Greg Mirabella (Image: AAP/Lukas Coch)
Greg Mirabella (Image: AAP/Lukas Coch)

Sometimes a dude just can’t catch a break. While the surprise return of former Wentworth MP and expert room reader Dave Sharma, who has succeeded in replacing Marise Payne in the Senate, has taken the majority of the media coverage, spare a thought for Greg Mirabella. Mirabella, who just missed out on a return to the Senate in Victoria, has had a rough couple of years.

Making Senate inquiries

Mirabella, married to former Liberal MP Sophie Mirabella since 2006, has had several cracks at getting elected, with mixed results. In 2019, he ran to replace departing communications minister Mitch Fifield, and narrowly lost to Sarah Henderson who had the backing of then-PM Scott Morrison and then-treasurer Josh Frydenberg. In 2021 he finally got his chance, replacing the resigning Scott Ryan and beating out key Frydenberg ally Simon Frost. That, as it turns out, was not to last.

Enter Palmer

Sworn in during February 2022, Mirabella was out by May, after the Liberals’ calamitous showing at last year’s federal election. That would be bad enough, but Mirabella was making way for none other than United Australia Party Senator and founder of the “grindset” caucus Ralph Babet, the disappointing answer to the question “What does $120 million buy you these days?”

Matters of state

With persistence bordering on masochism, Mirabella was elected president of the Victorian Liberal Party in August 2022, just in time to start accruing material for the scathing report he would be forced to write in the aftermath of the Liberal Party’s comically bad performance at the state election in November 2022.

The report was released in early 2023. It argued former opposition leader Matthew Guy was so unpopular, and the Liberals’ election campaign so negative, that the party gave Victorians no “reason or moral permission” to vote for them. Guy publicly shot back that Mirabella was “factional and juvenile” and should resign.

Indeed, it’s been speculated that the lingering odour of this dispute was part of what cost him the spot vacated by the shift of backfiring blunderbuss David Van to the crossbench. He was beaten out by Kyle Hoppitt, a 41-year-old small business owner and former Baptist preacher, despite Mirabella being opposition leader Peter Dutton’s pick.