r/conservativeaustralia

They say, in politics, that the key to success is authenticity; if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.

The teal political movement was literally built on the foundation of the distribution problems inherent in our political system, which are solely due to the ongoing prevalence of political parties.

Member for Wentworth Allegra Spender and Member for Warringah Zali Steggall depart after a press conference at which they launched their new party. Alex Ellinghausen

How that movement can then turn around and establish the very thing they were elected to subvert and still think they can maintain a skerrick of authenticity without a marketing snow job so epic it would bury Mount Everest, is inexplicable.

Data centres around the world are hosting terabytes of memes and Substack articles, making this obvious point. To date, neither Zali Steggall nor Allegra Spender has let us in on how they can justify this.

They point to the need to stop One Nation, secure a Senate seat, and take advantage of public funding.

Most politicians have a healthy ego, but even on their best days, with adrenaline mainlined into their veins, none think they alone can stop another political party.

Until now.

>“Some will claim that they were always a party, if so, that is an admission that the teals were inauthentic from the beginning.”

Now, with Allegra and Zali on the case, Pauline Hanson is finished.

A good thing about the teals was that they were going to do politics differently. They were not to be defined by what they were against, but by what they were for. They stood for things, they said.

But saying you are not One Nation, or not Liberal, or not whatever, is the oldest form of politics there is. In art terms, it is creating negative space. Not only is this the opposite of standing for something, but it also means falling for anything.

The last year has been dominated by Labor’s regressive changes to our tax system. Not only did the teals, led by Allegra Spender, front‑run Labor’s tax changes, they also created a whole bunch of nonsense arguments taken up with alacrity by Jim Chalmers. All these arguments hurt the people they represent and Australia more generally.

Following the public outcry, which included teal donors, Allegra completely shifted her views.

Looking through the miasma of inauthenticity, hubris, and ambiguity, this did create the possibility of a new party focused on abundance, willing to advocate for the hard decisions necessary to return Australia to a better future.

The teals were conceived in a moment of abundance.

The federal government had transferred $400 billion from the budget to households. By 2022, households had record savings. Interest rates were low, house prices were high, traffic congestion was minimal, and immigration was nonexistent.

Our biggest problems were not where to find resources but how to distribute them. Along came the Climate 200‑funded teals, promising to distribute more public funds to climate change, female empowerment and integrity.

But Australia and the world have changed.

You don’t have to be a devotee of any post‑Keynesian economist to know that Australia has a productivity problem.

It is not just basement‑dwelling econometric nerds suffering lower living standards, falling real wages and persistently higher inflation. It is all of us. Low productivity has negatively impacted our living standards, business investment and social cohesion.

There are two types of parties, those that believe in abundance and those that believe in distribution. Put less prosaically, some want to grow the pie; others want to divide it.

The Australian parliament is cluttered with parties that believe our biggest problems are distributional. One Nation and the Teals are not promising to grow the pie, just to cut it up differently.

A teal party (and this is how people will see it) was always going to face significant challenges. Some will claim that they were always a party; if so, that is an admission that the Teals were inauthentic from the beginning. How does that make this better?

All of this has left Australians with many unanswered questions, claims so courageous that some might consider them hubristic, and inside‑the‑beltway discussions about funding advantages.

The teals were elected to change Canberra; it did not take long for Canberra to change them.