Six months on: The women who plunged the Liberals into crisis | LisaVisentin
They were swept in on a fairy tale. Triumphant, cashed-up community campaigns sent six impressive women to Canberra on platforms of action on climate, integrity and gender equity, stripping the Liberals’ ranks of some of their best talent and plunging the party into an identity crisis.
But ultimately Australian voters delivered a majority Labor government, meaning the independents backed by Climate 200, a crowdfunding initiative set up by Simon Holmes a Court, were immediately under sustained pressure to prove to their communities that they hadn’t been dealt out of the action. “I genuinely feel I’ve had much more impact as an independent than any member of the opposition. On so many major issues, they’re just not in the debate, and they’re not making the legislation better,” she says.
“When the National Anti-Corruption Commission legislation was debated in the House, we debated that for about 4½ hours. The government largely didn’t accept the amendments, but it forced the attorney-general to really justify the legislation in the form that it was,” she says.
“There’s a real strength to the House of Representatives’ crossbench at the moment. As a government, we’ve been wanting to make sure that even though we’ve got a majority in our own right, that both debate and the consideration of amendments is constructive,” he says. The IR bill was furiously opposed by big business and the Coalition, which said the changes would leave the economy exposed to industry-wide strikes, an argument rejected by the government, which instead claimed the changes were fundamental to getting stagnant wages moving.
But there is a live debate over whether the teals are a flash in the pan - a response to a deeply unpopular prime minister who failed to connect with moderate Liberals and women in particular - or whether they represent a nascent movement tracing its origins to Cathy McGowan’s 2013 victory over Liberal Sophie Mirabella and posing a long-term threat to the major parties.
As the study’s co-author Sarah Cameron concluded this week: “The medium-term success of the teals will depend on how much they can create a distinct political identity to carry to the 2025 federal election.” Spender, who has a masters in economics from Cambridge University and was managing director of her late mother Carla Zampatti’s fashion empire before entering politics, has been non-committal about whether they should be kept or ditched, instead calling for a wide-ranging review into the tax system.
Ryan dismissed Dutton’s remarks as “incessant negativity”, “completely off the mark” and part of a “concerted move” by Liberals to attack independents.
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