ABC star Laura Tingle has unleashed on the Coalition ‘clown show’, who she claims will be ‘destined to fail’ if they do not come up with fresh policies.
Tingle, who is leaving her role as the ABC’s 7.30 Political Editor to become the public broadcaster’s Global Affairs Editor, was asked what she made of the Coalition’s break-up and subsequent make-up.
Nationals Leader David Littleproud sensationally broke away from the Liberal Party last week – only for both parties to patch things up again a few days later.
‘I can say this because I’m going, but I don’t care,’ Tingle told the ABC’s Party Room podcast.
‘I mean, like, seriously, these people are irrelevant for the next little while. They’re a sideshow. They’re a clown show.
‘And the fact that their personal ambitions are just so blatantly out there (is) basically disgraceful, because we as taxpayers are paying for them to be looking after the interests of their voters in their electorates and to be looking after the national good.’
Tingle, 64, argued that if the Coalition failed to find a rational policy position then they ‘deserve to be in the state of oblivion’ they currently find themselves.
‘My sense is that the Coalition doesn’t have any ideas, and it hasn’t had any ideas for a really long time,’ she added.
Tingle, who is leaving her role as the ABC’s 7.30 Political Editor to become the public broadcaster’s Global Affairs Editor, was asked what she made of the Coalition’s break-up and subsequent make-up
‘I can say this because I’m going, but I don’t care,’ Tingle told the ABC’s Party Room podcast
The media veteran said the Liberal party had not evolved since the days John Howard wooed older Australians with ‘a lot of largesse and handouts’.
‘Most of those people are dead now, as I keep saying,’ she added.
‘Yes, people are getting older, but it’s a demographic that is locked in with the policies of the past.
‘There are all these other people they don’t speak to. We’ve got this huge intergenerational wealth issue largely as a result of those policies and until the Coalition really understands those dynamics, I think they’re destined to fail.’
Tingle joined the ABC in 2018 after a decades-long career covering Canberra which includes stints as the political editor of The Australian Financial Review and also working for The Australian, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
Her new role, where she is replacing John Lyons, will see her travel around the world reporting on big events ‘that also shape our nation’.
‘The job was advertised, and I applied for it,’ Ms Tingle told The Australian earlier this month.
‘It’s the best job in journalism, I reckon, other than the one I have already got.
‘It’s so important that the national public broadcaster has Australian eyes on the world putting the significance of major global events into context for local audiences.’
Tingle sparked controversy last year when she accused then Opposition Leader Peter Dutton of fanning the flames of racism when he claimed high immigration was causing the housing crisis.
At the same event, she described Australia as a ‘racist country’.
After an outcry, Tingle subsequently doubled down on her remarks.
‘In my commentary at the ABC, and at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, I expressed my concern at the risks involved in Peter Dutton pressing the hot button of housing and linking it to migration for these reasons,’ she said.
‘Political leaders, by their comments, give licence to others to express opinions they may not otherwise express. That does not make them racist.
‘But it has real world implications for many Australians.’