Analysis: Talk about clutching at straws!
The latest criticism of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for wearing a T-shirt of one of his favourite bands, Joy Division, smacks not just of desperation from Opposition Leader Sussan Ley, but a complete lack of ideas.
It's the sort of attack that only serves to speed up the ticking of the clock that's counting down the end of her political future.
READ MORE: Ley wants apology over PM's T-shirt
The only thing saving her is that no one else wants the job of leading a party that has Buckley's of winning back power in the foreseeable future.
I had held some sympathy for the thankless task of opposition leader for Ley.
Her grasp on the Coalition top job was already tenuous, having only narrowly claimed the position in the wake of the party's electoral wipeout at the last election.
As a moderate and a woman, Ley appeared on paper to be a reasonable choice for the Liberals to start clawing back some of the centre of politics and attempt to win back voters who had abandoned the Conservatives in droves.
But instead of being backed in as leader, she's been undermined at every turn, had shadow ministers quit the frontbench in protest at the direction she wants to take the party, and become the face of a political rabble intent on eating its own, obsessing over internal dramas instead of offering a credible alternative government.
For democracy to work, we need a strong opposition that can hold those in power to account.
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The Coalition with Ley as leader is failing dismally, and the attacks she has chosen to launch against the prime minister are proof she's not up to the job.
It was bizarre when Ley called for Australia's Ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd to be sacked after the prime minister's first face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump.
Rudd copped a lashing from the US president for his previous criticism of a man who doesn't take kindly to unkind words.
But the meeting and the entire US trip was a huge success, not just for Albanese but for the entire country.
And Rudd had worked tirelessly to help make it happen.
Ley's criticism of Rudd was a blunder that she was forced to walk back after even her own colleagues publicly admitted she got wrong.
Now, even more bizarrely, Ley has stood up in parliament to criticise the prime minister's choice of clothing when he flew home from the same US trip – swapping a suit and tie for a T-shirt of British band Joy Division.
She claimed it showed a "profound failure of judgement" to support a band that got its name from "a wing of a Nazi concentration camp where Jewish women were forced into sexual slavery", particularly "at a time when Jewish Australians are facing a rise in antisemitism".
She's right about the Joy Division name, but it's a very long bow to draw, trying to claim that makes the band or those who like their music antisemitic.
Joy Division is classed as a highly influential post punk rock band, and it's also ironic that Ley herself once claimed to be a punk rocker!
There are far more important issues for the opposition leader to hone in on than criticising the PM's choice of T-shirt.
