Peter Dutton is in the frame, of course, but so are some of his “colleagues” – thanks to the timely intervention of Big Bad George, aka George Christensen.

Seemingly, all sorts of anonymous apparatchiks are coming to George with very nasty anecdotes. He is now seeking even more Liberal whistleblowers. The story may even one day get to the legacy media.

MODERATE

The Liberals’ leadership contest seems to have devolved into a contest between an archetypal female “moderate”, Sussan Ley, and a conservatives-in-name-only (CINO) male, Angus Taylor, who was apparently doing the numbers for a leadership tilt weeks before the May 3 election.

Ley once used taxpayer funds to fly to the Gold Coast to buy a property from a Liberal donor.

But other bits of establishment right-to-rule nonsense are in play, too.

According to the National Michael McCormack, who no one has ever heard of despite once leading the Party, the high informal vote in his electorate of Riverina was “shameful”.

At the time of his comments, the informal vote topped 11,000 or around 10 per cent of eligible voters. This is up around 4000 from 2022, and the number is growing.

The ABC also dragged out a political science professor from the glorified TAFE, Charles Sturt University, to join the conversation.

Voting behaviour is notoriously difficult to analyse. Short of asking every voter, including those voting informally, why he or she voted a certain way, it is all guess work and some deduction.

The academic suggests that the more the candidates in an election, the higher the likelihood of an informal vote.

There were certainly more candidates in many seats this time, in part due to the growth of generally (alas) useless micro Parties. These mainly ensure that it just takes longer for preferences to get to the CINO candidate. The increase in candidates may or may not cause voter confusion. It may do.

An equally plausible theory is that disillusion with the UniParty is growing apace with the passing years.

McCormack wants first past the post, or, rather, optional preferential voting. He thinks that would help him and other establishment pollies.

When you look at their proposed “reforms”, both McCormack and CSU’s Professor O’Sullivan seem to think that it is the system that is at fault. That voters are merely confused.

But what if it is disillusion that is driving much of the new voting behaviour? Increased non-voter turnout – that I have previously canvassed – suggests that there is much to the disillusion thesis.

WICKED

McCormack seems to agree. His word “shameful” wreaks of his unstated assumption that “wasting” a vote is somehow wicked.

Here is what he says: Mr McCormack said the figures were “shameful” and suggested voters who wasted their ballot should not complain if things did not go their way.

“There are 103,000 names on the Roll of Honour at the war memorial so that people could get a free and fair vote,” the Riverina MP said.

“Anybody who wastes their vote needs to take a good, long, hard look at themselves.”

God help us all. He is even invoking the war dead to bag the shameful deplorables.

The ABC report says: “Former deputy prime minister Michael McCormack has criticised constituents after a sharp increase in informal votes in his rural NSW electorate.”

This statement indicates quite clearly that it is the voters, not the system, that he is actually railing against.

Yet his “solution” is to tinker with the electoral system. Such as move would make it easier for the mistaken informals to cast a valid vote. But that is not the main problem for McCormack.

Let us just say, charitably, that he is a bit confused.

I lean towards the idea that this “shameful” behaviour is highly rational and only to be expected when the establishment types in the House of Representatives ignore voters’ wishes, break promises, outsource policy to the unelected, focus on BS frippery, engage in performative “retail politics” of nil value and “solve” problems that do not exist.

One could go further. Flipping the bird at the ruling class might well be seen as a moral duty. The duty of law-abiding citizens to disobey bad laws and make life difficult, in whatever miniscule ways we can, for those who visit such laws upon us. The list of elites’ specific transgressions is too long and too familiar to repeat here.

FRINGE

The McCormack class never seems to stop and to ponder why there are no so many “fringe” candidates in so many seats.

Here is a hint – your class has failed us, and people are realising that to keep voting the same old way and expecting a different outcome is a fool’s errand.

Perhaps they don’t like all the lies (see under Albo) and the empty promises and ongoing chicanery (see under the Libs) and wish to send a message.

Alas, a message that is still not heeded, as the factions and the hangers-on continue to this minute with their self-serving games.

It is noteworthy that around 35 per cent of formal voters are now routinely sending this very message.