The Flying None

The boys are coming for you, Suss

Electing Sussan Ley as party leader was a positive for the Liberal Party given she is the best talent they have. A negative for the Liberal Party is that Sussan Ley is the best talent they have.

Licenced pilot, former air traffic controller, ex-punk, ex-station cook and wool and beef farmer, ex-public servant, master’s degree in tax law and master of accountancy and the most senior woman in the Liberals’ 80-year history. Not bad. Until you scratch the surface.

In 2001 in her first tilt at parliament Ley lost Liberal preselection for the Victorian seat of Indi to Sophie Mirabella. Fact hunt – Mirabella, the bacon fat on Gina Rinehart’s chip butty, the Excretia Borgia of RWNJ politics and now (thanks to therapist and Lib AG Christian Porter) a Commissioner for life on the Fair Work Commission on $388,000 p.a. (who says Tories don’t have a sense of irony?). Losing preselection to that flabulous, wedgie-in-waiting is quite the achievement, but perhaps that says more about the Liberal Party than it does about Ley.

The surviving half of Dud & Suss, Ley is a member of the Lib Moderates – an oxymoron akin to ‘frolicsome soccer hooligan’. As Dud’s 2IC at the 2024 incineration of Tory hopes and dreams she effectively came 2nd in a loser contest. Brushing off the smell of burning Tory flesh she has re-entered the fray brandishing the same balloon on a stick:

“What would Peter say? What we would he do? What examples can I draw from from his leadership of our team?” (Sussan Ley addressing the LNP party faithful at their August ’25 convention where the consensus was to keep digging that hole despite the lingering waft of charred Tory bodies.)

Anyone tempted to grant Ley some slack because she’s a woman at the pointy end of a boys tree house club replete with toolies, old school witch burners, ducking stoolers, Christian Taliban and Aunt Lydias should consider Ley’s record.

Ley’s “I’m so disappointed” routine, (sooking and sulking and blowing snot bubbles at Albo) has been put to one side now that she’s head girl* at the fuster of clucks that is the Tory front bench. However, the head tossing and the woe-begone expression of a proctologist’s manicurist make an appearance whenever performative self-righteousness is called for. (*Don’t @ me. It’s used ironically.)

We can put aside her numerology provided she limits it to rearranging the plants who make up her ministry – oh, wait… that’s feng shui.

Too many slides down the bannisters, her inner ditz kicked in when she insisted that once in office the Libs will scrap the tax cuts to low income earners, and when telling Sky News that no-one was making electric utes and saying people with $3million + Super savings are doing it tough…

“Ley has a habit of pulling the pin on hand grenades then holding them until they explode.” (Niki Savva, journalist, author, and former senior adviser to prime minister John Howard and treasurer Peter Costello.)

Gaffe incontinence was a feature of wisdom suppository Tony Abbott, the shit that happened, during his thankfully short-lived regime. S’ooze is showing this wasn’t an Abbott-specific tic but a feature of addled, principle-free thinking whenever the L/NP are distracted from their core mission of shovelling public money to their mates.

Sussan Ley, Question Time 6 Feb 24:

“Will the PM rule out any changes to the current tax treatment of neg gearing?

Sussan Ley, Sky News 7 Feb 24:

“I’m not going to play the yes, this is good, no this is bad, the rule in, rule out. I’m not going to do that.”

Saying that the first step in Closing the Gap was to “listen to the indigenous” when her party vigorously opposed ‘Yes’ in the Voice Referendum is Suss showing the boys she too has mastered the Tory go-to of rank hypocrisy. And here’s a fine example of how she champions the sisterhood:

“While men speak on a variety of topics, they also speak for women so I’m very comfortable with the leadership of our party.” (Suss, press conference at Parliament House, May 2022.)

There’s lots more, but this could get tedious and she has displayed worse flaws.

Miss Ley’s seat of Farrer lies west of Canberra. The taxpayer funded 20+ trips to the Gold Coast where she owns an investment property. The Gold Coast is well north of Canberra.

As Health Minister she charged taxpayers to attend two New Year’s Eve events hosted by Sarina Russo, one of Australia’s richest women courtesy of Tory crony capitalism.

None of this puts Ley even close to the nastiness, comical unsuitability, loathsomeness and ugliness of her predecessors – crypt escapee Ol’ Camphor Balls, followed by the wingnut in the red sluggos, through God’s anointed emissary Diddley Scott and thence to Cuddly Pete. She could reasonably be considered to be vacuous but much preferable to any one of the four of them. But let us also take into account some of the darker side.

All aboard the Tubermensch’s dog whistled racism train – “If you do not want to see Australian women being assaulted by foreign criminals, vote against Labor. Send Labor a message”. Her own electorate has some of the highest rates of violence against women in NSW and three of the highest child sexual assault areas.

Australia – no better place to raze your kids where the once Minister for the Environment showed an 18th century view of the environment as adversary where “…we just have to pick winners” – trees or tradies in a zero-sum conflict. Future generations can fuck off too – fighting in court to prove she had no duty of care to protect young people from climate collapse while looking into ways to help mining companies bypass environmental laws.

On the side of genocide, backing a foreign, mass murdering war criminal against our own PM. Netanyahu is wanted by the ICC and his regime forged Australian passports so Mossad agents could assassinate Palestinians in Dubai and murdered Australian Zomi Frankcom and six aid worker colleagues, hunting them with repeated missiles.

Dismembered children’s limbs being gathered up by their parents, premature infants left to die and decompose in their incubators, families burnt alive in their tents, snipers targeting children – every atrocity imaginable is not important if there’s an opportunity to score political points off Albo – stating she will officially “revoke” the recognition of Palestine and insulting anti-genocide demonstrators as hideous protestors.

The icing on this perfidy cake is the insistence that Albo demean himself and hence our country by fondling the teeny weeny of the Orange Despot. You may be a strumpet Suss but your country is not.

Being an awful person does not bar one from leadership of the Liberal Party. Experience has shown that it is a credential. S’oozy has been doing her best to show the boys she’d buffed her CV and is up to the job. It is not going to save her.

Will they wait for the next election to take her out or will it be a pre-emptive shiv?

The boys line up. Candidates and saboteurs

Angus Taylor would steal the sprinkles off an orphan’s fairy bread, so that box is ticked. He’s also a fucking idiot – not a disqualifier (Tony Abbott anyone?) and yet despite all evidence to the contrary he thinks he’s PM material. He’ll likely pull the trigger to pre-empt Andrew Hastie, a more palatable contender, flat-earther or not. The good new is that Angus is counting his own numbers hence he’ll fuck it up.

Tim Wilson would go to the opening of a bowel if there was a photo op to be had. His own biggest fan boi but autofellatio is not gonna sell him to most of his cohort who prefer a more hands on style.

Dan Tehan, amuse-douche. Not saying he talks shite but when they put teeth in his mouth they ruined a perfectly good arsehole.

* * * * *

Lignocephalic¹ Ted O’Brien? LOL!

Jacinta Name-Ya Price? Puhlease. This is the Libs. She’s Black, she’s female, she’s a dispensable, useful idiot.

S’oozy – gone before April Fools Day.

¹ Lignocephalic – wooden-headed, thick. From the Medical Acronyms and Doctors’ Slang Dictionary.

“Retiring independent MP Tony Windsor nominated Mirabella for “the nasty prize” when asked who was the person he would miss least in politics on the ABC Insiders program. “She is the nastiest – I reckon if you put it to a vote to all politicians, she’d come up No.1”, The Border Mail Local News

Tony Abbott’s 10 biggest gaffes, clangers and cringeworthy moments, SMH, 11th March 2015 ($).

This article was originally published on Grumpy Geezer

Dear reader, we need your support

Independent sites such as The AIMN provide a platform for public interest journalists. From its humble beginning in January 2013, The AIMN has grown into one of the most trusted and popular independent media organisations.

One of the reasons we have succeeded has been due to the support we receive from our readers through their financial contributions.

With increasing costs to maintain The AIMN, we need this continued support.

Your donation – large or small – to help with the running costs of this site will be greatly appreciated.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969