Victorian Liberal MP Tim Smith, who was sidelined by his party’s leader after crashing his car into the fence of a Hawthorn home while drunk last year, has said he still wants a future in politics but that his party should abandon inner-city seats like his own and focus on outer suburbs.
Speaking on Sky News’ Outsiders program on Sunday – his first TV appearance in months – Smith declared: “I’m uncancelled and I’m back”.
Victorian state Liberal MP Tim Smith at a press conference in November.Credit:Justin McManus
Smith’s career collapsed in October after he ploughed his new Jaguar into the fence outside an eight-year-old child’s bedroom and had his licence cancelled after driving more than two and a half times the legal alcohol limit.
He subsequently resigned as shadow attorney general and is seeing out his term as the member for Kew until the state election in November.
He said, however, that he would “like to have a future in politics,” and then gave some advice to his party: “Stop obsessing with the woke concerns and obsessions with the inner-urban elites. Stop it. Forget about it, move further afield. Take the focus off Kew, and focus on Cranbourne.
“I really want to get back into the fray. I feel like I’ve got something to add, and ... I know the Liberal Party is teetering on the precipice and needs to focus on the people who need us,” he said.
Smith described these people as “the quiet Australians, the forgotten people, the people that Menzies set the party up to represent”.
“And they don’t live in Toorak anymore, I hate to tell you.”
Asked by The Age if he would be prepared to contest an outer-suburban electorate at the 2026 election or nominate for preselection in the upper house ahead of the November poll, Smith said: “I’m not ruling anything in or out.”
Toorak is part of the state seat of Malvern, held by former opposition leader and Liberal MP Michael O’Brien. Katie Allen lost the federal seat of Higgins to Labor’s Michelle Ananda-Rajah in last week’s election.
Smith said the federal Liberal Party had stood for nothing at the election.
His state seat of Kew falls in the federal seat of Kooyong, one of a swathe of electorates in Liberal territory flipped by independent challengers who campaigned for climate action and a national integrity watchdog.
Former treasurer Josh Frydenberg was the highest-profile Liberal MP cast out at the federal election, after a successful challenge from teal independent Monique Ryan.
The federal seats of Goldstein, North Sydney, Mackellar, Wentworth and Curtin were also former Liberal seats picked up by the independents backed by Climate 200.
The wipeout sparked an identity crisis for Victorian Liberals, with Jason Wood the only Liberal to improve his margin in the state.
Opposition Leader Matthew Guy distanced himself from Tim Smith after the drunk-driving incident last year.Credit:Joe Armao
A number of right-wing commentators and Liberals have urged the party to shift further to the right and look away from its traditional heartland seats in the inner cities to win favour from voters in the outer suburbs, calls that Smith now appears to be echoing.
The opposition declined to respond to Smith’s comments on Sunday, pointing to recent comments from Opposition Leader Matthew Guy, who acknowledged the party faced an uphill battle in inner-Melbourne.
“Yes, we have clear issues in the inner-city areas,” Guy told The Age last week. “That’s true. But that’s not the whole state. Victoria is a segmented market, and I think what you’re seeing here is that playing out.”
Guy quickly moved against Smith, his former ally with leadership aspirations, after his drink-driving crash last year.
Asked on Sunday how he felt he was handled by the leader in the fallout, Smith said: “My mother always taught me, ‘if you’ve got nothing nice to say, say nothing at all’.”
He apologised at the time and acknowledged he’d made a “serious error of judgement”.
Jess Wilson, a former staffer to Frydenberg, has been preselected to represent the party in Kew at the November poll. She will be defending a margin of 4.8 per cent.
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2022-05-29 06:29:49Z
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