THREE weeks after WA’s radical Liberals were butchered at the ballot box, NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean has called for the Party to shift even further Left.
The WA Liberals, who now hold just two of the State’s 59 parliamentary seats, had attempted to outgreen The Greens, calling for net-zero carbon emissions a full 20 years earlier than Labor.
- Kean has a reputation for ambushing his own Party's centre-Right members.
- He's been described as the Liberal's very own Kevin Rudd – a disaster-in-waiting.
- The 41-year-old has been involved in politics since he was a student.
In the electoral massacre that resulted, Party leader Zac Kirkup was booted from parliament and his Party was reduced to independent status. The Nationals, not the Liberals, are now WA’s official State opposition with four seats.
Regardless, the NSW Energy & Environment Minister told The Australian newspaper this week that he was right to drag the Liberal Party to the Left.
“We cannot allow the Liberal base to become a very narrow section of the community,” Mr Kean told The Australian’s Kylar Loussikian.
REJECTED
“You cannot deny the fact that large sections of our base no longer feel represented by the Party, which is why they rejected Liberal-thinking candidates in seats like Warringah, Indi and Mayo.”
Mr Kean has a reputation for ambushing his own Party and publicly inflicting damage to centre-Right colleagues.
One Party member told The Australian he had “poor form”. Another said he was “just not f..king normal”.
A third described him as a disaster waiting to happen – the Liberal Party’s very own Kevin Rudd.
“He’s our Kevin Rudd if Kevin Rudd ran a faction … totally obsessed by the media.”
Just last year Prime Minister Scott Morrison gave Mr Kean a public dressing down over his “science is settled” stance on climate policy.
In a TV interview, the PM said Mr Kean “didn’t know what he was talking about, that he was an unknown in [federal] cabinet and that he didn’t have a clue what was going on”.
HAZARD
The Prime Minister even gave Mr Kean public instruction on how to do his job.
“I think Matt should focus on [fire] hazard reduction, I’ll focus on emissions reduction,” he said.
The 40-something-year-old Mr Kean has been involved in politics since he was a teenager.
He has since risen to become a senior player in NSW’s ultra-Left “moderate” faction, which has a sordid history of manipulating Party preselections to advance Left-wing politicians and policy.
Constitutional academic Prof David Flint said on Friday that political leadership had been diminished as a result of “compromised” preselections.
“The political Parties have been taken over. They were once mass Parties. The Labor Party was a mass Party, the Liberal Party was a mass Party and they were run by the members of the Party and their supporters,” Prof Flint told Sky News anchor Cory Bernardi.
COMPROMISED
“That’s still the case in relation to the Republican Party in the United States,” he said.
“Preselections, as we would call them, are decided by registered supporters. That’s how Donald Trump got in.”
Prof Flint said the political system in Australia had been completely compromised.
“The Parties have been taken over so that most preselections are not based on merit – forget about sex, they’re not even based on merit,” he said.
“Those preselections are run on the basis of loyalty by the candidate to a particular powerbroker.
“We are getting people into politics who don’t have the public’s interest, which they should have in order to go into politics. And they certainly don’t have the experience.
“We are seeing people go into politics who have no life experience. Look at the background of just about everybody on the National Cabinet.”
He said most of them had been politicians – or in the political preparation period – all of their lives.
“Very few have had very real jobs,” he said.PC
It’s hard to tell who would win ‘The Dumbest Politician in Australia’ award – Matt Kean or Chris Bowen.
Only way for NSW to ignore Kean’s madness is for government to ignore it most. If this government won’t ignore him, we will change them for a government which will.
The NSW government is good at ignoring, they’re ignoring the broader population, they’re ignoring long suffering party members and they’re ignoring common sense.
Being better than the alternative is not enough to deserve my vote! I’m not going to gift my vote to anyone who does not represent me and my community.
Kean must go! And so must the factional corruption he represents. The previous government brought about its demise through corruption and self interest, NSW shouldn’t cop the same corruption from any government, regardless of the banner they fly.
You posed the question at the beginning of your article ‘What should voters do?’ In WA they voted for the Nationals who are now the dominant Coalition Party. John Barrillaro is a conservative, hoodwinked into submission by the currently dominant Left Liberals. Look at the difference between Mark Latham – Labour Leader , and Mark Latham now that he can do his own thing. If he had a strong enough Party he would get the conservative vote hands down!! I think voters can answer their own question just by considering those ideas.
Matt Kean, has support in the Liberal Party which means there is more than one idiot in the party who wants to lose the election.
The Liberal party has lost my vote , until he goes.
re.MATT KEAN
I absolutely agree that Matt Kean is just not normal – and that is insulting normal.
My husband and self have been members for a long time and maybe are old fashioned. We certainly did not intend to join The Greens. We appreciate how hard Alister Henskins works and help him when possible. However we cannot understand how he has not been chosen in a Ministerial position. Guess as not in a Faction!!
We are just so disappointed with the way the Liberal Party we knew is heading. One just cannot compare the abilities of Alistair and Kean and we absolutely agree with your reader who stated he is mad.
It has become obvious the Liberal Party has been not only infiltrated but taken over by the those of the Left and Turnbull’s brand is all over it. I don’t know how it will return to the conservative values we once knew but unless Tony Abbott returns we can kiss goodbye to the old Liberal Party. Please google “Soros and his U.S. and Australian Minions”. for the problem.
What is it that when Political Parties start to converge their ideologies, their policies and directions that it confuses far too many of the voting community as to who is going to delivery the best outcome? Is there any wonder why more and more that the “confused” voted start to go for the likes of One Nation (if more conservative) or Greens (if more Socialist). Perhaps the Australian Liberal Party is confusing itself from the policies and socialist ideologies of the Liberal political parties of the UK or the USA
Matt Kean is far too interested in self (OGM, Malcolm Turnbull’s “Shadow Minister”) than what those who elected him for would prefer (I am willing to bet he did not canvass his constituents) and he deserves to either be voted out for a more conservative local state member (one Nation where are you here?), and reshuffled from the ministry, or at best, removed from the Liberal Party.
How embarrassing for our Premier to allow this sort of decision to be made and then having to back peddle. Gladys you cannot afford to let this Liberal MP make any emotive decision again, let alone one which moves your party towards the left so far you have little left to discriminate Liberal Party from Labor Party.
Kean seems to be a narcististic puppet in the Photios puppet show. They allegedly exploit public subsidies to maximise their own greedy returns from the various renewables scams destroying Australia. Gladys seems like a hostage to the factional left. The NSW libs need a big clean out to restore policies that build Australia rather than destroy it. Gladys is hiding behind her comparative success with the handling of the virus at present. This was a low bar given the pathetic handling by other states. Time to hold Gladys, Kean and Photios accountable before NSW returns to the dark ages, literally.
Morris and Texas Jack have commented well on Sean’s so horribly true article and so I can only add:
GLADYS – ALL RED/GREEN CANCER CELLS must be excised immediately – NOW – or total destruction will follow as surely as night follows day!
Gladys is a RED/GREEN CANCER CELL.
Members of the Liberal Party need to understand one very important number – 14.14.
Why’s that?
That’s the two-party preferred swing against the Party in the recent WA Election where the Liberal leadership explicitly offered voters the policies of the media-left with all the woke and green trimmings that could be packaged by a Liberal Moderate running as a ‘refreshing progressive’.
Just let that sink in.
When voters are offered a choice between a Labor Party running hard for the political centre, and a Labor-Lite ALP/Greens forgery of the kind Matt Kean espouses – they simply dump the Liberals.
There will be those that argue the WA Liberals demise can simply be chalked-up to Mark McGowan’s clever exploitation of COVID-19 restrictions, and there are grains of truth in this. What they’re ignoring is that in similar electoral circumstances, Deb Freckilington’s LNP actually managed to increase the LNP’s primary vote by +2.2% while going down to Anastacia Palaszczuk back in October – in the middle of the pandemic lockdowns.
Those of us who’ve handed out Coalition how-to-vote cards for many years (in my case 47-years) may no longer be deemed worth listening to. That’s okay by me. I will simply stop voting for anyone but a well-loved old donkey.
“I will simply stop voting for anyone but a well-loved old donkey.”
My own strategy is to put a zero in each box for the lower house and to vote for my preferred conservative party in the senate. There is good reason for using zeros as opposed to donkey voting, as it ensure that no funds go to undeserving parties – from the Wikipedia article on political funding in Australia:
“After each election, the Australian Electoral Commission distributes a set amount of money to each political party, per vote received. For example, after the 2013 election, political parties and candidates received $58.1 million in election funding. The Liberal Party received $23.9 million in public funds, as part of the Coalition total of $27.2 million, while the Labor Party received $20.8 million.”
As for Kean, he looks, speaks and acts exactly as one would expect of someone who has been involved in politics since their teens: thoroughly self-centred and entirely divorced from reality, to the extent that he honestly believes that he can bring about a desired outcome by simply giving utterance to his wild fantasies. He is the epitome of everything that is wrong with politics in this country, and a symptom of the aggressive cancer of socialism that has reduced the “Liberal” party to what it is today: a clamorous pack of jackals fighting over the carcass of Australian democracy.