Liberal Staffers Turn on Own Party, Peta Credlin and Nikki Savva attack Scott Morrison

Two influential Liberal insiders have savaged Scott Morrison’s Coalition for very different reasons, with one arguing the party has gone too woke, while the other claims the government is turning off progressive, inner-city voters. 

Peta Credlin and Niki Savva both attacked Mr Morrison’s strategy in newspaper columns on Thursday morning, as new polling shows the Coalition is bleeding inner-city seats in electorates concerned with integrity and climate action, while also losing regional votes to minor right-wing parties.  

Ms Credlin, a Sky News host and Tony Abbott’s former chief of staff, said the Liberal and National parties were in danger of ‘standing for nothing’ if they continued to try and appeal to city moderates. 

Meanwhile, Niki Savva, an ex-adviser to former Liberal treasurer Peter Costello, said the Liberal Party’s focus on conservative issues and disparaging attacks on independents is pushing inner-city MP hopefuls and voters further away from the Coalition.

In her attack Ms Credlin wrote the Liberal Party faces some ‘tough soul-searching’ post election, should they lose seats to the increasingly popular teal independents while Labor candidates sweep up the majority of first preferences. 

Ms Credlin feared Liberal moderates edging further to the left to compete with moderate independents were alienating the party’s hardline conservative base and losing their votes to so-called right-wing ‘splinter parties’ – the United Australia Party and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.

‘I’d argue the biggest risk to the government is not losing one or two wealthy seats to the green-left but losing quiet Australians to conservative splinter parties, with their ill-disciplined preference flows, that don’t try to sit on both sides of the political fence,’ Ms Credlin wrote in the Australian.

However, Ms Savva differed with Ms Credlin by writing that the party was in real danger of losing seats, but they would be inner-city ones lost because of Mr Morrison’s stance on transgender issues and the rise of the independents.  

Ms Savva said the Liberals were ‘hollowing out’ the party in inner-city seats by imposing ultra-conservative candidates like Katherine Deves and instead targeting disaffected Labor voters in western Sydney and the Hunter region.

She said the move was backfiring and pushing undecided voters to the more moderate independents. 

Niki Savva (pictured) has said the Liberal Party will lose inner-city seats at the election  because of Mr Morrison’s stance on transgender issues and the rise of the ‘teal’ independents

Ms Savva recalled Mr Morrison’s opposition to same-sex marriage in 2017, and his refusal to condemn Israel Folau’s homophobic rants in 2019.

‘Senior Liberals fear Morrison has deliberately sealed the fate of a clutch of moderates already struggling to survive,’ she wrote in The Age.

Ms Savva wrote that multiple Liberal insiders were more disappointed with Mr Morrison’s comments about Deves at a press conference after she recanted her apology for transphobic comments on Sky News, 

Mr Morrison had said he was ‘absolutely pleased’ to have been able to recruit and appoint his captain’s pick in Warringah, calling her a ‘strong female Liberal candidate… that’s what being a Liberal is all about,’ he said. 

His comments showed he was out of touch even amongst many in his own party, claimed Ms Savva. 

Ms Savva (pictured) hit out at her former party’s ‘crude political tactics’ targeting the rise of independents in swing seats

‘It is fatuous for Morrison to congratulate himself for choosing Deves when she makes Craig Kelly (another of Mr Morrison captain’s picks) look rational, and after he and his party have so badly mishandled the threat from the teal independents. 

‘The crude political tactics, the sledging, the denigration of obviously articulate, accomplished women for daring to challenge the Liberals’ best and brightest was a manifestation of the sort of behaviour which had alienated those voters in the first place.’ 

Ms Savva lashed out at the Liberal party’s treatment of the teal independents so far in the election lead up, calling it a ‘petty’ and ‘patronising’ campaign. She wrote Liberal moderates were losing position to those independents because of voters’ intense dislike of Mr Morrison.

Credlin, on the other hand, believed the party needed to forget the independents in inner-city seats and refocus on rural and conservative votes.

Credlin said her former party had been bullied into a climate plan by the media and independents (Pictured: Scott Morrison with the infamous lump of coal he brought into Parliament House in 2017)

She believes the party’s focus on climate change has alienated regional voters and instead pushed them to minor conservative parties like the United Australia Party.

Ms Credlin lamented ‘bullying’ from the media and inner-city ‘modern Liberal’ MPs for making the government look weak on climate change, and talked up the importance of the National Party in retaining Queensland and Western Australian seats for the Coalition. 

The Prime Minister, she wrote, had been unfairly made to look shamefaced about the moment he brought as lump of coal into parliament, and had not been seen in teal seats as a result. 

She also criticised the LNP for offering no fourth term agenda beyond promises based on cash splashes and defence.

‘If the government loses, the Coalition will have to think long and hard about what it stands for and who it represents,’ she wrote. 

Mr Albanese was declared the winner of Wednesday night’s debate, as new polling data reveals the Labor Party is on track to win the May 21 election

‘Morrison won in 2019 thanks to the quiet Australians but many feel ignored ever since. The reality is, with less than two weeks to go, if you don’t stand for something, you end up standing for nothing.’

The latest YouGov poll has predicted a landslide Labor victory over the incumbent Coalition, with the ALP set to win 80 seats compared with a combined 63 for the Liberal and National parties. 

The poll revealed the ALP could form a majority government with multiple Coalition seats predicted to fall to independents.

According to its results, the LNP is bleeding first preferences in seats where voters are turning their eyes to issues of integrity in politics and climate action. 

Independents are clawing ground from the Liberal Party in inner-city seats like Wentworth in Sydney, and lead in the polls in seats such as Warringah, Kooyong, and Goldstein.

Teal independents have centered their campaign on attacking the LNP’s track record on the government’s parliamentary behaviour, including scandals involving frontbenchers and failure to introduce legislation on a Federal anti-corruption body.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s seat of Kooyong is slated to tip to independent, Dr Monique Ryan, 53-47 on a two-party basis, despite heavy Liberal campaign spending in the seat.

The Liberal Party is tipped to put forward Defence Minister Peter Dutton as its next leader should the PM stand down in defeat and Josh Frydenberg not be re-elected. 

After Wednesday night’s leadership debate Seven’s audience of undecided voters resoundingly favoured the Labor leader.