Sean Burke Politicom April 2, 2023
Leftist Liberal MP Natalie Ward has been schooled live on air after defending her factional boss Matt Kean’s hard-green policy agenda. The former State Roads Minister was brought to task by former PM Tony Abbott’s chief of staff Peta Credlin during last Saturday’s Sky News election coverage. If you think ‘more-of-Matt Kean’ is the way to get yourself into government you are kidding yourself. The Kean strategy has eroded margins right across the board – including in his own seat.
Ms Ward had claimed that Mr Kean’s pro-Greens agenda had successfully “batted away” a challenge from Teal candidates.
Ms Credlin, however, said that while the former Treasurer may have saved a handful of seats from Teals, his policies had, in the process, lost many more winnable seats.
“I’m sorry Natalie, but if you think this is the way to win elections, then good luck with that,” said Ms Credlin, who now hosts her own program on Sky News.
“You’ve won the battle to hold two or three Teal contested seats but you’ve lost the war, you are out of power,” she said.
“And don’t give me the twelve years stuff. If you think ‘more-of-Matt Kean’ is the way to get yourself into government you are kidding yourself.
“I think it’s delusional. What you have done, the Matt Kean strategy has eroded margins right across the board – including in his own seat.
“I’m not saying Dominic Perrottet didn’t sign-off on them, but the origins of the policies come from Kean.
“The wrong headedness has come from Kean. It’s absolutely apparent. They match his speeches, they match his rhetoric, particularly the damage he’s done on the energy stuff and that’s where you were king hit.
“Quite frankly if more Liberals spent more time working their seats and not shopping around for other seats, you’d all be in a better shape.”
Meanwhile, former Liberal Party member John Ruddick, who contested – and is likely to win – an upper house seat for the Liberal Democrats, said his old Party lacked “intellectual substance”.
“They are rejecting people with intellectual substance and they want people who are drones – and not creative thinkers,” Mr Ruddick said.
“That’s the biggest problem the Liberals now have. The Mafia-like gangs run the whole thing. They think half the country is going to vote Liberal, so they just have to have their mates wear the Liberal badge on election day.
“They are losing votes to the Left and to the Right. Look, I have mates in the Liberal Party who say they can turn it around. I gave up on them.”
Mr Ruddick said the Liberals had swung too far Left.
“We’re coming for them and we’re going to gobble them up,” he said.
“I look to someone like the Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis. He was elected four years ago on about 50.1 per cent of the vote.
“He’s just got re-elected with over 60 per cent of the vote and he has shown Right-of-centre Parties around the world how to be popular.”
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