When high profile Indigenous conservative commentator and activist Warren Mundine was announced as the Liberal candidate for the federal seat of Gilmore it raised a lot of eyebrows among politics nerds.
There was the fact that Mundine wasn’t actually a member of the Liberal Party until this week (indeed, last November he was a member of the Liberal Democrats and was considering a Senate run). Also, that he was a former president of the Labor Party, and that the seat already had an endorsed candidate selected by the local Liberal branches in the form of Grant Schultz.
The fact that one unnamed “Liberal party source” has enthused that Mundine would be seen as a cleanskin outsider was also telling, suggesting even the Liberals think their brand is on the nose.
Like this.
But the biggest issue is the whole changing of the date of Australia Day thing.
See, Scott Morrison has turned keeping Australia Day on January 26 into a point of pride and official Liberal Party doctrine. As has Labor and Bill Shorten, which makes it a bit of a weird thing to have a pretendy fight about.
One person who has, however, been super vocal about changing the date is one Warren Mundine.
He’s been a vocal advocate for moving the date, speaking about the “devastating effect” it had on indigenous people, and suggesting that it be moved to the date of Federation (January 1) as “a day everyone can unite behind”.
And it’d be one thing if he’d changed his mind, but Mundine’s sticking to his position. “I’d like to see the date changed,” he bluntly said at the announcement, before adding “but I’ve got a hundred different things in front of that before I even get to that.”
Mind you, with Gilmore being held on a margin of 1.4 per cent and with a very angry Schultz planning to run as a a vote-splitting independent candidate, the chances of Mundine actually ever having to discuss the nuances of this matter with Morrison in parliament, much less government, seems woefully unlikely.