This election wasn’t a contest of ideas. It was a funeral procession for conservative certainty, stage-managed by a Prime Minister who governs like a weather report – calm, consistent, and impossible to remember. And into the vacuum where the Liberal Party once stood marched a dozen middle management independents, dressed in pastel, promising integrity and solar panels. The funeral was tasteful. The coffin was Teal.
We’re told the Teals retained their seats – yes, they did – and they will continue to warm them.
Let’s drop the fantasy that the Teals are a grassroots phenomenon. They are a curated vengeance: a boutique moral rebrand of a party the moderates could no longer lead.
Their purpose was never to govern. It was to bleed out the right – which they’ve done, even if it meant cannibalising some of their own.
Now, left with no enemy, the Teals are politically redundant – seat-warmers in Veronika Maine blazers, mouthing progressive platitudes and moving amendments.
They speak of climate and civility, but avoid the hard edges of leadership.
They’re polite placeholders. Inoffensively packaged, strategically moderate, and ideologically weightless.
Labor’s dominance wasn’t driven by passion. It’s driven by exhaustion. After a decade of masculine chaos – Abbott, Morrison, Dutton – the public chose Alban-easy. Albanese offered steadiness, not inspiration. He didn’t spark a movement. He offered managerial peace.
But with the Liberals dead and the Teals again irrelevant, Labor governs alone – and unthreatened. The Teals cannot challenge them. They were designed to resist the right – not lead the centre. They do not have a next act.
And yet, something stirs beneath the surface.
Because here is the truth: Teal voters are already restless.
Not all – but enough.
They bought the product. The glossy branding. The promise of cleaner politics, feminised leadership, and social progress without structural discomfort. But after the photo ops fade and the soundbites settle, there’s very little heat behind the halo. The Teals don’t lead. They pose.
And more and more of their voters are noticing.
Especially the young disruptors – the ones who are ambitious, curious, and disillusioned with mediocrity. The ones who want someone real.
The woman who is coming…
She won’t look like the Teals. She won’t beg for approval. She won’t talk in therapeutic half-sentences or compromise herself into irrelevance.
She will be sharp, eloquent, and intellectually dangerous. She will dress with intent. Speak with precision. Laugh when she pleases and silence a room when required. She won’t flatten her femininity to fit into the boy’s club, and she won’t soften her authority to keep other women comfortable.
She will not merely be liked – she will be wanted by voters who didn’t realise how tired they were of watching women apologise for power.
And when she arrives, the Teals won’t endorse her.
But their voters? Many of them already want her.
They just don’t know her name yet.