Australia’s conservative Coachella, CPAC, is returning after a year-long hiatus with its 2022 conference later this year.
The organisation has already announced most of its lineup of speakers plucked from the star-studded international right-wing speaker circuit: a former Trump-appointed attorney-general who held the role for four months, Matthew Whitaker; Brexit campaigner turned professional Cameo-maker Nigel Farage; and Zuby, a British rapper who rose to fame after posting a video of himself “breaking the women’s deadlift world record” because he jokingly claimed to identify as a trans woman (he doesn’t).
But there are still some surprises yet to be revealed. Between Australian headliners like Country Liberal Party Senator Jacinta Price, CPAC Chairman Warren Mundine, and failed Liberal candidate Katherine Deves, CPAC 2022’s website promises a “to be announced” former prime minister.
Given there are only a few former prime ministers who would be caught dead at the conference home to the hard right of Australian politics, names such as Scott Morrison, Tony Abbott and John Howard have been floated (although last month CPAC founder Andrew Cooper hosed down the suggestion of Morrison, saying he wouldn’t be in high demand).
CPAC’s website appears to reveal the answer. The URL for the webpage for the mystery prime minister’s speaker page is http://cpac.network/keynote-speakers-2022/tony_abbott, which seems to confirm Australia’s 28th prime minister as the slated speaker.
The source code for the conference’s webpage for all the speakers also hints at other as-yet-unannounced speakers. These include foreign affairs writer and Fox News regular Gordon G Chang — whose Wikipedia entry pointedly mentions that he wrote a book predicting the collapse of China in 2011, and subsequently “changed the timing of the year of the predicted collapse to 2012” in December 2011 — as well as Liberal Senator Jim Molan and law academic James Allan.
CPAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The self-proclaimed “top conservative talkfest in Australia” offers tickets starting from $119, going all the way up to $7249 for the “VIP Platinum” experience, which includes two private luncheons with the speakers.
CPAC takes its name from a US-based event of the same name. At the conference held in Dallas, Texas, earlier this month, speakers stood in front of a digital banner that said “We Are All Domestic Terrorists” and “You’re Next: The Rise of the Democrat Gulag”.
