The Advertiser Editorial: Wentworth is a warning from voters
FOR the second time in eight years, Australia will be led by a minority government reliant on the support of independent and minor party MPs to remain in office.
FOR the second time in eight years, Australia will be led by a minority government reliant on the support of independent and minor party MPs to remain in office.
Voters in the Sydney electorate of Wentworth used a by-election to make their displeasure clear at the Liberal Party’s decision to remove local MP Malcolm Turnbull from the prime ministership.
Liberal Party MPs who supported Mr Turnbull’s removal from the leadership have nobody but themselves to blame for independent Kerryn Phelps capturing the seat. Some Government MPs have criticised Mr Turnbull for failing to campaign for Liberal Wentworth candidate Dave Sharma, but the former prime minister was under no obligation to do so.
Saturday was the first time many Wentworth residents had ever voted for a non-Liberal candidate.
Like former Labor leader Julia Gillard, Prime Minister Scott Morrison must now learn how to work with the crossbench to remain in Government and implement his agenda.
The Liberal and National parties have 75 of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives and should be capable of maintaining the support needed from the six crossbench MPs to continue governing until a general election is held next year.
Several of the crossbench members, including Dr Phelps and Mayo MP Rebekha Sharkie, have expressed a desire for the Government to remain in office and for the Parliament to run its full term. Senior Government MPs, including Defence Minister Christopher Pyne, believe that the Liberal loss in Wentworth is the inevitable result of disunity and some members of the party becoming focused on internal debates at the expense of policies which will benefit the Australian community. He is right.
If it is to have any hope of winning the general election due by May next year, the Government must put infighting behind it and focus on governing. The Liberals would be stupid to ignore the lessons from Wentworth.
The hardest word
YESTERDAY Australia told child sex abuse survivors that we were sorry.
The apology’s significance cannot be underestimated. All those people who came forward with their stories — and all those who couldn’t because it was too hard or too late — needed to know that they were heard, and believed.
Just as with the apology to the Stolen Generations, this is a critical moment in the nation’s history that marks for the record what sort of people we want to be.
And just as with the Stolen Generations apology, the Federal Government now has to map a path to ensure this never happens again; that the apology never rings hollow.
The apology must be backed up now, and forever, with substantial action and fearless transparency from all institutions and governments.
Hundreds of recommendations came out of the Royal Commission.
Some will be straightforward; others may cause political pain. But political pain holds no currency in a conversation about the physical and mental anguish that child sex survivors have been through.