None of us can afford another hung parliament

No one should need reminding that we never want to see the drift, chaos and division of the Gillard government era again, writes Peta Credlin. But as things stand, there’s every chance we’re headed for a hung parliament.

If you wake up with a hung parliament next Sunday, one of the key reasons will be an assault on Liberal seats by so-called independents.

After the defection of Julia Banks and the Malcolm Turnbull-dummy spit that handed his old seat to a green independent, don’t forget that this is an election where the Morrison government has to win seats just to hold on.

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Yet in the seats of Wentworth, Warringah, Kooyong and Flinders, the Liberal Party is spending close to a million dollars to regain or to hold seats that should never have been in doubt.

Even if the Liberal Party regains Wentworth and holds all the others, that’s four million that wasn’t available to win more marginal seats off Labor.

All of these so-called independents are contesting seats where the Labor Party would normally have no chance of winning. All of them are claiming to be Liberal-lite in order to harvest protest votes from disaffected Liberals.

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Yet all of them are really campaigning for just one issue and that’s “more action on climate change”; more action, in fact, than Bill Shorten is promising even though Labor’s 45 per cent emissions reduction target is already “economy-wrecking” according to the Business Council of Australia.

These independents bristle at the suggestion that “you vote independent, you get Labor”, yet any formerly Liberal seat seized by one of them will end up a Greens seat by default (just look at the fine print of their policies) and deliver a Shorten victory.

Kerryn Phelps narrowly won the normally safe Liberal seat of Wentworth at last year’s by-election. Picture: Monique Harmer

Each of these independents — Kerryn Phelps in Wentworth, Zali Steggall in Warringah, Banks in Flinders and Oliver Yates in Kooyong — are being backed by the left-wing activist group, GetUp! and by covert Labor operatives such as the former ALP staffers Darrin Barnett working for Phelps and Anthony Reed working for Steggall.

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The former PM’s son Alex Turnbull has admitted helping to fund Bank’s campaign and is vocal in his support for the return of the devious Rob Oakeshott.

By tying up prominent Liberal MPs and massive campaign resources in otherwise reasonably safe Liberal seats, Bill Shorten is the beneficiary. But the long-term impact of this assault on safe Liberal seats and senior Liberal ministers is to force the Liberal Party to disagree less with Labor and to move the whole of the political spectrum further to the left.

This week, these “independents” joined others (including the Gillard-supporters Oakeshott and Andrew Wilkie who helped deliver the carbon tax) in a joint commercial that simultaneously denounced “nasty politics” and attacked political parties as bought by vested interests.

These self-proclaimed independents said they were all “co-operating” and “sharing resources” while denying that they had themselves become a party, something that will now be investigated by the Electoral Commission.

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Effectively, they’re members of a small “g” green party, while denying their political orientation in order to scoop up “progressive” Liberal voters and then harvest the Labor preferences needed to win. But make no mistake, what they tell Liberal supporters before the election is vastly different to how they actually operate once in office.

Warringah candidates Tony Abbott and Zali Steggall. Picture: Damian Shaw

No sooner had Phelps got into parliament, claiming to be an economic conservative, when she voted with Labor to undermine border protection. Indeed, if you look at her overall parliamentary record, the MP/GP/current Sydney City Councillor sided with the Greens 32 out of the 42 times she voted.

On the other side of Sydney, the ex-skier Steggall is hedging her bets on who she’d support in a hung parliament (clue: if she refuses to say now, you can bet it won’t be Morrison). Yet for someone who openly admitted she’s never voted Liberal in her life, the irony is that the protest votes from the very people who have voted Liberal, could elect her, and elect Bill Shorten.

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Or worse. Considering the tightening polls, and the way the campaigner in Morrison has out-campaigned Labor, as things stand, there’s every chance we could be headed for a hung parliament.

I was there last time, and no one should need reminding that we never want to see the drift, chaos and division of the Gillard government era again, with its squalid backroom deals needed to maintain the numbers, the Peter Slipper circus, the grubbiness of Craig Thomson, carbon taxes and the like.

If you are in a seat with a prominent so-called independent, think very carefully before you vote next weekend.

You might have money in your pocket to insulate your family from the worst of Labor’s $387 billion in new taxes, and it’s uncosted climate plans, but the majority of your fellow Australians do not.

And none of us can afford another hung parliament.

Watch Peta Credlin on Sky News, weeknights from 6pm.

Originally published as None of us can afford another hung parliament