Amanda Rishworth says US tariffs on foreign made films ‘unjustified’
Labor minister Amanda Rishworth has appeared on Nine and says the government is not going to take her party’s election result for granted.
Asked how Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will respond to the latest tariff announcement from the United States on foreign made films, Rishworth says the government will advocate that they are unjustified.
“The prime minister said yesterday that there was a discussion about tariffs. I know that our whole team, including the prime minister, the foreign minister, the trade minister, will be making a very strong case that these are just unjustified tariffs,” she says.
Amanda Rishworth has been asked whether she knows if she’ll keep her portfolio in a Cabinet reshuffle.
She says there’s a process underway and it’s up to the prime minister to choose those portfolios.
“I am happy to serve in whatever he chooses for me,” she says.
Matt Canavan says Coalition has ‘left our fighting spirit behind’
Nationals Senator Matt Canavan says he was shocked about the scale of the Coalition’s defeat on Saturday.
Canavan has told Sky News he thought the Coalition didn’t have enough to fight for this election campaign.
“I don’t feel like we had enough to fight for this election and politics is not like designing a new car. You don’t just add a new bit of mirrors and power steering or what have you. Politics is about heart, it’s about passion, it’s about ambition, it’s about a purpose to improve people’s lives,” he says.
“I think we’ve left our fighting spirit behind in the past few years and we have become too timid, too scared about being criticised.”
He says the discussion should not be about how the Liberal Party should be saved but rather how the country can be saved.
Asked how his party will appeal to a city voting block, Canavan says the Coalition needs to turn its attention to winning over outer suburb communities which he described as a “forgotten frontier”.
‘We can’t fatten the pig on market day’
Arthur Sinodinos says housing needs to be the number one priority for any government and need to be treated as crises.
He tells ABC Radio National Breakfast that the there are a lot of issues that can be addressed in line with Liberal Party values, but he says the party needs to detail a plan to address them.
“We can’t fatten the pig on market day. You’ve got to put in the work before hand and that requires ultimately leadership. It is leadership that will drive the party to do this,” he says.
“The situation in the Liberal Party is dire but it is not terminal. The Liberal Party is one of the great election winning machines in Australia and it can win again but only if we do the hard work.”
Asked what role US President Donald Trump has played this election, Sinodinos says Australians opted for “relaxed and comfortable over a leap into the unknown”.
Arthur Sinodinos says Coalition campaign looked ‘ad hoc’ and ‘reactive’
Former Liberal minister Arthur Sinodinos says the Liberal Party has a structural issue and needs to change.
Sinodinos tells ABC Radio National Breakfast that increasing female representation is important for the party going forward, and that culture wars will not win the Coalition government.
“This is not about wokeness or political correctness, it’s about when we look in the mirror, do we represent the community we aspire to represent and that is the challenge going forward,” he says.
“We looked as if were doing this in an ad hoc and reactive way. The grievance politics was not enough. We had to have our own coherent plan and we didn’t.”
He says the nature of Australia’s compulsory, preferential voting means the Liberal Party needs to pitch its message to a “broad tent”.
“You have to go to people where they are rather than shove your own ideology down their neck,” he says.
Liberal MP blames poor communication for party’s loss
Liberal member for Durack in WA, Melissa Price, who was one of the few Liberals to have a swing towards her, says poor communication was a key reason for her party’s election failure.
“For example, if you put our housing policy up against Labor’s policy … I would say ours was a better policy, but if you are unable to communicate that message to people who you want to hear your message, then you’re failing,” she says.
Price also points to an unsuccessful social media campaign.
“People that I’ve spoken to since the election or leading up to the election, people under the age of 40 … when they’ve given me their opinion, they’ve said that they didn’t think our social media was cutting through and, you know, that’s a big problem,” she says.
She says the result had nothing to do with the quality of the candidates, but is unwilling to blame former leader Peter Dutton either.
Calls to consider gender quotas in the Liberal Party
Liberal senator Maria Kovacic says the party must also look at implementing gender quotas to boost female representation, an idea previously floated.
It’s a sentiment former senator Simon Birmingham supported in a lengthy LinkedIn post where he said “quotas for women in parliament may be somewhat illiberal”, but he “struggle[d] to think of any alternatives if there’s to be a new direction that truly demonstrates change and truly guarantees that the party will better reflect the composition of modern society”.
“With parliamentary representation now at an all-time low, such quotas could and should be hard, fast and ambitious,” he wrote.
Despite the number of women in the lower house set to reach a record high, the Liberals have failed to boost the number of women on their side of the chamber.
Four Liberal women have so far secured seats, with another five in doubt. In 2022, nine Liberal women won seats.
Kovacic also addressed some of former leader Peter Dutton’s commentary during the campaign about welcome to country ceremonies being overused and the school curriculum being “woke”. She said the discussions were “unnecessary” and not what voters were talking about.
Liberal senator says party must move to the centre
Liberal politicians, past and present, are calling for the party to return to the centre and consider quotas to boost the number of women in their ranks, after Saturday’s federal election defeat.
Liberal senator Maria Kovacic said the party failed to address the key issues of housing and cost of living and offer solutions to “properly fix that”.
She warned Saturday’s “brutal” loss needed to be a catalyst for change.
“We need to move back to the centre,” she says.
“It is very, very clear that the Australian public … were not happy with the way that we were conducting ourselves as a potential government.
“They didn’t like what we did so they did not elect us on Saturday. They sent us a very clear message.
“We must move to the centre. We have no choice. That’s where we belong.”
Good morning 👋
Hi everyone and thanks for joining me for another day of federal politics live.
The Liberal Party is continuing to pick apart the results of Saturday’s election, which saw Labor return to power with an increased majority.
It’s also on the search for a new leader. The race has narrowed to Angus Taylor, Sussan Ley and Dan Tehan after Andrew Hastie pulled out of the race yesterday afternoon.
I’m Josh Boscaini. Join me as I take you through today’s developments in politics.
