There are weeks when your Aussie correspondent has to scratch to find anything interesting enough to report... and days when everything seems to happen at once. Yesterday was one such day. Nothing exactly earth-shattering, but a whole bunch of little earthquakes rumbling at once. Here’s a roundup of an eventful day in Oz politics.
First up, after less than a week of getting Barnaby to tell Johnny to tell Sussan that Bridget totally reckons that David is ditching her, the internecine spat between the coalition partners seems to be over. They’re totally going together again: tru luv4eva.
The Liberals and the Nationals have reformed a coalition, after Sussan Ley and David Littleproud reached an agreement.
Liberal MPs confirmed it was their understanding Ms Ley and Mr Littleproud had come to an agreement, after the Nationals walked away from the coalition last week.
The two parties later agreed to a pause on the separation.
Maybe they couldn’t decide on who got the silverware and who has to take Matt Canavan to footy games on the weekends. One thing they seem to have agreed on is that the Nats will get to see some punishment meted out to Jacinta Nampijinpa Price for jumping the waka.
Ted O’Brien will reportedly become opposition treasury spokesman on Sussan Ley’s new frontbench, with Victorian Senator Sarah Henderson expected to be dumped from the shadow cabinet.
The opposition leader is anticipated to announce her shadow cabinet within hours, after she sealed a deal for the coalition agreement with Nationals leader David Littleproud this morning.
Sky News has also reported that Liberal Senator Jacinta Price, who left the Nationals after the election, may not land a position in the new shadow cabinet.
In the long run, though, keeping one of the coalition’s best-known faces and biggest drawcards out of cabinet isn’t going to do them any favours. No matter how much it mollifies the Nats’ hurt pride.
Whether Littleproud’s leadership will survive the fracas remains to be seen. Clearly some in the party room aren’t happy with his public dummy-spit.
Nationals MP Colin Boyce says the decision to exit the coalition was made on the basis of “unfounded and wrong” information, signalling he could no longer support David Littleproud’s leadership.
Mr Boyce welcomed reports that the Liberals and the Nationals had struck an agreement to reform a coalition, saying the decision to leave had been “based on bad information that was delivered to us by the leadership team”.
He said Mr Littleproud’s future as leader was under a cloud following his handling of the coalition split.
“How can you support a bloke that misleads the partyroom? I’m calling him out,” Mr Boyce told Sky News.
He said, as Matt Canavan lurked behind a nearby tree, rubbing his hands together.
In state politics, the Liberal party’s self-inflicted implosion just keeps on delivering. Mostly thanks to the inept machinations of the ‘moderates’. Former leader John Pesutto, as wet as they come, fell over himself to damn female conservative MP Moira Deeming as a ‘Nazi’. Unlike most spineless conservatives, Deeming wasn’t taking it lightly. She challenged Pesutto to withdraw the slur or face defamation charges. Idiotically, he doubled down.
Deeming easily won her defo case, and Pesutto is up for her legal bill, to the tune of $2.3 million. If he can’t pay it and goes bankrupt, he’ll be forced to vacate his seat. For some reason, the Liberal backroom is determined to keep Pesutto in a job, so they’re passing the hat around.
Alright, says Deeming: then his backers can pay my legal bills.
Former Victorian Liberal Leader John Pesutto says he is doing everything he possibly can to raise the $2.3m in legal costs he owes Moira Deeming, after it was revealed Mrs Deeming had threatened to take legal action against former premiers Jeff Kennett, Ted Baillieu and Denis Napthine in a bid to recoup the money.
The Australian revealed on Wednesday that Mrs Deeming’s lawyers had signalled new legal action against nine Liberal figures who donated to Mr Pesutto’s failed defamation defence – including the three former premiers, current frontbenchers David Southwick and Georgie Crozier and former Liberal MP Margaret Fitzherbert – should Mr Pesutto fail to pay his bill.
There’s a precedent, here. When media mogul Kerry Stokes funded former soldier Ben Roberts-Smith’s failed defamation action, Stokes was found liable for costs.
Some in the party fear Mrs Deeming’s fresh legal action against her own party elders risks inflaming internal tensions.
“This could blow the party up,” one Liberal told the Australian.
Well, if it blows the wet, weak, woke ‘moderates’ out of the party, all for the better in the long run. Get it done now and let the party get down to rebuilding its centre-right credentials ahead of the next state election in November next year.
