The well-informed Nick Cater has been writing about this week’s non-event, the appointment by Sussan Ley of a shadow ministry. A shadow cabinet so shadowy as to be operating in almost total darkness.

Not to mention the apparent formalisation of a new “non-coalition” of the unwilling.

TENSION

He says: “The tension between the Liberal modernisers and conservatives that overshadowed three terms in government lay dormant under Dutton. Not any more.|

Calling the wets “modernisers” seems to me to be bordering on the too-kind. But we can let that pass.

The shape of Ley’s shadow ministry was well summarised by The Spectator’s Terry Barnes in his Morning Double Shot.

“The federal Coalition is a thing again. The paper was signed last week, and the announcement Sussan Ley’s shadow ministry announcement soon followed. And what a shadow ministry it is.

“Stuffed with wets and factional allies. Good people – not just conservatives or Angus Taylor backers – demoted or dumped. Good people promoted to portfolios mismatched with their skills and expertise.

“Other good people not promoted quickly or high enough. Two former Nationals leaders left in the freezer. Matt Canavan declining so he can lead the fight against net-zero that his leaders won’t. With the bad blood after the Coalition’s abortive split not going away anytime soon, it’s a frontbench for an insecure leadership that gives itself 18 months at most to perform or die.”

This week’s non-event only makes sense in the context of the Liberal wets’ successful efforts before the election to defenestrate Peter Dutton.

Running dead, head office “bungles”, Jacinta Price, the Nats, Littleproud and all that. It looks very much like the Libs are still running dead, so long as the “right” people get to keep control of the thing.

Nick Cater mentioned two names in his dissection of the recent Liberal power plays that rang familiar and caught my attention. Both belong to a pair of factional unflushables of whom most Australians (other than readers here) would never have heard.

These two – Hawke and Photios – seem still to run the Liberal Party, judging by the machinations involved in constructing the shadow ministry.

And by Hawke, I decidedly do not mean Bob, one of the nation’s better prime ministers. It is one of life’s minor travesties that Alex Hawke shares his name.

DEPORTED

Hawke II is the guy who had Novak Djokovic deported in 2022 for not taking ScoMo’s jab – because D-joker might have become a “talisman” for anti-vaxxers down under.

Well, he was a hero to those of us who avoided the kill-shot, but we didn’t need to wear his presence like some old good luck charm.

(In ejecting, possibly, the greatest tennis player of all time from our shores, Hawke will go down the plug hole of history with his former ministerial colleagues, Barnaby Joyce, who will be most remembered for ejecting Johnny Depp’s dogs, and Karen Andrews, who sent the wonderful Katie Hopkins packing for cracking jokes about our COVID fascism. I don’t know much about Depp’s dogs, but in each of the other two cases, the ejectee far surpasses the ejector in class and achievement.)

Yes, Alex Hawke is still around. Unflushable. Pulling strings for sock puppets.

Michael Photios runs a political mates consultancy and makes phone calls to ministers for his clients to get favourable decisions done. Presumably, Photios’s consultancy clients now routinely include wind farm and solar farm types.

It is unknown (perhaps not unknown to Nick) whether Albo’s chief climate operative, Black Hand member, LINO and former Photios acolyte Matt Kean, was also a lunch attendee.

Hilariously, the goons at The Saturday Paper seem to think, or at least want to pretend for their Leftard readers, that it is Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin who control the Liberals.

Alas, these two never did – and still don’t.

If they have been attempting to, they have certainly been doing a crap job of it. We all know where the fantasy-suggestion that they are would have come from.

Back to reality.

If the events of this past week seem a little familiar to those with longish memories and a more-than-passing knowledge of the politics of the Rum Corps State, well, there is a reason for that.

Sussan Ley bears more than a passing political resemblance to one Gladys Berejiklian.

Ley was born in Kano, Nigeria, to British parents. Both are “moderates” (another let-off-lightly euphemism), both are women – big tick for the feminists among us – both see the future of the Liberal Party in their own images, a long way from Menzies’ and Howard’s “broad church” coalition. And a long way from the aspirations of their Party’s members and voters.

Here is the thing. Gladys’s first ministry (in 2017) was alleged to have been personally picked by Michael Photios. Just like Ley’s in 2025.

Like the late Labor Senator Mal Colston, Alex Hawke is a factional animal. He used to be a Right winger in Macquarie Street and the mentee of a socially conservative guy called David Clarke.

GREATNESS

Then Hawke saw his opportunity for greatness, and a seat in Canberra.

He spilt his then-faction. He did deals with Photios (of the dominant NSW Left), and has been doing them ever since. Basically, to ensure their own longevity as factional warlords.

Only, unlike Robert Ray and Graham Richardson of Labor legend, who were nasty and the perpetrators of truly ugly deeds but who at least were massively successful electorally, these two couldn’t organise a root in a brothel. So to speak.

They certainly cannot organise the basics of election campaigns or getting the Liberals into government. Oh, wait a minute, that isn’t always their aim.

They just excel in creating nondescript, irrelevant shadow cabinets and getting the odd Teal-impersonator into a city seat.

They (Hawke II and Photios) are both still in situ. Very much so. Hawke is apparently Sussan Ley’s numbers man. He did the same job for Scotty from Marketing. He again prospers, this time as Shadow Minister for Industry & Innovation – as well as manager of opposition business in the House of Representatives.

A good return for Alex, given his priorities. That is, himself and his faction.

And what have these self-absorbed swamp dwellers achieved for the country?

Well, the final Senate count is now in. Labor and the Greens do not need any other support to get legislation through the Upper House.

Sky News says the Senate cross bench is “irrelevant”. That includes One Nation’s four and Ralph Babet, reduced to being inquisitive in committees and making great speeches of little consequence. (Gerard Rennick is gone, sadly.)

Not great reading and not a pretty legacy for those who conspired to engineer Dutton’s and the Liberals’ ignominious defeat.

We shouldn’t forget, too, that the behind-closed-doors machinations of the Liberal wets and their careerist fellow travelers are not just disenfranchising the one third of voters who have abandoned the legacy Parties and have gone elsewhere – non-voters, informal voters and voters for alt-Parties – but they are also disenfranchising probably two thirds of their own Liberal voters.

TAKEOVER

Those who are well to the Right of those who have engineered a reverse takeover of their Party. Those who still (unaccountably) have blind faith in the principles that once underpinned their Party of choice, or perhaps simply see them as less-worse than Labor and The Greens.

But you have got to admire the sheer fully-formedness of the perfectly vertically and horizontally integrated Photios/Hawke business model. All beautifully insider/elitist, with little if any nodding either to rationality or virtue.

Let alone any sense of democracy. Not even a whiff of recognition of the popular will. They are a cartel.

Here are the core elements of the model:

• Seize factional control.
• Rig all the pre-selections.
• Factionally control who gets promoted to the ministry.
• Get the Premier/Prime Minister/Opposition Leader you have engineered into that position to put in your own people.
• Then, when they are ministers, get paid for putting vested interests in touch with them, knowing they owe you for their entire grubby career.
• Oh, finally, get the other factional leaders (like Hawke II) to join the in-house mutual benefits club.
• You even get your globalist policies, to the extent you have the remotest interest in policy outcomes, implemented. Net-zero, anyone? Renewables? Mass immigration? Public health run by the WHO? Compulsory clot-shots.

Everyone’s a winner, baby, and that’s no lie. Not quite, though.