Wednesday, 19 November 2025

 Tim RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (16:16): It is a chance to rise today and grieve for the people of Victoria if the Liberals’ reckless, radical and ruthless behaviour ever finds its way to government. I thought there was a line in the sand today. I think we might need to get another line in the sand, or a couple, maybe a few, more – maybe a few sandcastles.

What better day to bring your united team together than to hear the member for Kew’s address on the grievance debate? I was so excited last night. I was up until 11:30 writing some notes. I just thought, ‘Here we go. We’re going to have the member for Kew’ – but she is nowhere to be seen. Remember when the five former leaders past all took this opportunity to lead and move forward and show unity? Well, I do not know where they are. I do not know if they are gone or what is going on. As one Liberal MP said to James Campbell, which is in the Herald Sun today:

I thought we had hit rock bottom last December but this is worse.

Yet here they are again, the same old Liberals – self-serving, self-loathing. That is their party.

Bridget Vallence: On a point of order, Speaker, I take personal offence to being called old.

The SPEAKER: No point of order, member for Evelyn.

Tim RICHARDSON: Today’s Victorian Liberals would put the series Nemesis to shame. It would only be a pilot episode compared to their efforts. Remember that series with Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison and the hero of the member for Kew Josh Frydenberg, the former Treasurer? The plotting, the carnage and the chaos is more fitting of a Game of Thrones episode.

Today is the ever present reminder of what it means to be a Liberal in Victoria, and it is worth taking a journey back 46 weeks to just after Christmas in December 2024. At that time unnamed Liberals were circling around the member for Hawthorn, and they had hit rock bottom. Well, it was going to get worse. Bedrock had been hit, and we are going further. When Victorians were having their downtime during that time, the Liberals were destroying each other. That spill motion got up with 18 Liberals supporting the spill motion, just like the member for Kew’s 18 supporters of the spill motion – hardly a resounding endorsement of change or stability going forward.

When the member for Berwick emerged from his party room victorious and purposeful, he uttered these immortal words:

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

I want to thank the member for Hawthorn for what he has done for the party over the last two years. He is a true believer of our values and is a man of his word, and he has worked tirelessly between now and obviously up until now. We now have an obligation to move forward –

sounds very familiar –

and I am thankful for the support of my colleagues in the party room to ensure that we can come together united, get on message, for a message we need to have.

Well, that was only 327 days ago, only 46 weeks. It was on the 325th night of the member for Berwick’s leadership that the coup was in full flight. Remember, the member for Berwick now is the shortest serving leader of the Liberal Party in over 90 years. The member for Berwick was meant to be the hope, the way forward, the line in the sand, as the member for Kew had stated in every media appearance. Yet here we are with another display of full chaos, carnage and callousness by Victorian Liberals.

Shockingly, the new Leader of the Opposition, the member for Kew, has claimed that this humiliating treatment of the member for Berwick was on the back of colleagues approaching her to run. We need to play this out a bit. We need to dig a little deeper, because in Shannon Deery’s piece on 17 November 2025 he said a senior Liberal told him the plot had been in train for the last two months.

This means when the member for Kew was appointed Shadow Treasurer at the expense of the ever-talented and ever-present member for Brighton, the plotting was halfway through. When the member for Berwick was in China the plot was three-quarters complete. Remember when the member for Kew suddenly withdrew from that China trip?

And then there was the Herald Sun piece where James Campbell wrote, today:

The secrecy with which the coup was executed may have been necessary for its success but the sudden move on Monday … blindsided even MPs as senior as ex-leader –

the member for Bulleen –

… and health spokeswoman Georgie Crozier, who were both enraged by it.

Given the standing in the Liberal Party leadership of the member for Bulleen and Ms Crozier in the other place to senior leaders and a senior moderate in that court, as well as Ms Crozier, what kind of colleagues do we think approached the member for Kew?

Campbell goes on to write that the member for Bulleen and Ms Crozier in the other place:

… worked the phones on Monday night, trying to shore up support –

for the member for Berwick –

… and to stop the veteran right-winger Bev McArthur …

from becoming upper house leader of the Liberals.

Here lies the secrecy and the plot. Here is the riddle solved before our very eyes. This was not colleagues coming and approaching in unison, this was the dark arts of factional hits like we have never seen before – because as colleagues will recall, it was Mrs McArthur who was reported to have gone along to that cross-factional colleagues meeting to inform the member for Berwick that he would be ambushed in the morning.

So let us be clear: a fellow moderate like Ms Crozier was not aware of this plot and neither was an elder statesman like the member for Bulleen, who has led this party twice, significantly, to elections. This was a brutal backroom deal to seize the office of the Leader of the Opposition, with Mrs McArthur installed as one of the most senior figures in the Liberal Party leadership. Why else would the member for Berwick be so humiliated and so horribly treated other than for power, personalities and Liberal politics? He was apparently leading in the Freshwater poll. He was apparently leading in the DemosAU poll. That is a leadership coup that we have seen. Remember when he came out at 8 pm and was ambushed by the media? The member for Berwick said that it was ridiculous that there would be a challenge and asked what the media had heard. To this moment we are yet to have one explanation – one single explanation – of why the member for Berwick was so brutally torn down.

Even the media asked dozens of questions. Tom Steinfort from Channel 9 asked the new Leader of the Opposition what the member for Berwick was doing wrong – ‘Why did you get rid of him?’ The member for Kew responded, ‘Brad was doing nothing wrong, but the reality is we have to put our best foot forward,’ the implication being that he was not the best foot forward.

But it gets so much stranger. We head over to Sky News, that huge conservative media organisation. The member for Kew stated the member for Berwick:

… has done a terrific role, and I thank him for his service. I thank him for his leadership but more broadly for his service to the Liberal Party over many years.

So this is a Leader of the Opposition who is described as doing a terrific role, who has done nothing wrong. If politics had a jurisdiction for wrongful dismissal, the member for Berwick would be up for millions of dollars in compensation. And here lies the truth and the tragedy of the modern-day Liberal Party: a leader can be described as doing nothing wrong, as having done a terrific role as opposition leader, worthy of universal praise, but be utterly humiliated, ambushed and blindsided like we have never seen before and be the shortest-tenured Liberal leader – under a year, 11 months – in more than 90 years.

We know that the member for Kew was supported by the member for Sandringham. Remember that piece in the Age back then, when they told the member for Berwick and the member for Polwarth that they had the numbers? They did not count it then. The member for Kew finished third behind the member for Mornington and the member for Berwick at that time, well behind. If the member for Kew’s office is listening, do not put the member for Sandringham in – the first round of that count was well off, finished third. I would just caution. The member for Brighton is up for it, though. If anyone is tuning in around the country, the member for Brighton is absolutely up for coming back to Treasury.

We know that the member for Sandringham was joined by Mrs McArthur, Dr Heath and Mr McGowan and sent that extraordinary message to the member for Berwick.

So why didn’t the member for Kew go and see the member for Berwick herself? Why not have the dignity – this is someone that you think has done a terrific job, who has done nothing wrong – the courtesy, the kindness and the compassion, as the Shadow Treasurer, to go to that person, who you respect, and give them that message? No, it was an absolute backdown like we have never seen before, and the impacts were extraordinary. It was not until later on, when the coup was in full flight, that then the member for Kew picked up the phone to the member for Berwick to describe what was to take place in the morning. It is a truly extraordinary thing. Just remember, the member for Bulleen and Ms Crozier had no idea about this. They panicked and rang as many people as they could to support and protect the former Leader of the Opposition, the member for Berwick. So who were the colleagues banging down the door then of the member for Kew? There are only 31 to count, so it is not like a Cluedo mystery – who was in the library with a coup, or who was in the Leader of the Opposition’s office, telling the member for Berwick what was going on? Only a few hours earlier the member for Berwick was with the member for Warrandyte and the member for Caulfield, declaring themselves gangs’ worst nightmare – remember that one? Remember that time they were the gangs’ worst nightmare? Well, in reality, the member for Kew would be the member for Berwick’s worst nightmare, like we have never seen before.

The new Leader of the Opposition has so many questions to answer: what deals have been done to secure the critical support from Mrs McArthur, who was instrumental in securing the leadership from the member for Hawthorn to install the member for Berwick? What has been said to have Mr Davis knocked off and Mrs McArthur installed as the leader? Remember, it was only three Liberal members of Parliament who changed their mind, changed their support and supported the spill motion. Victorians deserve to know exactly where the member for Kew stands and who she stands with, not statements about lines in the sand or the hollowness of looking forward – haven’t we heard all those fateful words uttered by Liberal opposition leaders past. Because while the member for Kew tries to talk a big game about modern Liberal values, we cannot help but wonder whether she is taking the member for Berwick’s place at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Let us be clear: that is the conservative bastion of the far right of the Liberal Party. They market themselves beautifully, like real estate agents: ‘a values-based, non-profit organisation’ with a mission ‘to protect liberty and opportunity for all’. That sounds right. I will hold off on my Donald Trump impersonation of what that looks like, but this could not get any more off the reservation of being a Liberal.

But let us look at the speakers line-up of this organisation in Brisbane. We have got Barnaby Joyce and Pauline Hanson as the headliners. The US President, Donald Trump, has addressed the American conference multiple times, and it has been described as the road map to the Make America Great Again movement. That is the company they keep, the ideology that they promote, and Victorians are entitled to know where the member for Kew stands with her political comrades.

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

The installer of today’s Leader of the Opposition is Mrs McArthur. Let us trail back through some of Mrs McArthur’s views. Remember that time, 16 August 2024, on Sky News? She made that crystal ball hypothesis about the Liberal budget and what it would mean. She said:

Current spending is simply not sustainable. We are at record debt levels, and that means we are going to have to make cuts when it comes to our health services. Schools are not going to be built or even fixed.

That is on the record. That is the cuts narrative of the new leader of the Liberal Party in the Legislative Council. I will repeat that:

… that means we are going to have to make cuts when it comes to our health services. Schools are not going to be built or even fixed.

Does the member for Kew endorse the cuts narrative that has seen an $11.1 billion black hole in their budget? Will the member for Kew back the radical policies of Mrs McArthur and cut from education and cut from health? It is on the record as clear as day. Then there are the utterly awful comments from May 2023, when Mrs McArthur was criticised after suggesting that First Nations people should be grateful for the wonderful things that have been enabled via colonisation. Do we remember this? Does the member for Kew, a supporter of the Voice, stand with the comments of Mrs McArthur about colonisation and First Nations people? Mrs McArthur is one of the most prominent voices against trans Victorians. Remember when she crossed the floor to vote against outlawing gay conversion therapy? Yet the federal seat of Kooyong, which almost entirely covers the seat of Kew, voted 73.7 per cent for marriage equality.

This was well above the average for Victoria, which was 64.9 per cent at the time. How on earth does the member for Kew front her progressive constituents and Victorians knowing that to get the role as opposition leader she had to elevate Mrs McArthur to the most senior role in the Legislative Council? This is not a whip role, this is not a shadow portfolio role out on the flanks; this is absolutely at the centre and in the tent of the Liberals. Now we are to believe that the member for Kew is suddenly a moderate? Victorians will not be fooled by these contradictions. Let us be clear, as Chip Le Grand reported in the Age: you dance with the one you brung. We know that it is absolutely clear that the member for Kew is compromised by the conservative flank and leadership of the Liberal Party. There are only 18 that supported the spill motion. If the member for Bulleen and Ms Crozier, with their political talents, had been given another 12 hours, they would have stopped one of the most brutal political takedowns and savage impacts on a political career we have seen. The member for Berwick has been horribly treated. It is the political game playing and the hatred in the Liberal Party that has defined them and defines them into the future.