James Morrow: Labor has a new hero after Connie Fierravanti-Wells spray at Scott Morrison

Connie Fierravanti-Wells was once loathed by progressives for her stances on climate and marriage, but her attack on the PM has made her Twitter’s darling, writes James Morrow.

And just like that, the Left cares about bullying in politics again.

Sometime after 10pm Tuesday night, after Treasurer Josh Frydenberg handed down his Budget and parliamentarians and lobbyists were enjoying various knees-ups and fundraisers, Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells dropped a bombshell.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison, she said, was an “autocrat” and a “bully who has no moral compass”.

She then went on to name check a host of factional players, including Immigration Minister Alex Hawke.

“There is a very appropriate saying here, the fish stinks from the head,” she said.

“Morrison and Hawke have ruined the Liberal Party in NSW by trampling its constitution.”

Oof.

Outgoing Senator Concetta Anna Fierravanti-Wells. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Picture: Graham Denholm/Getty Images

For political junkies, the moment was a bit like Will Smith smacking Chris Rock at the Oscars: utterly shocking, the inspiration for a million think pieces and tweets and perhaps the only thing to improve the ratings of a moribund institution (a post-Budget Senate sitting, not Hollywood’s night of nights).

But for Labor supporters and those on the Left especially, the outgoing senator’s speech was something more.

Namely, a chance to grab the moral high ground they had been losing ever since posthumous revelations about the treatment of now deceased Victorian Senator Kimberley Kitching at the hands of a “cantankerous cabal” of “mean girls”.

Former Australian of the Year Grace Tame, who has never missed an opportunity to criticise the prime minister, was quick to jump on the story, seeing a media conspiracy in the story’s absence from the front pages of newspapers that had long since been sent to the printing press.

“If our nation’s news media industry was balanced, uncorrupted and not collusive, what happened last night would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country,” she tweeted, to rapturous virtual applause and more than 12,000 likes.

Illustration: Terry Pontikos

Needless to say, Ms Tame and so many others jumping on the story were far more silent when allegations about Ms Kitching’s treatment were front and centre.

There are two things to say about this.

Number one, more eyebrows were raised at Parliament House over the outgoing senator’s speech than glasses were hoisted at Tuesday night’s post-Budget drinks.

That Ms Fierravanti-Wells has a well-earned reputation as a robust player of the political game is no secret – though, of course, actual workplace bullying is wrong and if the PM is guilty let the chips fall where they may.

But the other important detail is this. Ms Fierravanti-Wells’ speech was made in the context of her leaving the Senate after she failed to garner enough votes at a preselection last weekend to get a spot on the Liberal ticket for the next election.

And despite her claims of bullying at the hands of the prime minister, it was Scott Morrison’s personal intervention in her 2016 preselection that allowed her to spend the last six years in her seat.

The second thing, more extraordinary yet at the same time entirely unsurprising, is how Morrison’s haters have suddenly decided to rehabilitate the outgoing senator after years of treating her as a horrible harridan of the right.

Ms Fierravanti-Wells has long been known as one of the Coalition’s fiercest social conservatives.

She has been what the Left calls a climate change “sceptic” and in 2020 took heavy flak after she mused that ecoterrorists might have lit the previous summer’s horror bushfires.

She famously resigned from Malcolm Turnbull’s front bench (she was Minister for International Development and the Pacific) citing the then-PM’s sidelining of conservatives, specifically citing the issue of same-sex marriage. She also was reportedly backed Peter Dutton in the 2018 leadership crisis, making her anathema not only to the left wing of her own party but also to legions of Labor and Greens supporters who would never vote Coalition on a bet but still swooned every time “Malcolm” rocked up to Q&A sporting his jaunty leather jacket.

But take a shot at Scott Morrison and it seems all is forgiven. Interestingly, the following day Pauline Hanson got up in the Senate chamber to back up her colleague’s claims against the prime minister but so far her comments have attracted far less attention or praise from the very online Left. Perhaps even that is a bridge too far for some.