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As I wrote for Real Good Oil yesterday, the big question surrounding the Liberals party’s leadership change is: will it make any real difference?
Can replacing the wet, woke Sussan Ley with supposedly conservative warrior Angus Taylor save the party? Does Taylor’s emphatic win in the leadership ballot signal the end of the ‘moderates’ malign influence? Will the Liberals regain the disaffected who have drifted en masse to One Nation?
Not even a week into Taylor’s leadership and we’re starting to get some hints.
Liberal MPs are continuing to distance themselves from a leaked proposal to ban people coming to Australia from terror-declared areas, such as Gaza and Somalia.
Yet, this was a policy drafted under Ley’s leadership, clearly with the aim of reclaiming lost ground in the immigration debate from One Nation. Yet, even such a timid, no-brainer move as that is proving too much for the Liberals, especially the ‘moderates’ who are still hanging around like a bad smell.
Speaking with Nine, senator Dave Sharma said the leaked proposal did not reflect the party’s policy.
“I cannot say that what I’ve seen in the newspapers today actually reflects our policy. It doesn’t reflect what I know of our policy,” he said.
“I mean, I’m not in the shadow cabinet, but as far as I’m aware, our policy is not going to single out any particular region or group of people.”
And this is why they’ll keep losing.
Even Taylor, for all his tough talk of a few days ago, is backflipping harder than a ‘refugees welcome’ Greenie in Ponsonby confronted by a couple of smelly brown foreigners asking for lodging.
Opposition leader Angus Taylor has denied knowledge of an immigration policy that was looking to ban people coming to Australia from terror-declared areas […]
The policy developed under former leader Sussan Ley was reported by some media to bar entry to people from parts of Gaza, Somalia and the Philippines.
Taylor denied any knowledge on 7.30 and said that after Ley lost the leadership in a Friday spill motion it was not valid anyway.
“That document, which I haven’t actually seen, has no validity,” Taylor said.
So much for Taylor the ‘conservative warrior’.
Opposition immigration spokesman Paul Scarr released a formal statement blasting the reports, which raised questions over who developed and leaked the policy that few frontbenchers knew about and none endorsed.
“I refer to media reports of a so-called leaked Liberal Party policy proposal with respect to banning migration from certain declared regions,” Senator Scarr said. “It is important that I provide the following information for the record: I never proposed any such policy. I never agreed to any such policy.
“I never signed or approved a shadow cabinet submission containing any such policy. I have a range of serious concerns with respect to any such policy.”
In other words, the Libs are still wetter than a lettuce leaf and more concerned with fighting among themselves for the scraps of their ever-diminishing number of votes than with developing winning policies.
Even worse, they’re suicidally determined to slavishly ape the worst of Labor’s policies, in the vain hope of winning back the ‘Doctor’s Wives’ set.
Expanding the childcare subsidy scheme would be a longer-term goal, with little work having been yet done on the model this could take and the cost to the budget.
Stick a fork in the Libs and turn them over: they’re done.
