Christopher Pyne: Why the so-called teal independents want to get rid of small ‘l’ Liberals

What the so-called ‘teal independens’ want is simple – get rid of the less conservative Liberal MPs. Christopher Pyne says he knows why.

The first thing to note about the so called ‘teal independents’ running in blue-ribbon Liberal seats is that they are not independent at all.

They are a co-ordinated team backed financially by Simon Holmes à Court, the son of Australia’s first billionaire.

They have one purpose – to defeat Liberal candidates with broadly liberal rather than conservative values.

If it wasn’t so phony it would be a sick joke.

Their central claim to want to force the Liberal Party and the Coalition generally to be more centrist than centre right is baloney. If that were true they would be seeking to defeat Members of parliament from the National Party and more conservative Liberal MPs particularly in rural and regional Australia and the outer suburbs.

If so-called ‘teal independents’ are elected, the Liberal Party would be more likely to swing to the right of the political spectrum, not less likely.

I assume that is their purpose – to make the Coalition unelectable for the foreseeable future and deliver long-term Labor government nationally.

Given that’s the case, they should be honest with the voters in the seats in which they are running.

Instead, they pretend to be open-minded about which party they will support in a parliament where there is an absence of a government majority without their support.

Jo Dyer running as an independent in Boothby made her colours clear at the end of last week. She admitted she was running to ensure a Coalition government was not elected and would preference Labor’s candidate Louise Miller-Frost ahead of the Liberal’s Dr Rachel Swift. At least she is being upfront.

Jo Dyer, the independent candidate for Boothby, made an announcement about her Federal election campaign this morning at her campaign office in Kingswood. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

Other so called ‘teal independents’ are hoping to sneak into parliament by fooling erstwhile Liberal voters into believing they are open to a continuing Morrison Government. If they win and then support Labor, it will be too late for those voters to do anything about it. For at least three years their local MP will be free to do as they please, without any platform or any mandate to implement one.

One of the particularly galling aspects of the so-called “teal independents” is their sanctimony. They claim to be wanting to restore integrity in politics. But the major parties are required to present their policies to the electorate and their leaders front up daily to the scrutiny of the press pack. As we have seen with some of Anthony Albanese’s campaign slip ups, the media pounce on any mistake of the party leaders and magnify that mistake.

Not so, the so-called “teal independents”. They seek to skate through the campaign with as little scrutiny as possible while mouthing nebulous platitudes about integrity. It’s stomach-churning.

There was a time in politics where independents won because of local circumstances that suited them. They certainly weren’t co-ordinated.

Rebekha Sharkie won in Mayo in a by-election contest that had uniquely local factors.

Bob Katter and his forbears are synonymous with Far North Queensland. Once he left the National Party and became an independent, he was always going to continue to hold that seat.

Helen Haines took over her seat of Indi in Northern Victoria from a similarly local candidate who had won the seat from the Liberal Party in a fair contest about who could deliver more for the local area.

People voting at the SA state election at Norwood Primary School. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Brenton Edwards

I could go on. But you get the point. None of them were part of an orchestrated group of, in some cases, former Labor Party members, running specifically against small “l” liberal MPs in similar seats around the capital cities with one purpose – to unseat the Morrison government and deliver a body blow to the small “l” liberal cause in Canberra.

Holmes à Court, the financial backer of the Climate 200 candidates, suggests that the minority Gillard Labor Government from 2010-2013 is the model of how to run a country.

I served in that parliament as Manager of Opposition Business and Shadow Minister for Education. It was one of the most oppressively awful periods in our nation’s national political history. As a model for government it was nothing short of a catastrophe.

The first thing the minority foisted on that government was to force Prime Minister Julia Gillard to break her promise not to introduce a carbon tax. Rather than acting to ensure her government stayed true to the platform she had taken to the election, they required her to trash it.

Is that the “integrity” the so-called ‘teal independents’ will bring to politics? Probably.

They are a cynical group seeking to deceive the voters in the electorates in which they are running.

The only way they can avoid that charge is to clearly state that they will support a Labor government if they get the chance and not a Coalition one.

If the so-called “teal independents” refuse to do so, they should be shunned as a hoax and consigned to the dustbin of politics.