ANDREW CARSWELL: Teals now look more likely to hold the balance of power in an impending minority government

It’s not easy being teal.

Life is fleeting. One minute you’re a boss; the new player on the scene, a world-changer flush with power and attention, boasting bold ideals of overhauling politics as we know it. A new breed with a new colour scheme, with a proud motto of integrity and transparency.

Viva the Canberra revolution!

Next, you’re trying to evade the scrap heap.

Australia’s flirtation with the teals appears to be ever-so-slowly running out of puff, ironically just as they appear likely to move into an odious menage-a-trois power-sharing agreement with Albanese’s Labor and the Greens.

There is now an increasing likelihood that the stable of teals that galloped their way into Parliament in 2022 will share the balance of power in an impending minority government.

It’s bordering on Winx odds. Get on it.

It’s just that their merry band may be missing a few members.

A smattering of polls suggest its members in the glamour Perth seat of Curtin, Melbourne’s Kooyong and Goldstein, and Sydney’s Northern Beach paradise of McKellar are under pressure to hold their seats, staring down the barrel at the ignominy of a solitary term.

Curtin and Goldstein appear the most likely to fold back into Coalition colours, with pollster Redbridge suggesting the teals are behind 47-53, while the other pair remain on a knife’s edge and North Sydney ceases to exist courtesy of a redistribution.

And while there is a looming threat of independents in the semi-rural seats of Wannon — where the third-time independent proudly wears orange but is funded by the Climate 200 teal bank — and the NSW seat of Cowper, it is clear the teals have retraced from their high watermark protest vote at the 2022 election.

Their power in numbers diminishing, just as parliamentary power arrives on their doorstep, gift-wrapped by a Prime Minister who seized government and just didn’t know what to do with it.

To be clear, this is no concerted move away from independents by the voting public. They will continue to be a force in Australian politics, particularly now when there is a chunk of voters struggling to be inspired by either major party leader. But the polls are showing a slight recalibration away from a certain type of independent candidate.

The insufferable ones. The ones with an inflated sense of their own importance and power. Teals masquerading as Greens.

Has there been a mob so undeserving of power? So unrepresentative of the real Australia; behind the facade of sophistication. So enamoured with the face that looks back in the mirror at themselves.

Take the words of the soon-to-be-departing member of North Sydney, Kylea Tink, whose wealthy constituents are known to choke on their Penfolds when reminded of the folly of their ways when they went to the ballot box in 2022.

“I have as much access to ministers as anybody in the back bench of the Government,’’ she told The Saturday Paper.

“There have been occasions where I will receive a note from a backbencher of Labor saying, ‘Heads up, this is coming.’ And I kind of have to go back and say, ‘actually, I already know.’’

Good on ya, champ.

All access, and no power.

It is a fallacy, at this moment in the political cycle, that the teals actually affect genuine change. They fiddle around the edges of the legislative process to assuage their conscience, to qualify the mistruth they tell constituents that they’re powerful and perfectly positioned in Canberra to shake the foundations of a political system that they say is not serving the people well.

Is it no wonder Australians have grown weary of the teals — the constant lectures and finger-pointing, for no result. Even those who once placed their trust in this new wave of political leaders have been left disappointed, as the steady beat of time has only revealed their extraordinary lack of self-awareness about their own ordinariness.

Whenever the teals have a party room meeting, otherwise known as a joint press conference, a nation groans. It is tired of such lessons in morality.

The teals rail against politicians with conflicted interests, but preach openly of their intent to make Australia a renewable energy superpower, without disclosing that some of their rich benefactors make good coin from renewable energy projects.

They claim they are free-thinkers, individualists, separatists, but yet vote in a block, and around 80 per cent, in lock step with the Greens.

They decry the cesspit of Parliament and the lowering of standards in the parliamentary debate only to thrust their hands into the muck themselves.

Just minutes before addressing the media in a joint press conference, scolding the Parliament for its hysterics, school-yard name calling and trash talk, Warringah teal Zali Steggall was on her feet in Parliament calling Opposition Leader Peter Dutton a “racist”.

Blinkered to their own hypocrisy.

Think how insufferable they will be when power is finally bestowed on them, courtesy of the nation’s plunge into minority government.

At least there will be fewer faces screaming at us.

Andrew Carswell is a former strategist for the Morrison government