As they say in politics, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Bob Hawke learned this lesson the hard way when Paul Keating strategically retreated to the backbench in the wake of his unsuccessful first leadership challenge in 1991. Free to plot in the shadows, Keating deposed Hawke six months later.
Coalition opposition leader Sussan Ley had better be watching her back, after sacking the enormously popular Jacinta Nampijinpa Price from the shadow ministry.
Sussan Ley is facing ongoing undermining of her leadership after sacking Jacinta Nampijinpa Price from the shadow ministry, with the ousted Northern Territory senator vowing to use her position on the backbench to campaign on indigenous issues, dumping net zero, slashing migration, the threat of China and the “indoctrination of children in our classrooms”.
The Opposition Leader on Wednesday evening announced she had dumped Senator Price as defence industry spokeswoman for repeatedly failing to voice confidence in her leadership.
‘Confidence in Sussan Ley’s leadership’ is a punch-line in itself. Ley is fast proving just what a poison chalice the opposition leadership is, in the immediate aftermath of an electoral drubbing. Just ask Simon Crean, Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull. Their only purpose is to take the hits during the post-election honeymoon period, while the actual next leader regroups behind the lines.
Usually, the post-election opposition leader’s lifespan is about a year. This gives the victors time to get over patting themselves and start tripping themselves up, and the opposition breathing space to rebuild a demoralised party.
Senator Price’s refusal to endorse Ms Ley on Wednesday dramatically escalated a messy political issue – sparked by Senator Price last week suggesting Indian migrants typically vote Labor – to a test of the Liberal leader’s authority.
Ms Ley said she also sacked Senator Price for failing to apologise for claiming the Albanese government was encouraging migration from India for political reasons. Ms Ley said Senator Price “failed the test of high standard that I have set for members of my shadow ministry”.
Except that Price was only echoing comments by Labor’s own strategist. If the comments were ‘offensive’, they were offensive coming from Labor as well. Instead of having the guts to point that out, Ley continued the losing strategy of her fellow ‘moderates’: dancing to the crack of the left’s whip.
Conservative Liberals on Wednesday night were scathing of Ms Ley’s handling of the saga, echoing moderate senator Jane Hume in arguing it was misguided to delegate the counselling of Senator Price to factional powerbroker Alex Hawke.
Hawke is, of course, yet another ‘moderate’ soggy lettuce leaf. A watermelon with a blue tie. These are the very people who’ve done so much damage to the Liberals, by steadfastly alienating their centre-right base, in a futile attempt to win the hearts and minds of the feral-left media. Not just regarding Price, but the critical litmus test of ‘Net Zero’.
Ms Ley has faced internal criticism from conservative Liberals for refusing to bring the net-zero argument to a head, with MPs believing shadow minister Andrew Hastie – considered the next leader from the conservatives – was considering crossing the floor and voting for Barnaby Joyce’s bill to abolish the mid-century target.
But sacking an enormously popular conservative rising star, touted by many as future PM material, may well be Ley’s fatal tactical blunder.
Senator Price – who defected from the Nationals to the Liberals after the May election with the intention of running as Angus Taylor’s deputy – on Wednesday said she would be a vocal backbencher.
“I will continue to speak up on issues which are in the national interest and that are important to millions of Australians,” Senator Price said.
This included the plight of indigenous Australians in remote communities and the “ongoing romanticisation of traditional culture that inhibits addressing the root causes of Indigenous violence today”.
“The ineffectiveness of bloated bureaucracies that have done nothing to ‘close the gap’,” she said. “And the need to push back against activists who, ignoring the referendum outcome and the will of the Australian people, march on with the goals of segregation and reparations under the guise of that Orwellian phrase ‘truth-telling’.”
Senator Price said she would also campaign against “mass migration”, net zero and the “indoctrination of children in our classrooms that engenders national guilt and inhibits national pride”.
All of those are issues that will win back disaffected coalition voters. And none of them are something the likes of Sussan Ley or the rest of the ‘moderates’ have the guts to take a stand on.
