Why do some men find the teals so triggering?

To their critics, there is something very triggering about the teals.

And fair enough, too.

Powerful push: Teal MPs - the member for Mackellar Dr Sophie Scamps, member for Goldstein Zoe Daniel, member for Kooyong Dr Monique Ryan, member for North Sydney Kylea Tink and the member for Warringah, Zali Steggall - arrive for a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra in November.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The threat these independent candidates pose – to the dominance of the two-party system, to the stability of our parliament and to the Liberal Party’s base – is very real.

Unfortunately, the community independents, as they prefer to be known, come in a nice, appealing and superficially non-threatening package, which makes them tricky subjects for a scare campaign.

The teals are not a political party, but a movement, and they are, for the most part, middle-aged, well-educated professional women who have had impressive pre-politics careers, who work co-operatively together and dress smartly.

They seem like the kind of people who could run either a listed company or the local P&C, possibly both at the same time.

They are precisely the cohort of female candidates the Liberal Party should have been preparing for pre-selection a decade ago.

But it didn’t, and now they’re coming for even more Liberal Party seats at the next election.

Climate 200, the political funding vehicle established by Simon Holmes a Court, is financially supporting about 30 community independent candidates at the upcoming election – 20 per cent of them male and a whopping 80 per cent female.

Adding to the horror, the teals may end up deciding our next government.

Their opponents, particularly those on the right, contend that the teals are ineffectual and have not gotten anything done for their constituents in the 47th parliament.

Instead, they say, the teals have voted consistently with the Albanese government and wasted their time “opposing the opposition”.

But the teals’ alleged ineffectiveness runs counter to complaints that they are actually too powerful.

They might hold the fate of the nation in their hands come election day, and this is a danger to the stability of our system, according to their detractors.

Simon Jackman is a political scientist and independent political consultant whose clients include Climate 200.

“I think it’s highly likely that the teals will be pivotal in the next parliament,” he says.

Voters know that “there is nothing that says healthy democracy equals two-party dominance”.

“You put compulsory voting and preferential voting together and you get political entrepreneurialism from bit players. We have a tradition of it,” Jackman says.

Yet, the claims against the teals grow ever more breathless.

In December last year, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton told a meeting in Mackellar (which was taken from Liberal MP Jason Falinski by teal independent Dr Sophie Scamps at the last election) that “people should know that when you’re voting for a green-teal candidate, you’re actually voting for Anthony Albanese”.

Liberal frontbencher Paul Fletcher, who is retiring from politics at this election, told the Sydney Institute last year that teal voters had been sucked in by a “giant green-left con job” that had been “carefully designed to dupe traditional Liberal voters”.

This week, my fellow columnist, George Brandis, wrote that there was “something peculiarly nauseating about the hypocrisy of political aspirants who affect a pretentious virtue by posing as anti-politicians, only to reveal themselves, once they get themselves elected, as the most calculating politicians of the lot”.

And this week, NSW Liberal Senator Dave Sharma, ousted from the seat of Wentworth in 2022 by teal independent Allegra Spender, told Sky News that the teals “have considerably less integrity when it comes to these things than the mainstream political parties”.

Sharma was referring, in particular, to a video widely published this week which showed Peter Jordan, the husband of Kooyong teal independent Monique Ryan, ripping down the campaign poster of his wife’s electoral rival, Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer.

Both Ryan and her husband have apologised for manhandling the corflute – and no wonder. As Brandis says, the teals have positioned themselves as anti-politicians and are supposed to be above all that.

Ryan faces a battle to hold onto Kooyong, the Melbourne blue-ribbon jewel she won from former Liberal treasurer Josh Frydenberg at the last election.

Kooyong has traditionally been a major Liberal fundraising driver, under the auspices of a group called Kooyong200, with its takings dispersed to other, less flush seats throughout Victoria.

Hence, when it turned teal, it really stiffened the spines of Victorian Liberal blue bloods.

But the trouble with all these criticisms is that they mostly provide oxygen and attention to the teals.

Under pressure: Independent member for Wentworth Allegra Spender.Credit: James Brickwood

Even News Corp reporting about Allegra Spender’s family trusts and company holdings is likely to backfire. In Wentworth, Australia’s richest electorate, having money tied up in a trust ain’t no crime. It’s smart asset management.

Every time a male Liberal politician tells teal voters they’re being fooled, it sends a strong, patronising message to the (majority female) voters who support them.

It’s a message that they’re stupid, or gullible; that they don’t know what they’re doing.

When in fact, teal voters are probably some of the most informed in the country.

“They are a highly sophisticated set of electorates where people understand how preferential voting works,” Jackman says.

“People understand exactly who they are voting for.”

As for criticisms that the teals are a green-left front, there is a kernel of truth to it – most teal voters are Greens and Labor supporters who live in electorates where those parties are never going to get up.

They vote strategically for their second-best option (a teal), or at least direct their preferences that way.

But this cohort of voters is not enough to get a teal candidate over the line. She also needs a boost from traditional small-L liberal voters disillusioned with the Coalition – they are the teals’ special sauce.

The more Liberal blokes reveal their fear and horror of the teals, the more likely they are to drive voters into their arms.

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.