Tim Wilson, the former “freedom commissioner” — and serial poster of things that both definitely absolutely happened and things you assume he’ll delete but never does — has secured preselection in his old seat of Goldstein ahead of the next election. In so doing, the “moderate Liberal” helped the Liberals’ “woman problem” by beating out Stephanie Hunt, a former adviser to Julie Bishop and Marise Payne; and Colleen Harkin, chief Voice opponent at Wilson’s old employers the Institute of Public Affairs.
If nothing else, it’ll clarify whether it was a good decision for him to retain “MP” at the end of his X handle following his loss in Goldstein to Zoe Daniel in 2022.
So, what has he been up to since then? And what clues does that hold for the campaign to come from the man once celebrated in these pages as “the antithesis of what anyone with a skerrick of blood in their veins feels life is all about: the rent-a-blazer with a nine-dollar smile”?
Announcing his return as a Liberal candidate, the Nine papers said Wilson is “studying for a PhD in economics”, possibly because saying he’s studying “alternative models for carbon markets through tokenisation and the development of derivatives markets” would raise more questions than answers.
As with many races that saw “moderate Liberals” turfed from their blue-ribbon seats, the contest between Wilson and Daniel was bruising and bad tempered. Who can forget the libertarian champion of private property encouraging his constituents to go to teacher over “unlawful signs” in support of Daniels?
Wilson also obviously didn’t share the predominant view that his campaign ended with Daniel’s victory. In April 2023, at an Anzac Day ceremony in Goldstein that Daniel was absent from on account of a personal commitment, Wilson pointedly laid an Anzac wreath at the local RSL, presumably stopping to look to the sky, hand hovering over his heart while surrounded by baffled locals.
Daniel, however, had sent a volunteer called Peter to lay the wreath in her absence, who was captured on video calling Wilson’s actions “very inappropriate” and “ridiculous”. Daniel’s people claimed Wilson had usurped Peter when the call had been made for a volunteer, and then refused to let go of the wreath when Peter had identified himself. Wilson retorted that he was asked to lay the wreath by an RSL staff member and that Goldstein’s MP wasn’t “at an Anzac Day service in her community”.
Meanhile, this past February he displayed his utter genius for hernia-inducing cringe by responding to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s announcement of his engagement to his long-time partner with…
With this kind of understanding of how normal people react to things added to Liberal leader Peter Dutton’s explicit strategy of dragging the Liberal Party even further away from anyone who would vote for a Liberal like Wilson in a seat like Goldstein, 2025 promises to be interesting.
What a tool. His memorable reaction on losing his seat was a moment of pure joy for the rest of us.
Yes Robert. I just can’t wait for Tim to tell us through more tears of self pity how “the voters got it wrong” on the next election night. It’ll be schadenfreude chilled to zero degrees kelvin with a twist of FU to the blackened shrivelled souls of the decimated Libs.
I live in Goldstein. Delighted that the Libs have renominated Timmy to run again. Zoe Daniel is going to eat him for breakfast. Will a second humiliation penetrate the Wilson Wall of Denial that Daniel outcampaigned him in a canter in 2021 and that his loss was no aberration? Don’t count on it, friends.
You could say that when God was handing out confidence, he did so in inverse proportion to intellect.
…. You mean Timmy’s got nothing to be supercilious about?
Dunning-Kruger.
Absolutely brilliant. I will be applying this quip liberally.
Wow! I love how the Liberals in Victoria just keeping digging their own graves deeper and deeper. Born to rule, Tim keeps that “MP” next to his name because it so violates the “natural order of things” that he’s not an actual MP. It was all just a mistake and an aberation, to Tim, that he was defeated by a Teal, and innate narcissism says to Tim that it’ll all change back the natural order next time, but…
1) The Teals stood on climate change action and the Liberals have not changed their policies on climate change, so why would the voters of Goldstein vote for Tim this time?
2) The Teals stood on “respect for women” and the Liberals have not changed their policies with respect to “respect for women”, so why would the voters of Goldstein vote for Tim this time?
3) Any chance the Liberals stood of winning back Liberal seats like Goldstein was strangled at birth and processed at the crematorium when Dutton announced the Libs cloud-cuckoo-land nuclear policy, which was a blatant fig leaf to giving Big Fossil Fuel and extra twenty years to take profits and kill the planet.
With apologies to Goanna, Tim is “living with a dream-world of yesterday”.
…. The Member for IPA? Has he been moon-lighting – for his ‘third-cousin(?)’ in that business that Tim chaired that parliamentary ‘super’ inquiry to benefit – too?
… “Geoff Wilson, chairman of Wilson Asset Management” (Timmy a share-holder in that business?)?
That Timmy-led parliamentary-funded PR campaign against “Labor’s retirement tax” – with it’s/his rent-a-crowd cast?
Labor’s policy to do in the tax-payer subsidised ‘franking credits rort’, that so benefited that ‘funny’ business?
…. That abuse of his elected “politics to make a difference” elite position : that ‘DIY help-yourself difference’ reality of his?
Yes indeed. His comments on superannuation, together with those of Jane Hume, the LNP minister “responsible”(?) for superannuation were plain wrong – as the RC into banking and superannuation concluded.
You’d think he could land a gig at his relative’s WAM, or maybe they know him well? 🙂
I was censored from SMH for indirectly referencing that.
AIM summed him up pretty well.. ‘Tim Wilson is a mere excrescence of shit from the IPA anus. Born to lie, a superstitious fool, trained to distort, corrupt, pass on …