Former Member of the Liberal Party Michael Towke
Former Liberal MP Julia Banks
The Guardian, 5 July 2021:
Banks also told the ABC Scott Morrison was like “menacing controlling wallpaper” during the period where she decided to leave the Liberal party after Malcolm Turnbull was deposed as prime minister.
She says she intended to stay on the backbench after Morrison took over as PM but changed her mind after he attempted to “silence” her.
“I thought if I’m to exit this parliament, I’ll exit on my own terms and under my own story and not on their terms, so I announced that I was going to become an independent.
“It was the three months of Morrison’s leadership that … was definitely the most gut-wrenching, distressing period of my entire career.”
Text Exchange Between Then Liberal Premier of New South Wales Gladys Berejiklian & A Person Understood To Be A Cabinet Minister
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| IMAGE: news.com.au |
Deputy Prime Minister & National Party Leader Barnaby Joyce
The Guardian, 4 February 2022:
Barnaby Joyce labelled Scott Morrison “a hypocrite and a liar” in a private text message, sent before he returned to the leadership of the National party.
In another blow for the embattled prime minister, the leaked text, seen by Guardian Australia, was forwarded to the former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins by a third party.
In it, Joyce said he did not “get along” with Morrison.
“He is a hypocrite and a liar from my observations and that is over a long time,” Joyce said in the message, dated March last year.
“I have never trusted him, and I dislike how earnestly [he] rearranges the truth to a lie.”
Joyce’s attack is the second time in a week private text exchanges, critical of the prime minister, have been leaked. On Tuesday, Morrison was blindsided when the Ten Network’s political editor, Peter van Onselen, used a televised question and answer session at the National Press Club to reveal private criticism of Morrison.
Van Onselen told Morrison he had a record of a text message exchange between a party colleague and the former New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian in which she branded the prime minister a “horrible person” who was untrustworthy.
“The minister is even more scathing, describing you as a fraud and ‘a complete psycho’,” Van Onselen said. “Does this exchange surprise you? And what does it tell us?”
Van Onselen later said the conversation was between Berejiklian and a federal minister.
Outgoing Liberal Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells
https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Hansard
The Guardian, 4 April 2022:
It’s fair to say I have not seen eye to eye with Connie Fierravanti-Wells on factional issues, but I do thank her for her honesty in admitting she assisted Scott Morrison in his preselection for Cook.
More importantly I am also happy to endorse her belated character assessment of the prime minister. She was spot on.
Sadly, it’s just all come a bit late for the Liberal party. The party I joined 40 years ago and loved. The party he has ruined.
The inspirational party of Robert Menzies, whose photo today is affixed to a multitude of policies and statements that bear zero resemblance to the character and values of those tens of thousands of Australians, who formed the Liberals after the second world war, determined we would be a force for freedom, fairness, and the power of individuals – the idea that enterprise and humble ambition through hard work mattered and should make a good life for them and their families.
That’s totally what I signed up for. And that’s what has been lost in the factional model of power driven by Alex Hawke and enabled by Scott Morrison as state director when everything changed and the Liberal dream was set on this awful path that in 2022 sees ruthless self interest spill out of the party tribulations and infect flood relief public policy.
Connie said the prime minister has “lost his moral compass”. Coincidently I used those exact same words in my email to Liberal state director Chris Stone two weeks ago, saying I could no longer stomach these self-serving behaviours and I do not recognise the party I joined.
It’s a terrible situation for me personally – at the age of 58 I have invested my entire adult life in the Liberal dream only to see it trashed – and it’s not like I haven’t tried to stop it. I have given absolutely everything, sucked in a lot, tried to make it work – only to lose it all, to the ruthlessness of the wrong people in power for the wrong reasons.
The Liberal party has no interest group like trade unions (Labor) or environmentalists (Greens). No, we exist for our values and ideas only. We are member based – so Scott Morrison trashed that over two decades starting with his time as state director, then as a scheming MP and now as prime minister finding loopholes in our constitution to delay pre selections in order to get his way.
I thought forcing moderates to vote for Craig Kelly in Hughes prior to the last election was the worst. But he has outdone himself engineering a federal intervention to jump over the organisation all together. Yes, he got what he wanted – at the expense of destroying our rules-based selection system and disgusting virtually every member of the NSW division. And in the process, our president, Philip Ruddock, who used to be a highly respected party warrior, looks like a complete tool. Reputations destroyed. So many Liberals I respected including moderates complied and here we are.
The climate change fight has divided and just exhausted many of us in the NSW Liberals. And sitting here in the flood-ravaged northern rivers I can only deplore how much time has been lost.
Somehow the federal Liberal party, encouraged by the Murdoch press, has delayed the urgent need for climate change action by at least 15 years. To give you an idea as to how completely anti-intellectual and stupid this is, just read Andrew Bolt’s opinion piece in the Daily Telegraph last week saying it was “woke warmists” (climate change activists) like Tim Flannery who caused Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This is the sort of commentary the Liberal party has indulged and wedged and tried to harness into votes. It’s appalling.
“There has been no conspiracy in my decision to speak out about Scott Morrison. Nobody puts words into my mouth”
Robert Menzies invested in the CSIRO, universities and schools, and spoke with great intellectual power about the role of education and science in powering a modern Australia. These values have been totally abandoned by the Morrison government. And I am not happy that successive NSW Liberal premiers have handed the education portfolio to the Nationals, because education is the core business of any Liberal government. Like agriculture for the Nationals and industrial relations for Labor, for us, it’s education. Our philosophy of hard work, competition and markets only works because every child has the opportunity of a first-class education. Our rhetoric falls flat on its face if education isn’t progressing. It’s who we are in terms of fairness and equity. I cannot understand how this – our most sacred core value – has been palmed off to another party. It’s all about inside deals where what we stand for and care about is now negotiable and can be bargained away. Koalas are on that list. I am so incredibly disappointed – not for myself, but for our higher duty to Australia.
So it’s been a difficult time as the ruthless “faceless men” factional power model has taken hold of the party – in my case, the NSW division. Certainly I left the moderates some years ago and standing aside from the factions was a poor career decision, but I thought I could manage to make a contribution. Many of my policy proposals including cost of living and childhood flu immunisation did get adopted and made a difference.
But Scott Morrison’s brazen attempt to fund flood victims in a Nationals seat and exclude flood victims in a Labor seat that I happen to live in was just too much. I cannot deny we are all overwrought here, witnessing so much suffering. My bullshit tolerance levels are at zero. So to see the self-serving ruthless bullying that has increased inside the Liberal party spill over into public policy and the poorest most vulnerable Australians who lost everything in the floods are the targets of this outrageous abuse of morality and power is simply intolerable. Particularly for anyone who actually understands or cares about why the Liberal party was formed in the first place and the values we are entrusted to uphold.
I spoke out expecting it would make no difference – but a Newton’s Cradle effect took hold when others across politics backed the need for fairness to flood victims. It became so embarrassing that the assistance was extended to all northern rivers victims. Of course I was surprised and happy but it seems now we are paying a second price with the prime minister refusing to engage NSW government on additional measures that are so needed for victims of this incredible disaster. It’s so bad I am moved to endorse Connie’s character assessment of the PM. “It’s my way or the highway.” For flood victims. Un-bloody-believable.
Everyone seems to find it hard to believe but I am merely a sidelined female backbench Liberal MP with a brain of my own – I have not been put up to this. I have five years left in my upper house term. No doubt they will find some other assassination of my character to dismiss my opinions rather than address the substance of what I am saying. The truth is, there has been no conspiracy in my decision to speak out about Scott Morrison. Nobody puts words into my mouth. I am what they call a “problem woman”, plus I live in the regions where we just call it out as deserved. The NSW government is not to blame for my outspokenness on this issue and punishing them for my remarks – ergo further punishing our flood victims – is yet another chapter in the disgrace of the prime minister’s approach to this flood catastrophe.
He obviously thinks it’s all about him. Actually, as anyone in the northern rivers will attest, this drama is not about him. It’s about the victims. And his inability to see that, and the compliance of his federal colleagues is further infuriating evidence the Liberal party is completely lost and adrift.
We are so lacking in compassion that even flood victims who have lost everything are like any other pawns in this awful Game of Thrones. And so we have forfeited the precious integrity and values that Australia admired and needed and that served our country so well for decades. The dumb compliance of the federal parliamentary party tells me my beloved Liberal party is beyond healing itself. I have failed and so have like-minded Liberals who understand the significance of who we are and why we even exist. Thus the task of reinventing the Liberals (if that’s even possible) has sadly defaulted to the electorate. Judgment looms. I myself cannot vote for the re-election of the federal Coalition government...... [my yellow highlighting]
The PM on 7.30 Report said I grew up at Alstonville - but I grew up on farm near Yass. Moved to Alstonville in 2000. He claimed I “made similar criticisms of Gladys” - TOTALLY UNTRUE - he just made that up.
— Catherine Cusack (@katieqs) April 6, 2022
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