I was halfway through a rather spectacular duck confit at Aubergine—the kind of quiet, understated Canberra establishment where the real, essential work of the Australian public is done—when Tasmanian senator Jonno Duniam looked up from his phone, his face pale and drawn. The latest internal polling had just come in. The Coalition was sitting at a popularity level usually reserved for telemarketers, parking inspectors, and untreated sewage. He set his silver fork down, looked me squarely in the eye, and uttered the most chilling sentence a sitting federal politician can speak: "Mate, I think I’m going to have to go home and see my kids."
I nearly choked on my Pinot Noir. Jonno? A Liberal frontbencher? A man elected in 2016 who has spent the better part of a decade safely insulated from the mundane horrors of domestic life by the warm, protective barrier of parliamentary privilege? It was unthinkable. Yet here we are. Before the end of the year, one of the Liberals’ best talents will step away from politics, citing the fact that the recent leadership spills had "started to really wear on me."
And frankly, who can blame him? The sheer administrative burden of participating in a modern Coalition leadership spill is staggering. The average voter—who, let's be honest, has never had to orchestrate a rolling factional coup while simultaneously pretending everything is fine on morning television—has no idea of the toll it takes on a man's spirit.
You have to constantly update the encrypted WhatsApp groups. You have to leak the right internal memos to the right friendly columnists (my inbox, for the record, is always open, and my discretion is assured). You have to smile warmly at your colleagues in the marble corridors of Parliament House, knowing full well you are actively trying to politically assassinate them before they can assassinate you. It is exhausting, highly skilled labor. To be expected to do all of that while the public aggressively refuses to vote for you? It is nothing short of a workplace safety hazard.
This is what I want the everyday, ordinary Australian to understand: your electoral choices have consequences. When you selfishly decide that you "don't like" the Coalition’s policies, or you "can't afford groceries," or whatever petty, small-minded grievance is currently trending in the outer suburbs, you are causing real, tangible harm to the political class.
Because of your stubborn refusal to support a historically unpopular party, you have forced one of our brightest conservative minds out of his federal travel allowance and straight into the kitchen of his own home. Has anyone stopped to consider the impact this will have on Jonno’s family?
For years, they have enjoyed the quiet, peaceful existence that comes with having a husband and father who is thousands of kilometers away in the nation's capital, locked in bitter factional warfare. Now, because the electorate is feeling vindictive, that man is going to be in their house. He is going to be asking where the good spatulas are kept. He is going to try to implement a spill motion against the family dog to determine who gets to sit on the good side of the couch. He is going to try to filibuster his own daughter's bedtime.
We are seeing an absolute epidemic of defeated incumbents returning to their primary residences, and frankly, the domestic infrastructure simply isn't there to support them.
I was speaking with a prominent lobbyist just the other day—I won’t name him, but let’s just say he represents a sector of the mining industry that relies heavily on the Coalition not looking too closely at environmental impact reports. He was absolutely devastated by Jonno's announcement.
"I used to be able to take Jonno out for a sixty-dollar steak, hand him a drafted piece of legislation, and get a straight answer," he wept into his martini at the Chairman & Yip. "Now, if I want to influence him, I’m going to have to fly to a Woolworths in Tasmania and pretend to care about his son's under-12 cricket match. It’s deeply undignified. It’s completely ruined my workflow."
The cynics in the press gallery love to mock the phrase "spending more time with family." They treat it as a transparent euphemism for "fleeing a sinking political party before the voters can publicly humiliate me at the ballot box." I find this incredibly insulting to Jonno's integrity. Why can’t it be both?
Why can’t a man look at his party’s cratering approval ratings, realize the ship is sinking straight to the bottom of the Tasman Sea, and think, "You know what? This is the perfect moment to finally learn my youngest child's middle name." That is not cowardice. That is elite, executive-level multitasking.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his government just get to sit there, blissfully governing, entirely unburdened by the crushing weight of knowing the entire country wishes they would go away. It is a fundamental imbalance in our democracy. How can we expect the Coalition to compete when they are forced to expend all their energy constantly reminding themselves why they deserve to be in power, despite all empirical evidence to the contrary?
Being a "top talent" in the modern Liberal Party is a thankless task. It requires a man to stand in front of the Australian public, look at their overwhelming rejection of everything he stands for, and confidently say, "No, it is the voters who are wrong." It takes a special kind of stamina to maintain that level of cognitive dissonance for eight years. Jonno had it. But even the strongest among us have a breaking point, and apparently, that breaking point is the prospect of losing an election so badly that you have to start doing your own grocery shopping.
So, the next time you step into a voting booth, I urge you to think about the human cost of your actions. Think about the pristine, quiet homes of the Liberal frontbench. Think about the spouses who have finally arranged the living room furniture exactly how they like it. Do not force these men to go back there.
Please, for the love of God, just give the Coalition a slight bump in the Newspolls. If not for the good of the country, then do it to save Jonno Duniam’s family from Jonno Duniam.