The structure of Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet would never exist in the business world.
It is absurd to think that government ministers often have limited experience in portfolios they are allocated as part of a factional game. Ministry titles are earned through loyalty to the leader and then used as stepping stones to overthrow that same leader.
The trick is getting close enough to the top to pounce. This leaves us with a ministry whose primary talent is deceit.
Even the best, most competent Cabinet Minister might find themselves shafted over a leadership squabble.
Yesterday, the freshly re-united Coalition unveiled its Shadow Ministry and the scars of the last ideological battle were obvious.
Rising star Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who daringly chose to sit with the Liberals instead of the Nationals to support Angus Taylor’s leadership bid, has been demoted from her role as Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians. This is despite overseeing the Coalition’s only electoral victory in recent memory – the Voice to Parliament referendum. The reward for being a popular media figure is obscurity dished out by an unsteady leader.
If Taylor and Price had been successful, we’d be looking at a more promising future for the Coalition.
Instead, we are assessing the damage. Prominent Nationals figure Barnaby Joyce is salty, also sidelined to the backbench. After pondering if he was dumped for his role in the Coalition marriage patch-up, he was then asked about the ‘generational change’ excuse. That got him going.
‘There are people who are older than me now. I’m 58, not 103! Kevin Hogan’s older than me. I’ve got no problems with that. Darren’s about my age … it’s not generational change. It’s politics and personalities.’
Michael McCormack, who is 60, doesn’t sound thrilled either.
‘Well, we weren’t told everything that went on between Sussan Ley and David [Littleproud]. Quite frankly, it would have been nice for the party room to have been told about the policy areas that were being taken as part of the Coalition agreement.’
The promotion of Alex Hawke (Shadow Minister for Industry and Innovation) and Julian Leeser (Shadow Attorney-General and Shadow Minister for the Arts) is like deliberately giving yourself a white ant infestation.
With those two around, there’s not much point bothering to save the Coalition because it clearly doesn’t want to be saved.
Nationals Leader, David Littleproud, seems quite pleased with the mess, saying: ‘What we have done today is set the foundation stones to say to the Australian people that we know who we are, we know where we’re going, and we’re focused on you.’
Really? What happened to the six-ish month demand from the Liberals to ‘discover themselves’?
Or was all of this about discovering the boundaries of factional power?
No one is surprised by Senator Price’s grim response to being demoted into a lesser portfolio as the Shadow Minister for Defence Industry and Defence Personnel. She’ll be working with her co-conspirator, Angus Taylor, who is Shadow Minister for Defence.
Speaking to Sky News Australia, Jacinta Price said:
‘I’ll be honest to say that there are probably some appointments that have not been predicated on experience or merit. This is the team we have to work with, that we’re working with going forward. I am not going to lie and say that I’m not disappointed that I am not within Cabinet itself.’
The two most popular members, the ones who would win a landslide election if they were shuffled about, were nowhere to be seen. Alex Antic and Matt Canavan are being kept as far away from the weak and shrivelled soggy factional appointments in case they overshadow them simply by being in the same room. They are like a pair of blue supergiant stars, locked in orbit, sucking air and matter away from the featureless cloud of wets.
Political parties that constrain their talent to further the careers of lesser men and women are doomed to fail.
Something for the Speccy reader to look out for…
A few of those promoted to the Shadow Cabinet are talking about the Voice victory as if it damaged the party. Yes. The only political victory in which the Coalition found itself listening to the will of the majority of Australia is now being blamed for the loss.
With that kind of logic, where can they hope to go?
They have evidently lost their minds and joined the Left in revisionist history.
As someone who has been a Blue Ribbon Liberal all my life, and comes from a long line of Blue Ribbon voters, I am ashamed of them. I find them repulsive. Their fickle character and total lack of conservative instinct makes my skin crawl.
I am critical of them because I wish conservatism to succeed, not suffer a replacement with a corporatist version of Labor.
‘An Opposition is not about hierarchies, it’s not about structure, it’s about getting every player on the field, fighting the fight. Because this is not about the internals,’ said Sussan Ley, following the appointments.
Sure. Whatever. There’s no point fighting this level of self-delusion.
And of course, this is the leader who has already spoken of wanting more women in the name of reflecting Australia. So why did Ley, as the Australian put it, oust women to make way for three male factional heavyweights with the adult human female Shadow Cabinet count going from 11 to eight?
I have no interest in quotas or gender politics, but Ley should be judged by the standards she promotes.
‘It’s simply not how I see it. As I said, 40 per cent of the Shadow Ministry are female,’ she replied to Karl Stefanovic.
‘It’s a fact,’ he said.
‘Well, I don’t agree with you.’
‘How do you not agree?’
‘Well, the people I care about are the best Australian people and putting the best team on the field.’
As you can see, when pressed about why so many women were shunned, she backflipped from her gender quotas stance and tried to argue merit. This is why most conservative women despise gender quotas and the politicians who promote them. They are used as weapons in factional games and nothing more.
‘I’ll be there at the table for all the big calls when it comes to policy development, when it comes to what we say as an Opposition.’
One of those men is James Paterson, who spoke to the ABC about it being a bit awkward taking over from Jane Hume. ‘My observation is political careers are not linear any more. There are often side steps on the journey, and I’m very confident Jane will be back in a senior role in due course.’
I don’t know why, but in trying to talk around the truth all the time, most of these politicians sound like they’ve spent too long at a Hippy Health Retreat. If you linger on what they say, you’ll notice it’s total nonsense. ‘Political careers are not linear any more…’ say it isn’t so. ‘Side steps on a journey…’ this isn’t Lord of the Rings, Paterson. You are the victor in a political game and to claim that crown you had to betray a wet foundational principle of gender quotas. Don’t worry. Albo and Chalmers did the same thing as straight white older men leading a supposedly Woke party.
‘We have the first female leader of the Liberal Party in Sussan Ley, and I think that’s a really important and significant development. The numbers of women in Shadow Cabinet will go up and down from time to time. It’s not going to be a static process, but there are new, younger, outstanding talented women who are coming forward who, in time, will be well-placed to serve in the future Shadow Cabinet.’
It will be a Shadow Cabinet, because this mess isn’t holding government any time soon.
How long before this ‘modern’ team stands there and cheers on treaties with the equally hopeless state oppositions? Maybe that’s why they’ve already started talking about the Voice as a mistake so they can soften us up to more race politics.
The only honest thing in this entire show is the changing of Dan Tehan’s title so that ‘climate change’ will now be ‘emissions reductions’. At least they’re no longer pretending it has anything to do with the environment.
Let’s hope Barnaby Joyce can make good on his threat to be ‘unshackled’ and raise hell against Net Zero.
Proving a point I made in a recent article about Net Zero being used as a faux war-footing described by Menzies where the Opposition is not allowed to have debates in case they are perceived as dangerous, we had one unnamed Liberal MP saying this:
‘It’s a very dangerous debate for us to be having. Tell me a seat we would have won if we had dropped Net Zero. Sussan and David are on the same page but the question is what capacity do they have to control their people? Especially David.’
To the unnamed MP, the debate is about the truth. If you are prepared to give away what will amount to tens of billions, perhaps hundreds by the time this is through, of other people’s hard earned money to win Teal seats on a Net Zero ticket, you don’t deserve to be an elected representative, and certainly not a Liberal. Seriously, where has your honour gone? Where is your conscience that you would waste taxpayer money in the middle of a financial crisis on the glory of Teal seats? Think of all the families who cannot pay their power bills, or afford to start a family, because of the cost of Net Zero and all this party is thinking about are those shiny Teal seats.
Sussan Ley has no talent for leadership and now that she has performed her task of elevating factional leaders into the Shadow Cabinet, odds are they’ll roll her when convenient.
Labor will test this weak Opposition. Mark my words, they will introduce bills with the purpose of opening the ideological cracks.
Indigenous treaties. Ridiculously powerful environmental laws. Renewables projects that destroy Nationals seats. Albanese will force the Opposition into a screaming mob attacking nothing but itself.
You know how we can tell that this Shadow Ministry is a disaster?
Because leftwing publications are congratulating Sussan Ley (they should be penning furious articles instead) and the ‘conservative’ publications that are as wet as the faction and use their journalists to validate the half-baked crackpot ideas of ministers, also think this is wonderful.
This is a ministry so wet it is in danger of drowning.
Flat White is written by Alexandra Marshall. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at donor-box.
