Liberal MP Paul Fletcher sees red over teals, but look deeper and there's more at play

Paul Fletcher, the longstanding Liberal member for Bradfield, is the opposite of a firebrand. On Monday night at the Sydney Institute, however, Fletcher doused the institute's familiar scenery with accelerant and ripped off a fiery denunciation of the "teals" — the independent candidates who two and a half years ago tore a significant hole in the ranks of the parliamentary Liberal Party. Fletcher — who came frighteningly close to losing his own seat to a "teal" challenger in 2022, and faces a repeat challenge this time around — denounced the teals as a "Green left con job". Fletcher's case is that a cashed-up group of opportunists exploited Australia's preferential voting system in 2022 by dressing some Greens up in twin sets to dupe Liberal voters into installing a Labor government, thus creating "the most serious threat to majority government in 80 years". Teal MPs, from left, Allegra Spender, Monique Ryan, Sophie Scamps, Kylea Tink, Kate Chaney, Zali Steggall speaking at Parliament House A conservative invention We have it because way back in 1918, Billy Hughes — the Labor defector and leader of the Nationalist Party, from whose remains Robert Menzies was ultimately to build the Liberal Party — introduced preferential voting specifically in order to dack the Labor party.