Banks betrayed real Liberals who helped her win seat

The speech Julia Banks gave to dump the party that put her into parliament was self-serving and deluded. It also showed no respect for those who selflessly campaigned on her behalf, writes Peta Credlin.

By spectacularly dumping on the party that put her into parliament, Julia Banks made herself a hero this week — but only to people who hate the Liberal Party and who would never vote for it.

Her speech, carefully timed to ambush a prime ministerial media conference, was made “on indulgence”. That’s a technical concept meaning by leave of the Speaker. And it was indeed indulgent in every sense.

It was self-serving, self-important and self-deluded. Above all, though, it was a betrayal of the real Liberals who worked hard to win the election in her seat; because they thought that she respected them, and the values of the party that they serve without any hope of personal reward or advancement.

In 16 years working for members of parliament, I came across thousands of Liberal Party members. There was a fringe of zealots and eccentrics, as you’d expect in any organisation trying to make change for the better. There was a hard core of careerists using the party to further their personal ambitions to “be someone”, by entering parliament and climbing the greasy pole of power.

The vast majority, though, joined the party because they supported free enterprise, small business and personal choice, while also respecting the family and the other institutions that have served this country well.

Julia Banks during the speech where she announced she would be resigning as a Liberal to become an independent. Picture: Gary Ramage

They were never going to be political staffers, let alone MPs, and would normally only serve as branch office bearers if no one else wanted the job. A few of them were libertarians who hated all rules but most were instinctive conservatives who know that rules are necessary if people are to live together in a decent civil society.

People like Rosemary and Kevin Pendlebury, who’d spent “long days” campaigning for the former Liberal MP because they were under the impression that she “represented the values we all had, Liberal values like taking responsibility for yourself, working hard”, and who now feel totally ripped-off. They feel that “Julia has almost used us to get where she wanted to go”. “We’re conservative,” say the Pendleburys; “we’re … not left of centre” but not “hard right” either.

As John Howard pointed out in his rebuke of her last week, like all Liberal MPs, she was elected much more on the party’s strengths than on her own.

Banks’ claim that she was elected as a Turnbull MP rather than as a Liberal one is as laughable as her claim that Turnbull’s downfall was engineered by “the reactionary right-wing” trading their votes for “promotion”. It was actually Turnbull who dumped his own energy policy after previously claiming it had “overwhelming” party room support. It was Turnbull who made his leadership terminal by spilling his own position when no one had called for it. And what’s “hard right” about wanting sovereign borders, lower power prices or being concerned about the contribution of immigration to stagnant wages, unaffordable housing and clogged roads?

Chisholm Liberal party members Rosemary and Kevin Pendlebury spent long days campaigning for Julia Banks. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

For all her talk about wanting to punish Liberal MPs for dumping Turnbull, Banks’ defection was about jumping ship before she was forced to cop a loss in her marginal seat. She won’t run in Chisholm again; it is too much hard work. Instead, last week was presumably a chess play to set up a post-political career as professional victim. Otherwise, if genuine, she would have raised concerns about the treatment of women long ago when she had the ear of the former PM and could do something about it. And there would be specific allegations; yet three months after her sweeping claims, there’s still nothing.

For all the talk about the Liberal “left” and “right” and the divisions between “progressives” and “conservatives”, most party members just want to be Liberals. To the extent that they’re philosophical, they support the party of Bob Menzies and John Howard.

Menzies authored the “We Believe” statement that, with a few modifications, remains the party’s version of the Ten Commandments. “We believe,” said the Liberal Party’s founder, “ … in the individual … in the rule of law … in the spirit of the volunteer ….in encouraging the strong and protecting the weak … in the great human freedoms to worship, to think, to speak, to choose, to be ambitious, to be independent, to be industrious, to acquire skill … to seek and earn reward. … (and) that under the blessing of divine providence … there is no task which Australia cannot perform and no difficulty that she cannot overcome.”

There’s nothing “far right” about this; even if, to Banks, it might sound quaint. But that’s because she never really understood the party that she joined just to get herself into parliament.

Originally published as Banks betrayed real Liberals who helped her win seat