canavan, Alex Antic, Andrew Hastie and a few others. And the Queensland LNP got rid of Rennick, so he’s no longer a problem for them.
Sussan Ley meanwhile, needs to think a little more seriously about her “Tealy Libs” campaign before the party splinters for good, perhaps for the cause of a real anti-globalist Trump-style political force. We can only hope.
