From the National Press Club: The disdain for conservatives was palpable in Simon Holmes à Court’s address at the National Press Club in Canberra on March 12. It is interesting that the son of Robert Holmes à Court, Australia’s first billionaire (known as the ‘Great Acquirer’), appears less aggressive in business than he is politics.

Holmes à Court sees the Liberal Party as a great, big ‘carbon bomb’ that will go off if the Coalition are able to form a majority government later this year.

The Teals and the Greens have, in my opinion, the potential to fracture the left much like the conservative parties are fracturing the right. Naturally, both sides of the minor parties are arguing that a minority government is better than the alternative of a Labor or Coalition majority government. Holmes à Court referred to those people who intend to vote outside the two major parties as ‘double haters’ who are likely to bring about a minority government.

According to Holmes à Court, Climate 200, the non-party party that funds the non-party party Teals, has a strategy to target predominantly Coalition seats where the incumbent candidate’s primary vote is below 43 per cent. While we can expect some Labor seats to be targeted, it is still clear that the Teals are a leftist movement that is anti-Coalition to its core.

The Teals are also anti-Trump. Holmes à Court made a point of referring to Donald Trump’s ‘authoritarian populism’, despite Trump’s romping electoral success. It’s funny how the symbolic head of Climate 200 is all about a movement that started in the electorate of Indi regional Australia and it’s all about democracy. Unless the other team wins.

At the same time, he mentioned a group of teachers in the ACT who are apparently involved in fundraising for the Teals. No details were mentioned but this should be ringing alarm bells for anyone concerned about the growing group-think that is now part and parcel of our education system.

Former independent MP Tony Windsor was also in attendance. One person asked, ‘Is Rob under the table somewhere?’ Windsor, along with Rob Oakeshott, propped up the disastrous Gillard minority government that delivered the infamous misogyny speech and not much else, except perhaps the changes to the definition of ‘gender’ in legislation that has put real women in a precarious position.

At the time, and despite initial reports from all sides of the media that Gillard had shot herself in the foot with her misogyny speech, the symbolism soon turned foul towards Tony Abbott. Right up until Abbott romped home with the biggest electoral victory for the Coalition in years, that is. (Incidentally, it is time a wealthy patron put up a few dollars for a Prime Ministerial Library for Tony Abbott. But I digress.)

During his speech, Holmes à Court displayed his anti-Coalition credentials when he said:

‘The Coalition is still the greatest threat to climate action. Their nuclear policy is a Trojan horse for extending fossil fuels.’

I’d be interested to know what he intends to do about all his farting cows, but that doesn’t seem to enter the Teal’s climate equation as far as I can tell. As for the ‘half a trillion dollars’ to fund nuclear, Holmes à Court thinks that Whyalla’s green steel dream is a good idea, along with the blank cheque that the now invisible Minister for Climate Change (oh, and Energy) has signed with our money.

Two key themes in his address were most telling. First, his view that the Liberal Party has never been in majority government (apparently the ‘Coalition’ is always a minority government). Second, he mentioned Matt Kean and then seemingly in the same breath said that the Liberal Party was moving further and further to the right.

I found this statement absurd.

I do not know anybody who thinks the Liberal Party is drifting to the right. I’m pretty sure the Teals would be in danger if that were the case. Instead, the Liberal Party appears dead set on mimicking Labor and the Teals and losing elections. The recent defeat in Western Australia is a case in point. So too is the ACT election, which is a clear indicator of what you can expect from a Teals and Greens dominated minority government.

Nonetheless, Holmes à Court stated correctly that the three top political issues at the moment are (1) the cost of living crisis, (2) the cost of living crisis, and (3) the cost of living crisis.

But the Teals have no answer for the cost of living crisis. Much like the recent election in the ACT, the left are over-spending and racking up public debt. Victoria is worse but an election cannot come soon enough. In the meantime, the Teals want to virtue signal and take advantage of what Holmes à Court called ‘regular people’s frustration with the status quo’. If this means more public debt, then we really ought to make economics a compulsory part of the national curriculum.

For all the Teal’s hype, sitting through Holmes à Court reading out his prepared speech for an hour was uninspiring. He mentioned that the Coalition are focused on negativity and that the major parties are receiving less than 1 in 3 primary votes at elections. While this is for the most part correct, the alternative being offered by the Teals only received applause from less than one third of the room, no doubt mostly the rent-a-crowd, and all the questions from all sides of the media were far from Dorothy Dixers.

Put simply, there is hardly an election-changing moment at hand for the Teals.

Having said that, the Coalition better be planning a large-scale D-Day election campaign that will take the left by surprise. Otherwise, we can expect our living standards to continue to go down the gurgler, along with our energy security and our defence capacity, and all of it advocated by a non-party party that stands on the platform of ‘climate, integrity, and women’.

Frankly, I’d rather have a few dollars left over at the end of each fortnight.

Dr Michael de Percy FRSA FCILT MRSN @FlaneurPolitiq is a political scientist and political commentator. He is a member of the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy, Chairman of the ACT and Southern NSW Chapter of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, and a member of the Australian Nuclear Association. Michael is a graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon and was appointed to the College of Experts at the Australian Research Council in 2022. All opinions in this article are the author’s own.