Industrial Relations Minister Kelly O’Dwyer, has seldom, if ever, laid a glove on Labor or the Greens but, like her protégé, is adept at causing enormous damage to her own side. Picture: AAP
Andrew Bolt Blog Posts
KELLY O’DWYER QUITS
Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun
Kelly O’Dwyer complained the Liberals didn’t have enough female MPs and seemed anti-women.
That’s after she helped to ruin the Liberals’ image by backing fact-free claims by MP Julia Banks that make Liberals bullied women – claims not backed up by a single example.
Now O’Dwyer completes the damage by becoming just the latest female Liberal – after Ann Sudmalis and Banks – to jump the sinking ship of the Morrison Government:
Ms O’Dwyer, 41, who serves in Cabinet as Minister for Industrial Relations and Jobs and also Minister for Women said she will continue on with her ministerial duties until the May election but will not re-contest her seat.
Her resignation is yet another blow for the Morrison government as it begins an election year.
In a statement and media conference today Ms O’Dwyer cited “personal reasons” for her shock move including the desire to spend more time with her children Olivia, 3.5, Edward, 20-months and also husband Jon, 43.
“Family reasons”, she says.
Fine. I understand that. In fact, O’Dwyer’s reasons are precisely why you’d expect fewer women to put up their hand for federal politics. Don’t blame the patriarchy for the matriachry preferring family to parliament.
But it should also be noted that O’Dwyer, of the Liberal Left ,actually looked like losing her once-safe seat to Labor at the next election.
By leaving her resignation so late, she’s given her yet-unpicked Liberal successor little time to establish themselves before the election in May – or earlier.
But no doubt we will once more see her blame the Liberal Right for losing a seat held by the Liberal Left.
Now, with all these Liberal women quitting, remind me again of the argument for hiring many more fighters just like them.
I have dwelt on the 45-40 party room tally when Malcolm was finally booted and have often wondered whether the score was actually: Skeptics 45 – Idiots and Buffoons 40.
In the light of all this, what am I to make of the following [cited and discussed at QoL]?
Cabinet Minister Kelly O’Dwyer has told colleagues the Liberals are widely regarded as “homophobic, anti-women, climate-change deniers” during a crisis meeting of federal Victorian MPs.
As far as the first two of the three go, I am in complete agreement with this:
Assistant Treasurer Stuart Robert, a Queensland Liberal MP, said he had seen no evidence the Liberal Party was homophobic, anti-women or stacked with climate-change deniers.
As for the third, Ms O’Dwyer and Mr Robert have precisely identified the problem. Why isn’t the party stacked with climate change deniers, that is, why isn’t it stacked with people with enough common sense to recognise idiocy when it is right before their eyes?
With this in mind, I want to see the list of the 40 who voted to keep Malcolm. Anyone know where it is?
The RBA is worried about rising house prices in Australia. But at the end of the article, Kelly O’Dwyer MHR, the chair of a parliamentary inquiry into foreign investment in residential real estate, put her finger right on the problem:
There was evidence to suggest current foreign investment restrictions were not being enforced by the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB), she said.
We used to pay for our balance of payments deficits through increased investment and the revenues that previous investments had caused. Now we pay for our imports by selling off the farm. The first could go on for ever and made us prosperous. The second will be a disaster but no one is willing to stop the inbound flow of funds.
Law of Markets 