Rita Panahi: Electing Malcolm Turnbull in a skirt as leader is not going to help the Liberals
After running a disastrous Labor-lite campaign, the Liberals have decided to double down on mediocrity by electing a leader with a track record of missteps and inauthenticity.
Rita Panahi
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If the Liberals are to be a credible alternative to Labor, they need to do better than electing Sussan Ley aka Malcolm Turnbull in a skirt as leader.
After running a disastrous big-spending, small-L Liberal campaign where they opposed tax cuts and refused to differentiate sufficiently from Labor on key issues, the Libs have decided to double down on mediocrity by electing a leader with a track record of missteps and inauthenticity.
It’s one thing to lose an election fighting for real change but the Libs lost by mounting a pitiful Labor-lite campaign. If they listened to conservative voices they would’ve abandoned the madness of net zero and fought an election campaign on energy and cost of living where they argued for cheap sources of energy vs. Labor’s renewables folly where emission cuts are prioritised over cost and reliability. The last thing this country needs is more groupthink and it’s hard to see how we will get anything other than that with Ley who is consistently on the wrong side of issues. From her numerology frolics to flip-flopping on consequential issues, Ley has a track record for being weak and flaky.
She was for pro-Palestine before switching to pro-Israel, she was pro-Voice, before switching to ‘no’, she was against the live sheep trade before she became a supporter, she opposed the stage three tax cuts before backing them, she was pro-gender quotas before backing away from the policy. Only last year she came out in support of a deeply flawed, activist-led gender wage gap report. The list goes on.
If she did any more backflips she’d make Nadia Comaneci jealous. Ley has done well to come back from a scandal that could’ve ended her political career. She was forced to resign from cabinet in 2017 after being mired in expenses scandals involving taxpayer funds being used to attend New Year’s events and to purchase property. That earnt her a sharp rebuke from then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.
The Liberal Party is divided. Ley prevailed over shadow treasurer Angus Taylor 29 to 25 votes meaning just two MPs changing their mind would see the candidates tied. It’s now imperative that the election post-mortem doesn’t degenerate into a butt-covering exercise. Ley will have a chance to prove herself but too many more missteps and backflips and there’ll be challengers lined up to unseat her.
Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist
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