The Daily Telegraph - 'Giant green Left con job'

The Liberals are sharpening their election attack on the teal MPs who wiped the party out of key inner-city seats, branding the independents as a “giant green Left con job”. 

Opposition government services spokesman Paul Fletcher, who is facing a teal challenge in his seat of Bradfield at next year’s election, will on Monday launch an attack on the independent MPs and make the case for majority governments in favour of a crossbench-controlled minority. 

Highlighting the more than $10m spent across the seats won by teals at the 2022 election – and the fact the movement targeted Liberal and National seats – Mr Fletcher will argue a parliament filled with crossbench MPs is “unambiguously a bad thing”. 

In a speech to the Sydney Institute, he also will point to data from the parliament’s library on the teals’ voting patterns that show – for the “great majority of times” – they lined up with the Greens. Analysis of “substantive votes” on Bills, which if passed, would become laws, showed teal MPs voted on the same side as the Greens between 73 and 90 per cent of the time. 

“Those Australians who voted for a teal candidate on the premise that ‘that nice teal candidate could almost be Liberal’ were certainly not expecting to get an MP who voted very largely with the Greens,” Mr Fletcher will say. 

He also will argue that the teals made “zero practical difference” in the lower house, as Labor holds majority government. But he will say the presence of the teals makes it “vastly easier” for Labor to govern even with its ultra-slim majority, as the larger crossbench means the opposition is not able to keep the “knifeedge” pressure on the ALP. 

“As the 2025 election approaches, the public interest would be well served by more critical scrutiny of the teals and their moneyed mates,” he will say. 

Wentworth MP Allegra Spender described the Liberal tactics as prioritising “political games over policy”, noting her own record of supporting more Opposition motions than those of the government. 

“I vote every time in the interests of the community, not the party,” she said. 

Goldstein MP Zoe Daniel said the Coalition should focus on “putting some policies on the table”.