Coalition frontbencher says voters conned into backing independents

A senior Coalition MP has attacked the teal independents as a “giant green con job” who managed to dupe traditional Liberal voters as Anthony Albanese signalled next year’s poll would be later rather than sooner.

Opposition communications spokesman Paul Fletcher, who suffered a major scare at the last election from an independent, will use a speech on Monday to argue it was a “deliberate plan” by the teals to put up the daughter and niece of long-term Liberal MPs as part of their effort to win.

Liberal MP Paul Fletcher says people who voted for independents in 2022 were “duped”.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Despite opinion polls putting the Coalition either marginally in front or on a par with Labor, most electoral analysts believe Peter Dutton will struggle to form a majority government at the next election due to the loss of seats such as Wentworth, Goldstein and Curtin to independents.

Fletcher suffered a 15.3 per cent drop in his primary vote in 2022 as his seat of Bradfield, in Sydney’s northern suburbs, went to preferences for the first time in its history.

Independent Nicolette Boele claimed more than 20 per cent of the primary vote. She announced last month she would stand again in Bradfield, where a recent redistribution has reduced Fletcher’s margin from 4.2 per cent to 2.5 per cent.

In a speech to be delivered to the Sydney Institute on Monday night, Fletcher will accuse the teals of being part of a tradition of front groups created by “left-wing political operatives” whose sole aim was to lure voters away from the Liberal Party by “tricking voters about their bona fides”.

Fletcher will say that at the 2022 election, teal independents targeted Liberal-held electorates but made no such effort to go after Labor seats.

This extended to installing candidates with Liberal ties including Allegra Spender, daughter of former Liberal MP John Spender, who won the seat of Wentworth, and Kate Chaney, whose family has ties to the Liberal Party going back to the Menzies government and who won the West Australian seat of Curtin.

“Every aspect of the teal campaign was carefully designed to dupe traditional Liberal voters,” Fletcher will say.

“Is it a coincidence that in a third of the new seats they won in 2022, the teal candidate was the daughter or niece of a long-time Liberal MP, with the same last name? Of course it is not a coincidence: it was part of a deliberate plan.

“The strategy was clear: to appeal to traditional Liberal voters who would never vote Labor but who were disenfranchised with the Coalition after some tough years of COVID and all its consequences.”

Fletcher will say that voters know what they are getting with a majority government, be it Liberal or Labor, but the arrival of independents into the parliament had led to chaotic processes and abrupt changes in policy direction.

“Majority government is a good thing for Australia – and the teals constitute the most serious threat to majority government in 80 years. The stability of the two-party system is a good thing,” he will say.

“It has delivered many benefits to Australia. Stable majority government is a foundational requirement for achieving any serious reform and advancing our nation’s prosperity.”

Albanese, who has declared Labor is the only party capable of forming a majority government, said on Sunday that he was yet to set an election date. While the next election can constitutionally be held as late as August, late May would mark three years since the 2022 poll.

The prime minister told ABC’s Insiders program his intention remained for parliament to return in February with several pieces of legislation, including electoral reform, still on the government’s agenda.

“I foreshadowed the whole way through … I’ve spoken about 2025 as being the election year. So we’ve got a bit of time,” Albanese said.

Last week, this masthead revealed Albanese had intervened to scupper a deal with the Greens to create Australia’s first national environment protection agency.

He addressed business concerns, particularly in the mining state of WA, over the plan but circumvented Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek, who had been working on the deal.

Albanese on Sunday denied being party to a draft agreement or not informing Plibersek, saying he had been negotiating across the parliament on all 45 bills eventually passed.

He said suggestions from the Greens that the proposed agency would give the environment minister the ability to block native forests from logging were wrong.

“I don’t accept that because I was there, and we know things that were put aside and in the agreements that were done between myself as the prime minister and the minor parties across the board – we agreed on most things, but on some things we didn’t,” he said.

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