It was always going to be a rough week. The Albanese government had been prepared for the referendum loss and had already begun planning a parliamentary week centred on cost of living, meeting election commitments and foreign policy.
But no one predicted the loss would be quite so thorough. And so, it was a parliament of dualities – a jubilant opposition and a devastated government, the emboldened and the cowed.
With Labor’s leadership backing in Israel, causing friction in its left flank, it was perhaps the most uncomfortable week the Labor caucus has experienced since winning the 2022 election.
It’s no secret Peter Dutton senses opportunity – Liberal insiders say he feels like he, and the Coalition, are back in the game.
So what’s next? Well, the Liberal senator Alex Antic’s private member’s bill to ban gender-affirming treatment for people under 18 is a big hint. But it won’t be Antic leading the charge, nor the Tasmanian Liberal Claire Chandler, who adopted banning trans athletes to “save women’s sports” as an early campaign. No, it will be the CLP senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, the current shining light of the Coalition. Price indicated during the campaign that “pushing back” against the “transgender movement” would be a priority after the referendum.
Price heralded the failed Liberal candidate and anti-trans rights activist Katherine Deves and expelled Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming as “brave” at an event Antic hosted at parliament last month, saying the women had been “thrown under the bus” for their binary views on gender.
Part of Price’s speech, reported by the Australian, shows where this debate is going:
That [the treatment of Deeming and Deves] sends a message to our vulnerable women, women who don’t come from western cultures, that they aren’t important, that their voices don’t matter.
Price is being held up as the future of the Liberal party, despite her current seat in the Nationals party room. Supporters are sussing out a lower house seat. Reports of a potential move to Leichhardt when the sitting MP Warren Entsch decides to pull up stumps are already being quashed – the far north Queensland seat is not considered a long-term safe seat for the LNP, with Entsch’s personal popularity one of the reasons it’s stayed blue. Scott Morrison’s seat of Cook has also been thrown into the mix, but Liberal MPs say Dutton is keen to keep Price close, as a sort of “mentee”.
Conservative Liberals are celebrating their “rock star” colleague, but the moderate wing maintains reservations. “You need someone who is going to appeal to the places Dutton doesn’t, but Price is speaking to the long converted,” one said. Other wondered at the potential for “a culture war too far”, but the moderate wing is as effective as using a dry mop to clean a blood spill these days.
For many in the party Price’s appeal is the cover she provides to wage culture wars. The long-term plan isn’t to win back the teal seats, or other inner-city seats where voters would be turned off. It’s convincing enough voters in outer suburban seats in New South Wales and Western Australia in particular to send Labor into minority government at the next election, opening the door for a Tony Abbott-style guerrilla political warfare campaign.
“You don’t need policies to lob grenades,” one Coalition MP told us. “The referendum is all the fuel we need.”
Labor frets over MCM
Labor MPs mostly kept their heads down this week, as they reconciled the referendum loss and the government line on Israel and Palestine. But despite the reports of handwringing over Ed Husic’s deviations from the official line (Husic said he believed Palestinians were being “collectively punished” for Hamas’s actions), most Labor anger seemed centred on the Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather.
MCM’s name appears written in the Labor Burn Book (with at least three underlines) if the reaction to his very normal speech, asking people to consider the plight of Palestinians is any indication. The mutterings seemed loudest from Labor’s left flank – is that perhaps because the former Young Labor member turned Green can still say the things they can’t? Although it did seem to cheer up some members of caucus when they saw the Greens leader, Adam Bandt, head over to where MCM was sitting with some Liberals during a Coalition attempt to extend the 2024 parliamentary sitting calendar, and bring him back to where the Greens were. That is, voting with the government. There’s no suggestion Chandler-Mather was going to vote with the Libs, but Labor MPs enjoyed the visuals at the very least.
Don Farrell’s done it
There was at least one moment of levity this week, and it came courtesy of the trade minister, Don Farrell. After he appointed his former Senate ally Chris Ketter to a trade commissioner role, Farrell seemed completely miffed as to why his impassioned defence against allegations of jobs for the boys was being met with snorts and barely contained laughter.
I have done it with you, Senator Waters, and I expect that we’ll be doing it again shortly. I have done it with Senator David Pocock. I would be very happy to do it with the Jacqui Lambie Network. I’ve done it with the teals.
In fact, I’ve done it with anybody who has asked to meet me to have a discussion about it.
We are not sure if someone filled Farrell in on the joke, but the clip of the moment was very quickly sent around offices of all political persuasions. For the record, “it” was discussing electoral reform.
Meanwhile, there were raised eyebrows at Michaelia Cash, the would-be again first law officer of the nation. We’re not sure what sort of parties Cash has been to, but in condemning the lack of support for her bill to stop the ACT from decriminalising drug offences (for personal use), Cash was concerned people would now be able to do about 15 lines of cocaine (in this economy?!) and the ACT government may have unwittingly created ice (the drug) cruises, because Jervis Bay comes under ACT law.
Not sure how you would advertise a cruise ship drug charter, but there is the bigger problem of cruise ships not actually docking at Jervis Bay. And that’s before you consider that ACT law does not override federal law or control international waters.
Tourists will come down the Hume Highway for the “ACT party lifestyle” and can do “about 15 lines” bc of drug decrim, Libs say. pic.twitter.com/PAbkbWbCe0
— Dominic Giannini (@domgiannini_) October 19, 2023
Cash also made reference to the ACT “party lifestyle”. We are yet to find evidence of that, but we’ll keep looking. For purely journalistic purposes, of course.
