What have the "teals" ever done for us?

Well, there's the aqueducts

…never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

—John Donne

The other day at a press conference, the leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton, with his signature smile on his face, a skip in his step, and with a kind word for everyone, posed what he seemed to think was a chilling proposition: “Can anyone name anything the teals have achieved since they’ve been in parliament?”

The Canutes of the LNP and Labor are desperate to hold back the “teal” tide

As framed, the question focussed on the community independents’ role in parliament, a role necessarily proscribed by the inbuilt two-team bias against which smaller parties and independents are constantly fighting, everything from staff allocations to committee representation to the ability to ask questions during Question Time.

Nonetheless, smiling Pete fell into the obvious Monty Python trap, and Climate 200, the community crowd-funded initiative founded by Simon Holmes à Court, shot back with their list of policies and issues …