It must be said that being Leader of the Opposition in Australia is the best training ground for eventually being the Prime Minister. The Leader of the Opposition is a position without real power but which is authorised to get access to the central documents of power. Indeed the Shadow Cabinet in order to do its jobs of holding the government of the day to account and to formulate policy of its own such that it will win government one day, needs those central documents of power.
However, being Leader of the Opposition in Australia is also a hiding to nothing. Sure, they get to play the role of thesp by standing opposite the dispatch box and yell all kinds of barbs and jibes at the government but at the same time, standing as the vanguard facing the enemy without also makes one vulnerable to the enemy within. For all the spears and pikes facing outwards, there are an equal number pointed at the Leader of the Opposition. The best way to stab someone in the back is to get behind them.
So therefore it does not surprise me that this week there have been rumours of yet another spill in the Liberal Party. Monday's edition of The Australian had a front page infobox which declared that Mr Dutton had a net approval rating of minus eleven. When the sponsor of the football team starts calling for a change in captain, especially when that sponsor is a multi-million televisionaire, you know you are in trouble.
Tony Abbott who is like a toxic frog, leaked so much poison into the party that even he eventually had to be removed. Mr Abbott has now gone home to his natural environment at the IPA which exists purely to create and spread poison. The Liberal Party then in a strange set of circumstance had a fit of competency and decided to install Malcolm Turnbull who eventually had to go precisely because he had that most evil of things, a conscience. He was then replaced by serial knave Scott Morrison who had a unique blend of incompetency and cruelty. Mr Morrison demonstrated both of these things with immigration and border policy, health policy during the height of the pandemic, before it came to light that he then tried to secretly add actual fascism by being secretly installed as Minister for many many things.
The 2022 election happened and suddenly the Liberal Party found themselves in opposition, only because they spent their time in government by forgetting that they were in government, and abrogating practically every responsibility that they had. After the election and with the party in disarray, the weirdest leadership competition which I have ever seen, installed Peter "Spud" Dutton as Leader of the Opposition; as the only logical choice in a talent puddle rather than a pool. This is like an episode of BBC Radio 4's "The Unbelievable Truth" in which Peter Dutton won with an unassailable score of -3.
The problem is that even though he started with a score of -3, "Spud" Dutton has done the amazing magic trick of becoming even more unpopular. Even with the full backing of News Corp's The Australia, Daily Telegraph, Herald-Sun, Courier Mail (the Adelaide Advertiser doesn't count), the horking borking sqawking dorks at Sky News Australia, and the chorus of 2GB, 4BC, 3AW, 5AA and 6PR, along with Nine West Media playing along, Spud's campaign on superannuation has fallen as flat as a squashed butterfly underneath the 8-car express train of inevitability.
On Monday, his tricky scare campaign failed to get a suspension of standing orders in Question Time. This caused visible disquiet in his performance from his own back benches and in a field of minuses, failing to do the simple transactional jobs in parliament, is another straw to add to the back to an already dead donkey.
The problem that the Liberal Party has is that in this current unreality TV series of "The Leftovers" in which all of the characters are unpopular, then in the event of a leadership spill, who is left to take over the leadership of the Liberal Party? It's not there's a great deal of talent on the front bench to choose from. Also, it's pretty obvious that the Liberal Party is firmly committed to the art of institutional misogyny. This means that they can't choose a woman as leader. By default... there's no obvious default. I mean they could choose Angus Taylor and he seems keen but to be perfectly honest, is he or in fact any of The Leftovers more trustworthy or likeable than Dutton?
If not Peter Dutton, then who? Sussan Ley as Deputy Leader of the Opposition? Sure, she has a handful of shadow portfolios but can they really sell her as likeable? The problem is that the obvious choices apart from Dutton are all Senators. Probably someone like Marise Payne, Janet Hume or even Michaelia Cash should be Leader of the Liberal Party but the nature of the game is that this is an adversarial business where one needs to square off against their opposite number. It would make sense for X to be the Leader Of The Opposition but only if the Labor Party did the sensible thing and made Penny Wong the Prime Minister from the Senate.
Who does that leave? Julian Leeser? Really? Maybe his greatest asset is that apart from political nerds and policy wonks, nobody knows who he is. Is that the best option? Burn any and all stumps and watch the greenery bud from the coppice? Or, and this is the most likely option, do you simply just ignore all rumours of a spill and accept the fact that even at minus eleven, Spud Dutton is still the best option.
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