The Guardian, 4 April 2022:
NSW Liberal MP Catherine Cusack says Scott Morrison ‘trashed’ the party’s values over two decades as state director. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP
Another senior Liberal has taken aim at Scott Morrison, accusing him of “self-serving ruthless bullying” and claiming he has “ruined” the Liberal party.
Catherine Cusack, a NSW Liberal who announced two weeks ago she would resign from the legislative council over her anger about flood relief, adds her voice to a growing chorus of critics of Morrison from within his own party in an opinion piece for Guardian Australia.
Cusack explicitly endorses Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells’s “character assessment of the prime minister” and reveals she will not vote for the Morrison government in the May election.
The prime minister’s office was contacted for comment regarding Cusack’s claims.
On Tuesday Fierravanti-Wells labelled the prime minister an “autocrat” and a “bully” in an excoriating Senate speech revealing allegations Morrison had made “racial comments” when running for preselection in 2007.
Morrison has vehemently denied the claims, contained in statutory declarations reported in The Saturday Paper and then publicly backed by his preselection opponent, Michael Towke.
Cusack accused Morrison of having “ruined” the Liberal party and “trashed” its values over two decades, as state director, “then as a scheming MP and now as prime minister finding loopholes in our constitution to delay preselections in order to get his way”.
Cusack criticised Morrison for “forcing moderates to vote for [former Liberal and now United Australia party leader MP] Craig Kelly” when his preselection was under threat before the 2019 election.
She has warned she would vote against the prime minister over factional “scheming” and politicised allocation of flood relief.
“But he has outdone himself engineering a federal intervention to jump over the organisation all together.
“He got what he wanted at the expense of destroying our rules-based selection system and disgusting virtually every member of the NSW division.”
Morrison’s immigration minister and proxy in the NSW party, Alex Hawke, has been accused of procedural delays prompting a takeover of federal preselections by a three-person panel, including Morrison and the NSW premier, Dominic Perrottet.
The NSW court of appeal is set to rule on Tuesday whether the takeover and resultant preselections complied with Liberal party rules.
Cusack, a longtime critic of the Liberal party’s culture towards women, has spoken out about the exclusion of Ballina, Byron and Tweed from federal disaster payments, a decision reversed in mid-March.
Cusack said that “Scott Morrison’s brazen attempt to fund flood victims in a National party seat and exclude flood victims in a Labor seat that I happen to live in was just too much”.
“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.”
Cusack said assistance was “extended to all northern rivers victims” after their exclusion became too “embarrassing”, but the prime minister now appears to be “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.”…….
How the Morrison-Joyce partnership is faring in New South Wales.....
The Liberal/LNP and Nationals Coalition Government currently hold 76 seats (50.3%) in the House of Representatives and the Labor Party in Opposition holds 68 seats. With only a 8 seat overall majority, a loss of even three existing Coalition seats in NSW at the May federal election, without winning any NSW Labor seats in return, would possibly cost Morrison government.
Newspoll January-March Quarter 2022 suggests that the NSW Two-Party Preferred Vote of 54-46 in Labor's favour may produce a swing towards Labor of 5.8%, potentially gaining the Labor Party three additional seats in that state at the May federal election.
The Morgan Poll 22 March 2022 suggests that an even bigger 9.6% Two-Party Preferred swing to Labor could occur in News South Wales and a possible three to six seat gained at the federal election.
While the latest Ipsos Poll 3 April 2022 raises the possibility that a Two-Party Preferred swing of 6.8% would see Labor gain four seats in New South Wales.
The Essential Report 22 March 2022 showed that in New South Wales Scott Morrison's performance approval rating stood at 46%. Three was no breakdown of Anthony Albanese's performance approval rating at state level in this particular poll, however his national approval rating stood at 43%.
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