When he appeared on Q&A a couple of weeks ago the recently ousted Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull made the point that three historically safe Liberal seats were now held by centrist female independent candidates with historic links to the Liberal Party – Rebeckha Sharkie in SA’s Mayo, Cathy McGowan in the Victorian seat of Indi, and Dr Kerryn Phelps in Turnbull’s former seat of Wentworth.
His point was that the Liberals were in danger of losing their actual base as they attempted to curry favour with the extreme right – a move endorsed by yet another former Liberal PM, Tony Abbott, who has been pushing NSW branches to swing behind conservative ideals despite their seeming unpopularity with the actual electorate.
And boy howdy, the barely-concealed hatred those two men have for one another is kicking back into high gear.
And Abbott is under particular fire at the moment. GetUp! reportedly had over 600 people turn up to a community meeting about ousting him. High profile independents including educator and writer Jane Caro are planning to run in the seat. His own branch had a sizeable minority attempting to prevent his endorsement two months ago.
And there’s even an instagram account and website, ‘Vote Tony Out‘, which appeared at the beginning of the week and attracted three early followers in he Turnbull family – Malcolm, Lucy and their son Alex. Oooooh, that’s subtle.
If that’s not inspiring you to stockpile popcorn, there are the comments under the story which a) suggest that Abbott’s got a social media bot army at his fingertips and b) are mainly comments which apply equally well to Abbott as to Turnbull:
Mind you, the Roseville branch of the Liberal Party have also voted to expel Turnbull from the party – the man who was their party’s leader less than 90 days ago, remember – for his Insta-following disloyalty.
So that’s a thing.
The Roseville Lib branch, who hosted a fundraising event featuring @corybernardi (AFTER he had defected from the Libs to form a new party) want to expel @TurnbullMalcolm for not campaigning in his former seat after he was knifed. Okaaay then…. #stablegovt
— Dee Madigan (@deemadigan) November 20, 2018
And this internal fighting might look terrible for a party struggling in the polls, but at least there’s not a state election this week, and another one in March, and a federal one just around the corn… sorry, what? Oh.