CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
As former Treasurer Josh Frydenberg today concedes defeat to an Independent teal challenger in Kooyong, the Liberal Party has officially lost their next cab in the rank for leadership.
Liberals are preparing for a leadership change to Peter Dutton, after several NewsCorp commentators explained to them that Scott Morrison’s loss of heartland blue-ribbon seats was a result of not being right-wing enough.
This is an interesting diagnosis, considering the fact that basically anyone who jumped ship to vote for these Independent will very loudly argue that the Liberal Party lost them after it became clear they had abandoned its socially liberal roots – opting to focus on the boomer Christian culture wars.
However, with the Liberals losing all of their promising moderate MPs to the community-centric teal wave, and losing their best centre-right talent to swinging Labor voters – it seems the party’s faithful are trying to make peace with the fact that Dutton is all they have left – even though it looked like even he had lost his seat for the first couple hours of the vote count.
According to some rapidly compromising senior Liberal powerbrokers, Dutton isn’t thaaaat right-wing – and is apparently capable of some flexibility on social issues.
Like for example, he’s not 100% glued to the idea that poor people should be put onto conveyor belts and turned into dog food.
And when he found out that over 65% of his North Brisbane electorate had voted YES to marriage equality, Peter Dutton took it upon himself to vote YES as well. This was veiwed by his colleagues as a very brave thing to do, considering it was a non-binding postal survey.
So now with the 50-something remaining Coalition MPs trying their very best to convince the public and themselves that Peter Dutton is actually a rather progressive guy who is really talented, it looks like the Member Of Dickson might end up leading the Liberal Party after all – something he has been trying to do since he knifed the Teal messiah Malcolm Turnbull 2018.
This news of the Liberals replacing Scott Morrison with a refreshingly open-minded young man like Peter Dutton has apparently left many dissident teal voters to grapple with serious bout of buyer’s remorse.
“I wish they’d done this before the election” says Meredith, a 62-year-old children’s lung specialist from Melbourne’s Goldstein electorate.
“I would have definitely stuck with the Liberals if I’d known they were going to be led by such a promising young man who values the socially liberal roots that first drew me towards them”
“Hopefully he sticks around until next election. I’ll definitely vote for them again when all that stuff about detained refugees lighting themselves on fire under his watch dies down”
“I hear he’s actually quite moderate”
