Labor MP Defects, Warns Former Party Will Send State ‘Woke and Broke’

Labor Party defector Tania Mihailuk will join One Nation in the upcoming state election, warning that her former party—which analysts believe stands a good chance of winning power—will send New South Wales “woke and broke.”

The MP has long warned the Labor Party of straying too far down the left side of politics—adopting policies like gender fluidity—and alienating its traditional voter base, including multicultural communities in the west of Sydney, like Mihailuk’s electorate of Bankstown.

On Jan. 17, Mihailuk announced she would join the right-leaning One Nation, partnering with fellow Labor defector and former federal leader Mark Latham.

“[Current opposition leader] Chris Minns as Premier and a Labor government will see [New South Wales] both woke and broke,” she said in a statement on Facebook.

“I know the true agenda of the people sitting currently sitting on Chris Minns’ front bench—they are from the extreme left. We simply cannot afford to have Labor controlling both Chambers of Parliament.”

She said One Nation would focus on issues that “matter to families,” including the cost of living and education.

“An education system that focuses on the basics that matter to mums and dads: literacy, numeracy, history and the humanities—actual common-sense skills that lead to jobs rather than left-wing indoctrination,” she said.

“There are prominent Labor shadow ministers that want drug legalisation and gender fluidity teaching in schools. I totally oppose these policies and will do everything that I can to stop their agenda from passing the Upper House.”

She also said she was a big believer in freedom of religion, and this ideal was toxic to “inner-west left-wing hipsters that set Labor Party agenda on social policy.”

Current New South Wales One Nation leader Mark Latham has been a staunch critic of the Labor and Liberal-National parties in his state, saying they have done little to address the onset of gender fluidity ideas in the education system.

Warnings Against Sliding Left

In April 2021, Mihailuk called on her then-party to support expanding anti-discrimination laws so they encompass religious protections.

“Labor should reject the false dichotomy that it must choose between supporting religious or LGBTIQ communities,” she wrote in an op-ed in The Daily Telegraph. “We should instead return to where Labor has traditionally stood and led–from the sensible centre that protects all groups from discrimination and guarantees human rights for all.”

In September 2022, under parliamentary privilege, Mihailuk linked Labor candidate Khal Asfour to disgraced former party powerbroker Eddie Obeid.

The speech prompted Asfour to deny the allegations.

“She has used parliamentary privilege to launch a cowardly attack on me and my family, and I call on her to produce evidence of any wrongdoing to the relevant bodies,” Asfour said a day after her speech to the New South Wales Parliament.

“She is citing matters from 2012. This reeks of sour grapes at being overlooked on Labor’s upper house ticket.”

While opposition leader Minns made the decision to remove her from the shadow cabinet.

“I’ve spoken to Tania Mihailuk and said that she cannot stay in the shadow cabinet and launch political attacks by parliamentary privilege,” he told Radio 2GB.

“I haven’t heard back from her … so I’ve come to the conclusion reluctantly that she can’t stay in the shadow cabinet.”

Mihailuk would subsequently quit the party in the following month to run as an independent before her latest announcement on Jan. 17, 2023.

Minns, meanwhile, has said an investigation from the state’s Independent Commission Against Corruption had looked into her claims finding them “baseless.”

“It’s not unreasonable that if you’re going to call somebody corrupt, then you have to produce information to back up those claims and not use parliamentary privilege to do it,” Minns told reporters.