I rarely use the term hysterical but I don’t know how else to describe Tim Wilson’s increasingly irrational attacks on Independents.
According to Tim, Zali Stegall’s proposal to establish an independent climate change commission to provide advice to the government on the appropriate policy mechanisms and interim targets needed to achieve net zero by 2050 amounts to “subversion and treason”.
Obviously terrified by the Climate 200 fund, Tim has penned an article in the SMH titled Independents more likely to hurt Labor and Greens than Liberals.
Wilson tries valiantly to use his most condescending, dismissive, sneering rhetoric, well-practised at the Rinehart-funded IPA, to suggest that the “Voices of” movement is astroturfing by confecting a community campaign, that they are bankrolled by outsiders, and that all the Independents “just happen to repeat precisely the same spin.”
Oh the irony.
Then it gets personal. Tim is being challenged for his seat of Goldstein by journalist Zoe Daniels.
“The strategy is very simple. Make voters think the so-called “independents” are Liberal-lite. That obviously doesn’t wash when the so-called “independent” candidate for Goldstein, Zoe Daniel, admits she voted Liberal in 2016, only to vote for Labor and their retiree tax in 2019,” says the so-called assistant minister for energy and emissions reduction.
I’m surprised Tim would remind us of his campaign against the “retiree tax” where he was rebuked by the Speaker for conduct that may have caused damage to the House economics committee’s reputation and to the House committee system.
Wilson collaborated with a multibillion-dollar fund manager on a campaign against the opposition’s franking credit policy, failed to declare his investments in funds run by the firm to inquiry hearings, and used the taxpayer-funded probe to help spruik Liberal Party fundraisers.
Needless to say, Tim has since been promoted and is now Angus Taylor’s assistant minister for emissions reduction – as you would with the man who wrote a glowing review of Ian Plimer’s climate change scepticism book ‘How to Get Expelled From School: A Guide to Climate Change for Pupils, Parents and Punters’.
Tim warns of “the confusion and chaos of a hung Parliament” where MPs “hold the nation’s policy agenda hostage.” That’s a gutsy call when we just witnessed the most chaotic two weeks from a majority government with their own members crossing the floor and threatening to withhold their votes until they get their way.
He then dismisses the contribution of independents as “carping from the crossbench” rather than being “at the decision-making table”.
Tim seems to be having an each way bet as to whether the crossbench are holding the country hostage or irrelevant.
His incoherence continues.
Tim states that “narrow, or single, issues may have electoral appeal, but it is not a sustainable and sufficiently broad foundation for government.”
He goes on to tell us that “The media fundamentally got the last election wrong because they underestimated what issues move votes. They missed the nearly one million retirees who risked losing a third of their income overnight because of Labor’s retiree tax.”
Seriously? Excess franking credit refunds are more important than action on climate change?
Throughout his article – eight times in fact – Wilson uses the term so-called “independents”. He thrashes around trying everything he can to discredit and invalidate them.
And then he finishes by saying they “will do far more damage to Labor and the Greens than Liberals at the ballot box.”
So why are you so worried, Tim?
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