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Once again, the White Knights of an incompetent woman resort to the gender defence. It’s as tiresome as it was predictable when Julia Gillard and her cronies plied it again and again. But as long as they can get away with it, they’ll keep on doing it.
So a bunch of blokes in the right wing of the Liberal Party think the answer to the party’s problem of regaining the votes of women, who have deserted the party in droves at recent elections, is to terminate their first female leader, Sussan Ley, after serving less than a year in the top job.
No word, then, about Ley’s singular achievement of dragging the Liberals to their lowest-ever poll numbers? Nope, let’s just make it all about the ovaries.
When I first skimmed this piece, I scrolled back up to the byline to see if it was written by a woman. It was in fact by Troy Bramston, which is near enough as ‘goddammit’ is to swearing, as Mum used to say. Bramston is exactly the sort of dripping-wet so-called ‘moderate’ blue-green who, like Ley herself, have progressively – in every sense of the word – destroyed the Liberal Party’s brand and alienated almost its entire voter base.
The only surprise is that he doesn’t somehow manage to blame any of this on the Bad Orange Man. Give him time.
And, of course, there’s the ‘but women vote!’ wailing.
As the men scheme to topple Ley, have they considered how voters, especially women, will view this latest act of political sabotage? At the last election, just 28 per cent of women voted for the Liberal and National parties, barely a quarter, according to the Australian Election Study. Good luck lifting that vote share.
Has it escaped this Woke White Knight that voters are deserting the Ley Liberals in droves for a party famously led by a woman? Or that more women have deserted Ley’s leadership than men? Like the menfolk, women are flocking to Pauline Hanson.
The problem clearly isn’t one of the gender of the leader.
As Troy the Soy-Boy’s own examples clearly illustrate.
This is a not-so-subtle undermining of the leader of which we have seen far too much in the past 20 years. Recall Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard? Or Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull? Or Turnbull and Tony Abbott? Or the cunning Scott Morrison, who took the prime ministership when Turnbull fell. [Andrew Hastie] and [Angus Taylor] are repeating the destabilisation formula.
Notice something, here? Three of his four examples are men undermining male leaders and the other is a female who knifed a male – and in the process, evaporated a landslide victory into minority government.
So much for ‘women vote’.
The only thing Bramston gets right is that Ley’s touted successor, Angus Taylor, is only slightly worse than replacing her with wet wokester Tim Wilson.
It is surprising that some Liberals seem to be taking seriously the idea of Taylor as leader. His colleagues have told this column he has a reputation for not putting in the hard work and, as shadow treasurer, seemed not to be across details of his portfolio. Why did he not return from a European holiday when parliament considered new gun ownership and hate speech laws in response to the nation’s worst terrorist attack?
During last year’s federal election campaign, as I noted at the time, Taylor struggled to communicate the Liberal Party’s values and policies, did little to prepare a detailed economic agenda to take to the election, and was comprehensively outgunned by Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Taylor looked weak and evasive, and his attacks fell flat.
This has been confirmed by the AES, which showed the most important issue for voters was cost of living at a time of high inflation and rising costs for households, yet Labor was judged the better party over the coalition on nine of 10 policy areas, including economic management and taxation. That is the verdict on Taylor – surrendering the party’s long-held advantage on economic policy.
All of which is true enough – but it’s hardly a ringing endorsement of Ley’s woeful leadership. Or the malign influence of the ‘moderates’.
Then again, maybe this is all a high-level satire that’s just gone over my head. What else, after all, is one to make of comedy gold like this:
Albanese, whose prime ministership has been a study in determination, conviction, steadiness, resilience and luck…
He’s joking, right? The only part he’s got right is the “luck”: lucky enough to have Ley and her army of ‘moderates’ making the Liberal opposition so totally irrelevant that Albanese is winning by default.
