CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
As Prime Minister Morrison takes body blow after body blow from his own MPs throwing him under buses to protect their own seats, the Liberal Party is now heading into an election looking like an assortment of indepedents.
With more and more Coalition members begging the Prime Minister to not visit them in their local communities, it has become clear that the biggest problem facing the Morrison Government is their leader.
With more and more Hawaii-sized fuck ups penetrating the Costello/Murdoch forcefield, it seems that both the Liberal backbenchers and the National Party heavyweights are having to get out there and run a campaign of their own. One that distances them from the Pentecostal churches of the Sutherland Shire.
A pioneer of the Liberal Party’s Not-Liberal-Party is Eastern Sydney MP Dave Sharma, who has already felt the wrath of voter frustration in the 2018 Wentworth By-Election – when he lost the Blue Ribbon seat once held by Malcolm Turnbull to celebrity Independent candidate Kerryn Phelps.
While he was able to claw back the seat for the Liberals four months later – once the animosity about Turnbull’s ousting had died down amongst Eastern Suburb voters – it seems nearly four years of Scott Morrison’s leadership has pushed him right back to square one.
In the 2022 Federal Election, Sharma is up against yet another prominent female business figure in the shape of Allegra Spender – the daughter of the late fashion icon Carla Zampatti and former Liberal MP John Spender.
While Sharma has done his best to combat the momentum of the Spender campaign by writing off her political ambitions as a ‘mid-life frolic’ – he does appear to be concerned.
So concerned that he has omitted any mention of the ‘Liberal Party’ in his election posters, choosing a shade of blue very similar to his independent rival, and kindly requested that only Josh Frydenberg fly up from Melbourne to help with the campaigning.
However, with Morrison being rolled grenades every minute by jilted members of his own party, it seems the embattled Dave Sharma has taken it one further today – by removing his name and face from all campaign material in the Eastern Suburbs.
The Liberal Party’s new posters in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney just show a teal placard with the words “Vote 1 For the person who is the current federal member for Sydney’s eastern suburbs’ in a bold play at winning over the crucial ‘status quo’ vote.
Internal Liberal polls show Dave Sharma currently leading well with voters who haven’t been watching the news for the last decade, and confused Brazilian backpackers who assumed his posters actually belong to the Spender campaign.
