Latest news with #Libs
7NEWS
a day ago
- Politics
- 7NEWS
South Australian Liberal Nicola Centofanti repeatedly forgets names of FIVEAA hosts in radio trainwreck
So-called train wreck interviews must be avoided at all costs by politicians, and they usually are. But the Liberal leader in South Australia's Upper House must be wishing she'd stayed in bed for a sleep-in this morning rather than appear on breakfast radio. Nicola Centofanti volunteered her voice to radio station FIVEAA. She was explaining why the Liberals are attempting to block new government regulations which are aimed at making public transport safer, with potential lifetime bans for violent offenders. Centofanti got off to a rocky start calling the presenters by their wrong names. Instead of 'good morning, Will and David' she kicked off by greeting 'Matt and Dave'. They were the long-time arch enemies of AA on the radio waves, namely Matt Abraham and David Bevan on ABC breakfast radio. Abraham at least now contributes to AA, whereas Bevan has retired and ridden off into the well-superannuated sunset. AA announcers David Penberthy and Will Goodings were clearly unimpressed and corrected her for which she apologised. But 30 seconds later she doubled up, again wrongly referring to them as Matt and Dave. Penbo's fuse was getting shorter by the second, eventually accusing her of 'having the disrespect of not knowing our damned names'. Name calling, or miscalling, aside, why was Centofanti on in the first place? The Liberals have called for a tougher stance on law and order, but feel the new regulations are being pushed too quickly through the SA Parliament. 'These regulations are being rushed through without consultation,' she claimed. 'We need time for these regulations.' The Libs' new concern is of potential unintended consequences from lifetime bans for troublemakers. From July 1, the transport minister will have the discretion of banning commuters who cause trouble on trams, trains and buses. That may be for a week, a month, or life. Unions are in full support, having seen drivers assaulted with almost weekly incidents of violence towards passengers as well. It's hard to argue against strong action being needed sooner rather than later. Why the Libs are now trying to stall the regulations coming into force seems bewildering. In a muddled explanation, Centofanti claimed that victims of domestic violence could get caught up in the mayhem and be wrongly banned from catching public transport. But I've got news for her. The regulations are going to happen anyway. Centofanti and the Libs had a lot to learn from today's transport-related train wreck, pardon the pun. It's unforgiveable to get announcers' names wrong, especially when the other pair has been absent together from the airwaves for almost a decade. That howler and the basis of her wobbly argument were then ridiculed by the right pair as 'just amateurish'. With the state election nine months away, Centofanti is likely to become a Liberal voice for various campaign matters. If this maiden voyage is anything to go by, she may struggle for relevance. Any future appearance on FIVEAA breakfast is likely to be greeted with some mirth from David and Will. They're totally professional and not vindictive types, but deserve a better performance than Centofanti dished up, or perhaps Liberal leader Vincent Tarzia should take reins next time.
7NEWS
5 days ago
- Business
- 7NEWS
Mike Smithson: SA Liberal leader Vincent Tarzia facing the most important week of his political career with stamp duty pledge
SA Liberal leader Vincent Tarzia is facing the most important week of his political career. His budget response speech will be minutely scrutinised this week as an early indication of him having the right stuff to lead the state after the general election next March. The Libs have finally gone on the front foot after a seeming endless policy vacuum with their chances of victory still at such long odds. But they've now opened the door with an ambitious pledge to cut stamp duty for first home buyers on any property, new or existing, up to $1 million. 'The Liberals are for lower taxes for hardworking South Australians,' Tarzia told ABC radio. 'Helping people get into the housing market, who're taking 12 years to save for a deposit, is part of this ambitious new policy,' he said. It seems all good on paper with an estimated saving of $50,000 for any struggling home buyer coping with a $1million debt. So, what's the catch? The Opposition concedes its plan will cost the SA Budget $100 million in lost stamp duty revenue. The Government has done its sums and estimates it's more likely to be $130 million. Treasurer Stephen Mullighan had a moment of hesitation when describing Vincent Tarzia's housing blueprint. 'Mr Tarzia is talking out of his…hat,' Mullighan claimed with an emphasised timely pause. 'It will benefit the vendor driving up the demand for homes and making buyers worse off,' he said. 'He's (Tarzia) happy to forego the revenue for an even high state debt.' With SA's projected debt to hit $48 billion by 2028 every dollar of conceded revenue is obviously a problem for the Treasurer. The Liberals are confident that 5,000 new home buyers would take up the offer but couldn't provide any conclusive independent analysis. 'The government is piling in the cash and they're banking millions,' according to Tarzia. Both sides are claiming the high moral ground when it comes to battlers in the marketplace. The Government already offers stamp duty relief for new builds and has also opened vast tracts of land in the outer suburbs. It also boasts urban infill in areas closer to the CBD for those who want to live nearer to the city but on smaller allotments. The Libs see their promise will appeal to more young people wanting to buy established homes just around the corner from mum and dad. Some of Tarzia's critics say he's only appealing to a small potential supporter base who currently don't own homes. The counter argument is that many of those voters have parents and grandparents who are desperately worried about their offspring ever being able to break into the real estate market. Those older swinging voters may be ripe for the picking on political perceptions alone. The government needs to be careful in dismissing the Libs' plan as ridiculous. I'm increasingly convinced that Labor thinks it has the next election already won. Most pundits in South Australia are also firmly of that view. But policies create chatter which, in turn, send growing ripples across the political pond. The Libs still have a raft of ideas to announce, but Tarzia's next task is to perform a showman-like presentation during his budget reply speech. If he falters there, vital momentum is guaranteed to be lost.
The Age
30-05-2025
- Politics
- The Age
Coalition of the unwilling: Climate wars will soon eclipse reunification relief
That gets close, but, in truth, Ley didn't even go that far. All she agreed to was that the Coalition would support an end to the moratorium on the building of nuclear power plants. She emphatically did not agree to finance and build seven nuclear power plants. Not even one. On the other three areas that Peter Dutton's Coalition had taken to the election and that Littleproud insisted remain, Ley has agreed but so hedged them with conditions that they are almost meaningless. Loading And what of Littleproud's other early demand – that Nationals' members of a Coalition shadow cabinet should not be bound by the principle of solidarity? He quickly abandoned that when it was roundly rejected. He achieved nothing he couldn't have accomplished with a quiet conversation behind closed doors, as is customary between the Libs and Nats. All he's managed to do is make himself a laughingstock with a limited leadership lifespan. And diminish the entire Coalition in the process. So far, the Liberals have done two things right since the election. First, they elected a woman as leader. Second, that woman handled the Nat spat with calm and steely grace. But the really hard part lies ahead, and the Coalition ruction was the opening act. 'It wasn't a fight about four policies,' says a Liberal. 'It was really about us being totally fine with them running all over us in three or six months' time when we reach a policy on climate change.' The climate wars are over. And the Coalition lost. But it will have great difficulty in accepting this fact. The Liberals have undertaken to review their policy; it will be traumatic. Ley will want to bring the party to a recognition that climate change is not only real but a reality that the party must embrace in its policies: 'You won't see any climate denial from Sussan,' says a Liberal from her camp. 'It's about respectful engagement, so voters understand that we are believers.' The pollster Jim Reed of Resolve Strategic says that this is an irreducible minimum for any party that hopes to win power. 'In the early to mid-2000s we regularly asked a question in our polling – do you believe in climate change? Very quickly, over two or three years, it became redundant,' he tells me. 'Speaking to tradies in focus groups, a no-nonsense group who, in the past, would have had some of the doubters in it, today, they say 'yes, and we can see it happening, we see the effects.' The ship has sailed.' Yet climate disbelief runs deep in the surviving members of the Coalition. In the Nats, certainly. Littleproud says he supports the pre-existing Coalition commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050. But Barnaby Joyce, Matt Canavan, Michael McCormack, Colin Boyce and Llew O'Brien, at a minimum, will fight to defeat it. Loading But climate scepticism also runs strongly through the ranks of the Libs, as Andrew Hastie reminded us this week: 'I think the question of net zero, that's a straitjacket that I'm already getting out of,' the new shadow minister for Home Affairs told the ABC. 'The real question is should Australian families and businesses be paying more for their electricity?' Other Liberals, even climate sceptics, think it's time for the party to bow before the electoral reality. 'Some of the colleagues still haven't absorbed the magnitude of our loss,' says one who, like Hastie, is a frontbencher from the party's conservative side. 'When they walk into the House, and they're confronted with the wall of Labor MPs, it will be a reality check for them. We'll see the final numbers and see what we have to do if we want to get back into government – it'll be of the order of 30 seats or around a 7 per cent swing.' A daunting prospect and extraordinarily difficult to accomplish in a single term. 'I can't think of a single seat in the country that we'll be able to win without a commitment to net zero.' Liberal Zoe McKenzie points to a statistic that should rivet the party's attention. Of the 151 seats in the House, 88 are metropolitan. Of those, the Coalition occupies just eight. This is, in effect, the banishment of the Liberal Party from the cities of Australia. Even if the Coalition can hold those eight and win all the other 63 city seats in the parliament, it would hold a total of only 71. In other words, it's mathematically impossible for it to win a majority, which is 76, without returning to metropolitan Australia. And belief in climate change is the price of admission to city seats. McKenzie, factionally non-aligned and freshly elected to a second term in the seat of Flinders covering Victoria's Mornington Peninsula, hopes that the party retains its net zero commitment. As it debates the policy, she wants the party to 'keep the voices of the ghosts alive,' meaning all the moderate Liberals who lost their seats in recent elections. The former MPs who'd be arguing in favour of net zero and climate-friendly policy. Loading Overarching all of this is the larger question of the party's political philosophy. Fundamentally, the Liberals have to decide whether they are the party of Robert Menzies or Rupert Murdoch. Menzies was a great pragmatist, principled but not ideological, who adapted to his times. He was preoccupied with the concerns and interests of the suburban middle class, not the capitalist class but the ordinary men and women of aspiration. Murdoch is a right-wing populist interested in pressing always further rightward to build constituencies favourable to his own business interests. The Liberals have to choose. Once they decide whether to continue following the Murdoch pied piper to electoral irrelevance or to rediscover the Menzian attachment to middle Australia, all their other choices will become clearer. And the Nationals? They are now reduced to four senators. The same number as One Nation. And, like One Nation, the Nationals won a touch over 6 per cent of the national primary vote for the House. 'We, as Liberals, would never allow One Nation to determine our policies,' points out a Lib. So, his logic runs, why should the party accept the Nationals' terms?
Sydney Morning Herald
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
Coalition of the unwilling: Climate wars will soon eclipse reunification relief
That gets close, but, in truth, Ley didn't even go that far. All she agreed to was that the Coalition would support an end to the moratorium on the building of nuclear power plants. She emphatically did not agree to finance and build seven nuclear power plants. Not even one. On the other three areas that Peter Dutton's Coalition had taken to the election and that Littleproud insisted remain, Ley has agreed but so hedged them with conditions that they are almost meaningless. Loading And what of Littleproud's other early demand – that Nationals' members of a Coalition shadow cabinet should not be bound by the principle of solidarity? He quickly abandoned that when it was roundly rejected. He achieved nothing he couldn't have accomplished with a quiet conversation behind closed doors, as is customary between the Libs and Nats. All he's managed to do is make himself a laughingstock with a limited leadership lifespan. And diminish the entire Coalition in the process. So far, the Liberals have done two things right since the election. First, they elected a woman as leader. Second, that woman handled the Nat spat with calm and steely grace. But the really hard part lies ahead, and the Coalition ruction was the opening act. 'It wasn't a fight about four policies,' says a Liberal. 'It was really about us being totally fine with them running all over us in three or six months' time when we reach a policy on climate change.' The climate wars are over. And the Coalition lost. But it will have great difficulty in accepting this fact. The Liberals have undertaken to review their policy; it will be traumatic. Ley will want to bring the party to a recognition that climate change is not only real but a reality that the party must embrace in its policies: 'You won't see any climate denial from Sussan,' says a Liberal from her camp. 'It's about respectful engagement, so voters understand that we are believers.' The pollster Jim Reed of Resolve Strategic says that this is an irreducible minimum for any party that hopes to win power. 'In the early to mid-2000s we regularly asked a question in our polling – do you believe in climate change? Very quickly, over two or three years, it became redundant,' he tells me. 'Speaking to tradies in focus groups, a no-nonsense group who, in the past, would have had some of the doubters in it, today, they say 'yes, and we can see it happening, we see the effects.' The ship has sailed.' Yet climate disbelief runs deep in the surviving members of the Coalition. In the Nats, certainly. Littleproud says he supports the pre-existing Coalition commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050. But Barnaby Joyce, Matt Canavan, Michael McCormack, Colin Boyce and Llew O'Brien, at a minimum, will fight to defeat it. Loading But climate scepticism also runs strongly through the ranks of the Libs, as Andrew Hastie reminded us this week: 'I think the question of net zero, that's a straitjacket that I'm already getting out of,' the new shadow minister for Home Affairs told the ABC. 'The real question is should Australian families and businesses be paying more for their electricity?' Other Liberals, even climate sceptics, think it's time for the party to bow before the electoral reality. 'Some of the colleagues still haven't absorbed the magnitude of our loss,' says one who, like Hastie, is a frontbencher from the party's conservative side. 'When they walk into the House, and they're confronted with the wall of Labor MPs, it will be a reality check for them. We'll see the final numbers and see what we have to do if we want to get back into government – it'll be of the order of 30 seats or around a 7 per cent swing.' A daunting prospect and extraordinarily difficult to accomplish in a single term. 'I can't think of a single seat in the country that we'll be able to win without a commitment to net zero.' Liberal Zoe McKenzie points to a statistic that should rivet the party's attention. Of the 151 seats in the House, 88 are metropolitan. Of those, the Coalition occupies just eight. This is, in effect, the banishment of the Liberal Party from the cities of Australia. Even if the Coalition can hold those eight and win all the other 63 city seats in the parliament, it would hold a total of only 71. In other words, it's mathematically impossible for it to win a majority, which is 76, without returning to metropolitan Australia. And belief in climate change is the price of admission to city seats. McKenzie, factionally non-aligned and freshly elected to a second term in the seat of Flinders covering Victoria's Mornington Peninsula, hopes that the party retains its net zero commitment. As it debates the policy, she wants the party to 'keep the voices of the ghosts alive,' meaning all the moderate Liberals who lost their seats in recent elections. The former MPs who'd be arguing in favour of net zero and climate-friendly policy. Loading Overarching all of this is the larger question of the party's political philosophy. Fundamentally, the Liberals have to decide whether they are the party of Robert Menzies or Rupert Murdoch. Menzies was a great pragmatist, principled but not ideological, who adapted to his times. He was preoccupied with the concerns and interests of the suburban middle class, not the capitalist class but the ordinary men and women of aspiration. Murdoch is a right-wing populist interested in pressing always further rightward to build constituencies favourable to his own business interests. The Liberals have to choose. Once they decide whether to continue following the Murdoch pied piper to electoral irrelevance or to rediscover the Menzian attachment to middle Australia, all their other choices will become clearer. And the Nationals? They are now reduced to four senators. The same number as One Nation. And, like One Nation, the Nationals won a touch over 6 per cent of the national primary vote for the House. 'We, as Liberals, would never allow One Nation to determine our policies,' points out a Lib. So, his logic runs, why should the party accept the Nationals' terms?
West Australian
24-05-2025
- Politics
- West Australian
WA Federal Liberals Andrew Hastie, Michaelia Cash in push to reunite with Nationals
WA Federal Liberals Andrew Hastie and Michaelia Cash have warned the Nationals that the only way back to government is through a Coalition — not by the conservatives going their separate ways. At the end of a tumultuous week in which Nationals leader David Littleproud refused to continue a long-standing arrangement in Canberra where the Liberals and Nationals had a Coalition agreement — both in opposition and in government — Liberals are hoping for a reconciliation in coming days. 'What I want to see delivered to the Australian people is competent, centre right government,' Mr Hastie, the member for Canning, on Saturday said. 'And the question is: Can the Libs do that on their own? 'No they can't. 'We have to do it as part of a Coalition with the Nats. 'A pre-condition of winning government, is forming a Coalition with the National Party. 'We can't afford to waste resources fighting each other in three-corner contests.' Part of the conditions of Mr Littleproud agreeing to re-enter a Coalition are the Liberals agreeing to adopt policies embracing nuclear power and committing to a $20 billion regional Australia fund. WA Liberal senator Michaelia Cash implored the Nationals to re-enter a Coalition agreement. 'I am a strong coalitionist,' she said. 'It was very disappointing I thought when David Littleproud did walk away from the Coalition. 'I think the work that (Opposition leader) Sussan Ley has undertaken over the past few days to bring us back together has been outstanding. 'We (Liberals and Nationals) are stronger together. 'The enemy is Labor. It's a simple as that.'
