Antinuclear

Putting the boot into a new leader: the monstering of David Shoebridge

Identity politics is at its worst when it reduces the complex, dispersed and often contradictory workings of power to a cast-list of heroes and villains. It turns politics into the story of one man or one woman, oppressor or victim, with the facile implication that change is driven from the top down, by the capture or replacement of symbolic authority rather than by the patient reform of institutions, relationships and material conditions by a process of mutual agreement.

Urban Wronski Writes, 4 Oct, 2026

David Martin Shoebridge has been leader of the Greens for four days. In that time he has choked up on national television. He has been tagged an ecopopulist. He has been accused of prejudice. A Murdoch hack has charged him with being “snobby” to a police officer.

The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, tells him to go after One Nation instead. He found it “somewhat concerning” that, “at a time when we see a rise of a far right-wing party, Senator Shoebridge took the opportunity to actually criticise Labor.” Leave his government out of this.

Four days. That’s quick work. It’s also very old work.

Fleet Street called it monstering. In 1914, Kitchener’s propagandists did it with Belgian babies. Our corporate scribes have a four-day-old leader on the bayonet.

It would be easy to answer in kind. Find the villains, name them, shame them, go home. That’s the trap. Naming and shaming is their trade, not ours. The people doing this are seasoned operators and they are shameless. They aren’t confused and they aren’t stumbling. They are building something. The useful question isn’t who they are. It’s how the thing is built.

Start with Wednesday night. Sarah Ferguson had the new leader on 7.30 for eleven minutes. Her first question set the tone. “To get to know you, who is your key philosophical or political inspiration?”

Shoebridge named John Kaye, his mentor in the NSW Parliament, “a person of incredible principle, incredible courage,” dead since 2016. His voice caught.

“Oh, that still bothers you?”

“It still does. It’s a hard start to this interview, Sarah.”

“Why does it still move you in the way it does?”

He told her. She asked whether Kaye had expected him to become leader.

“You’d have to ask John.”

“Can’t.”

“Can’t,” he repeated.

A minute later the weeping man had become a bruiser. He and his deputy, Ferguson said, “came out aggressively” to “play hard ball.” Then: “Is that what voters want? An aggressive attitude towards Labor?”

Too soft to lead. Too hard to trust. Both charges inside three minutes.

The psychologists call it a double bind. The Tudors had a better name. Henry VII’s Lord Chancellor, Cardinal John Morton, had a rule for squeezing taxes out of the merchants of England. If a man lived well, he could plainly afford to pay. If he lived frugally, he must have money put away, so he could afford to pay.

Either way, he paid. Morton’s Fork. Shoebridge was skewered on it before he’d finished his first answer.

The ABC’s write-up knew exactly where the story was. “New Greens leader David Shoebridge gets emotional before launching attack on Labor“. First the tears, then the attack. The soft man, then the angry man. Then the “ecopopulist”. A character arc, pantomime villain included, ready for the promo.

This is the getting-to-know-you interview, and every new leader gets one. Who are you, really? What moves you? Who did you lose? It feels humane. It isn’t neutral. It turns the leader into the story, and once the leader is the story the argument is scenery.

Call it what it is: identity politics.

Identity politics is at its worst when it reduces the complex, dispersed and often contradictory workings of power to a cast-list of heroes and villains. It turns politics into the story of one man or one woman, oppressor or victim, with the facile implication that change is driven from the top down, by the capture or replacement of symbolic authority rather than by the patient reform of institutions, relationships and material conditions by a process of mutual agreement……………………………………………………………. https://urbanwronski.com/2026/10/04/monstering-of-david-shoebridge/

October 6, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics